Cleopatra White

Officially founded in 1920, with untrained personnel, the organization began in its second year to offer general nursing and maternity classes under Dr. K. M. B. Simon, the government medical officer, and Amy Clare Woods George, a certified British Honduran midwife who had studied in Britain.

[2] In 1931, after the hurricane, White helped set up the nursing facilities and supply stations for the relief effort.

In 1943, she attended four-hour lectures each morning and completed rounds at the hospital for four hours each afternoon to obtain practical training.

Initially she was appointed to serve in Double Head Cabbage village, but then moved on to Gales Point and the Manatee River area of Belize, where she spent most of the next 16 years.

After Hurricane Hattie hit in 1961, White drove daily to care for those who had been gathered at what would become the village at Hattieville.

[3] When she retired from the Hattieville Clinic in the mid-1960s, White returned to Belize City and attempted to revive the Black Cross Nurses training courses, which had begun to decline.

[2] In 1986, the Women's Bureau of Belize established a prize in her honour, named the Cleopatra White Shield, for the winner of the National High School Quiz Contest.