{"id":390336,"date":"2026-11-02T01:08:57","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T01:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/390336\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T01:08:57","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T01:08:57","slug":"a-legacy-of-love-curlene-bennett-one-of-staten-islands-black-angels-dies-at-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/390336\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018legacy of love\u2019: Curlene Bennett, one of Staten Island\u2019s Black Angels, dies at 89"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the <a href=\"https:\/\/amsterdamnews.com\/news\/2026\/03\/05\/staten-island-black-angels-sea-view-nurses\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">legendary Staten Island\u2019s Black Angels nurses<\/a>, Curlene Gaynelle Jennings Bennett, died in her home on Sept. 29 at the age of 89. This past weekend, her family and friends gathered to honor her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI would love to say that our mama was and still is an inspiration to not just her family but to friends, former colleagues and her beloved spiritual communities. Her celebration of life reflected her legacy of love,\u201d said her daughter, Leah Bennett.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to her passing, she had a stroke and was in poor health, Leah said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A Tennessee native, Bennett moved to Staten Island as an elementary school student and she graduated from St. Peter\u2019s High School. In 1957, she graduated from Manhattan\u2019s Bellevue School of Nursing, and was a nurse at Sea View Hospital helping care for tuberculosis patients from 1957 to 1958 before leaving to work as a public health nurse with a specialty in neonatal care. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[FOR Web: Embed link] RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/amsterdamnews.com\/news\/2026\/03\/05\/staten-island-black-angels-sea-view-nurses\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Staten Island\u2019s \u2018Black Angels\u2019: How an unsung legion of African American nurses defeated disease and cared for the forgotten<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In her 20s, Bennett moved to Liberia in West Africa, where she was married. While her husband worked as a business manager for the country\u2019s president, William V.S. Tubman, Bennett used her nursing skills to set up well-baby clinics and teach nutrition.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Obituary2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10466466\"  \/>Black Angel Curlene Gaynelle Jennings Bennett passed at age 89. (Contributed by Leah Bennett)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She would go on to work at what was then known as Beekman Downtown Hospital in Manhattan as a head nurse. She also assisted in establishing a head injury unit at Susan Smith-McKinney Rehab Center in Brooklyn as assistant director, and ended her almost 50-year nursing career at Sea View as assistant director of nursing in 2002, her family said.<\/p>\n<p>Bennett raised her five children in Mariners Harbor on Staten Island. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her stories were shared with Maria Smilios, author of \u201cThe Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis,\u201d and Bennett was featured in the Staten Island Museum\u2019s 2023 tribute exhibit, \u201cTaking Care: The Black Angels of Sea View Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the legendary Staten Island\u2019s Black Angels nurses, Curlene Gaynelle Jennings Bennett, died in her home on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-390336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}