A public health nurse who worked with HIV patients and became a hospital minister in her retirement was a devoted missionary in her later years.

Cynthia Stovell took the lead on HIV and Aids education and awareness at a time when the disease was under a pall of misinformation in Bermuda.

As a supervisor at the Department of Public Health’s clinic for sexually transmitted diseases clinic from 1974 to 1985, Ms Stovell was on the front lines when the island reported its first case of Aids in 1982.

She recalled in a 1996 interview: “It was very overwhelming because at the time there was very little research on the disease and we didn't know what caused it.

“It took a while for other cases to show up. There was so much fear and stigma attached in the early days.”

Ms Stovell was stylish, loved hats and enjoyed travelling on cruises. Loved ones recalled her as a figure of “infinite generosity”, energy and enthusiasm.

She grew up in Pembroke and attended Central School — now Victor Scott Primary — followed by Howard Academy, where she taught after graduating.

Nursing caught her eye while she worked as a waitress on Victoria Street, in Hamilton, and dropped in at the health department across the street.

When she was 20, she headed to St Giles’s Hospital in London, where she completed her training as a state-registered nurse.

Ms Stovell returned to Bermuda in 1963, initially working at St Brendan’s Hospital in Devonshire, now the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute, before becoming a public health nurse at the Department of Health.

She ran the department’s sexually transmitted disease clinic and was often called upon to educate young people and speak in schools on the topic, at a time when HIV and Aids loomed large.

By 1996, when Ms Stovell was named chairwoman of the island’s World AIDS Day Committee, almost 300 lives had been taken by the virus — out of 366 people on the island known to carry HIV.

Ms Stovell, who was devoted to St Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Hamilton, also ministered to hospital patients, including people terminally sick with Aids.

She told the Mid-Ocean News in 1996: “I found myself ministering to many Aids patients because there was such a need.

“It was through this ministering I found I needed to be more committed. I think more Christians need to be committed.”

Ms Stovell had retired from nursing by then but called herself “deeply concerned” at the toll of HIV, with Bermuda’s deaths peaking at 36 in 1993.

She married Quinton Stovell Sr in 1963 and the couple welcomed Quinton Jr in 1966 followed by Curtis in 1968. Her husband died in 1987.

Ms Stovell continued nursing in her retirement at the government clinic on Victoria Street. She worked in doctors’ offices and became a caregiver to her mother.

In 2010, she was part of a missionary team sent to Mozambique in Africa by Richard Allen AME Church and St Paul AME.

Ms Stovell was moved to tears after distributing medicine in an impoverished community there.

"This was my first visit,“ she said. ”I just enjoyed the fact that I was allowed to go.“

• Cynthia Mae Eltruda Stovell, a nurse and champion for HIV patients in Bermuda, was born on August 27, 1939. She died on December 14, 2023, aged 84