Students, Mom Mourn Nurse's Death

TAMPA - Shock and grief follow the weekend shooting death of a popular nurse who tended students at Hillsborough High.

Cynthia Verdell Howard didn't have children of her own. So she took care of just about every child who came across her path.

But her life's work, whether as a nurse at Hillsborough High School or comforting poor people at the Lee Davis Health Center in College Hill, came to a violent end over the weekend.

Howard, a 35-year-old Tampa native, was shot to death early Sunday morning in her house at 1111 W. Nassau St. Police said she was shot in the head during a domestic dispute with her live-in boyfriend and died a short time later at Tampa General Hospital.

Her boyfriend, Stanley Larry Telfare, 37, told police the shooting was accidental. Monday, detectives turned the investigation over to the state attorney's office for further review, said police Lt. Jane Castor. No charges were filed against Telfare, who has worked in the maintenance division of the Tampa Police Department since February 1990.

"She was well known in the school, in the neighborhood and everywhere else," her mother, Verdell Howard, said Monday night.

"She didn't bother nobody. She would go out of her way to help people," Verdell Howard said.

"I don't know too much about what happened," the grieving mother said. "All I know is that my daughter is dead. I will never get over this. She was just a wonderful daughter.

"She loved to be around children. She didn't have children of her own, so she just loved everybody else's."

Meanwhile, the sense of loss Monday spread beyond the family, into the school and the community.

"She was the type of person, if you had a problem, you could go to her," said former student Kenneth Davis, 18.

Davis, now a freshman at Southwest Mississippi University in Summit, Miss., said he got to know Howard during his four years at Hillsborough. He said she was like a second mom to him.

"She treated us, basically, like her children," he said.

Howard often was like a guidance counselor, Davis said. She would help all the students, but "she would make you walk a straight line."

"Whatever type of problem you had - girl problems, school problems, problem with your parents - you could go talk to Ms. Howard," he said.

The school district's crisis intervention team counseled about 100 Hillsborough High students Monday.

Howard had worked at the school since 1991 as a health professional. She had a "caring nature and willingness to help," Hillsborough Principal Linda A. Kipley wrote in a letter to parents that was sent home with students Monday.

"It is a time of great sadness for all of us at Hillsborough High School," she wrote.

In her May 1997 evaluation, Howard was described as a "valuable member of the health team," said Mark Hart, spokesman for the district.

Howard graduated from Robinson High in 1980. In 1984, she received her medical assistant's certificate from Tampa College. She was a health support aide for the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services from 1984 to 1991. Services will be 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Luke A.M.E. Church, 2709 N. 25th St.