Ophelia A. Powell Torres will speak at 6 p.m. Friday at the Elaine Sprauve Library on St. John.
“She’ll speak about her personal battle with cancer,” Friends of the Library secretary Heather Ruhsam said. Under the pseudonym Anaroma B. Romano, Torres wrote “War on Breast Cancer: One Woman’s Journey with Breast Cancer.”
The event is sponsored by the Friends of the Library group.
Donations will be accepted to help fund the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life activities on St. John.
A graduate of All Saints School on St. Thomas, Torres holds an associate’s degree in nursing from New York University and a master’s degree in nursing education from NYU. She also worked on her doctoral degree in nursing at Columbia University Teachers College.
After a career spent in various nursing positions in numerous locations, she retired as an assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands.
Torres now owns Hands on Care, where she offers training in phlebotomy, intravenous therapy and electrocardiogram procedures. She trains home health aides and nursing assistants, prepares new graduates for their licensing exams, and gives refresher courses for those nurses who want to re-enter nursing. She also manages a Home Health Agency.
Torres is a past president for V.I. Board of Nursing, served in the U.S. Army Reserve and is the host of "Talk About Your Health" on WGOD radio.
She has written two volumes of “Caribbean Poetry, Folktales and Short Stories" as well as "Recidivism for Incarcerated Mothers” and “Just Passing Through."
For more information, call the library at 776-6359.
