June Ellen Stevenson, the only daughter of Henry and Doris Maplethorpe, was born on June 25th, 1928, in the fens of Lincolnshire, England, near the village of Billinghay. Her paternal grandparents were Jabez and Elizabeth Maplethorpe. On her mother’s side, her grand parents were Thomas and Ellen Clarke.
June attended primary school in Billinghay, Lincolnshire, until she was evacuated during World War II to Hunmanby Hall School in Yorkshire, England, the school from which she graduated in 1944. In that same year, she commenced studies in photography at the polytechnic college on Regent Street in London (now the University of Westminster).
For a short spell before the end of the war, June worked in the Air Ministry at Whitehall. During her studies in London, she met and became engaged to Harold Munnings, a Bahamian studying civil engineering at the time. In the month of June of 1950, June and Harold married in Nassau, Bahamas, at St. Ann’s in Fox Hill and had two children, Lindy and Richard. Soon after her arrival in The Bahamas, June opened a portrait studio in the diocesan building on Bay Street in Nassau called June’s Studio. Her work in the studio involved taking portraits of Bahamians from all walks of life and photographing workers in need of identity cards to work in the United States on contract. In 1951, additional work became available for June recording photo finishes from the race tower at The Hobby Horse Hall, where she met Cyril St. John Stevenson, a reporter working for the Nassau Guardian at the time. Her marriage to Harold Munnings ended, and in 1959 she married Cyril. Together Cyril and June had two sons, Michael and Clarke.
The practice of racial segregation at the Hobby Horse Hall, so obvious to her from the racetrack tower, and the conditions of social and political inequality she encountered in Nassau, ignited in June a commitment to encourage and assist those willing to struggle against the legacy of historical injustice.
In keeping with this political commitment, June photographed at the Aurora Lodge the first Executive Board of the newly formed Progressive Liberal Party, co-founded by Cyril St. John Stevenson. And when, in 1954, The Nassau Herald, the mouthpiece of the fledgling Progressive Liberal Party was put into circulation under the ownership and editorial management of Cyril St. John Stevenson, June found herself helping to keep the paper going in a variety of capacities working for the paper; eventually, with the help of her future son-in-law, Billy Stevenson, June took on the responsibility of distributing the political hard hitting Nassau Herald across Nassau and into the settlements of the Out Islands. P. Anthony White and Ira McKinney were June’s main co-workers at The Nassau Herald during these years. June was an ardent supporter of the Progressive Liberal Party, and, notwithstanding victimization at the hands of the Bay Street Boys, she, along with Cyril St. John Stevenson and her co-workers, persevered in maintaining the circulation of The Nassau Herald. She also played a pivotal role in ensuring that Cyril became a representative for Andros and part of the Magnificent Six – the first PLP Members elected to the House of Assembly in 1956 – an achievement of which she was forever proud.
June’s other political commitment in the 1950s was to Dr. Doris Johnson and Eugenie Lockhart in the women’s suffrage movement. This was expressed in the numerous demonstrations in which she participated on Bay Street and the help she provided raising funds on “Flag Day” to send Doris and Eugenie to The Colonial Office in London to be heard on the issue of the political rights of women in The Bahama Islands. She always reminded family that the organization of the funding for the leaders of the suffrage movement in The Bahamas to visit The Colonial Office in London took place above the print shop of The Nassau Herald on Charlotte Street where she lived in the late 1950s with her children from her first marriage and Cyril’s children from his first marriage.
After Cyril’s electoral defeat in 1967, June and Cyril became charter members of The Christian Missionary Alliance in The Bahamas, Chapel-on-the-Hill, where she taught Sunday School. During this period of her life, June’s faith grew, and she devoted her attention to the education of her children and managing her husband’s print shop in Centerville, Offset Printers.
Some of June’s retirement years were taken up with looking after her mother and her husband Cyril who both developed Alzheimer’s disease. After Cyril died on November 6th, 2006, June spent the rest of her retirement years in Christian and spiritual meditation, reading literature and poetry, and tending to her family and friends and her non-human companions – her beloved jungle of plants and trees behind the walls of her yard at South Beach (which she named The Fen). And during these years at her residence at South Beach, June always maintained that God had blessed her with “extra years” to live her remaining years in freedom, solitude, and everlasting peace.
JUNE ELLEN STEVENSON died at her residence at South Beach, Nassau, Bahamas, on August 28th, 2024, at the age of 96.
May She rest in peace.
