Ramona Helitha Henry

Love Lives On

Early Life

Ramona Helitha Henry began her journey on July 17, 1955, beneath the warm Caribbean skies of St. Joseph, Trinidad, in the West Indies. She was the daughter of Yolanda Hendricks and Arthur Lawrence, and was also lovingly raised by her devoted stepfather, Arnim Mahwah. At fourteen years old, she immigrated to New York City, where she enjoyed playing tennis and bowling at Wingate High School, graduating in 1973. She went on to earn her associate’s degree in business management from LaGuardia Community College in 1985, the first of many paths she would walk with purpose.

Passions & Personality

As a young woman, Ramona read constantly, played guitar, and collected stamps, imagining all the places she hoped to one day send postcards home from. An avid writer and journaler, she filled many, many notebooks with poetry and her thoughts and observations of the world. She loved Star Trek and Star Wars with the devotion of someone who never outgrew a childlike wonder, was a fan of the Jeopardy quiz show, and had more editions of Monopoly than she might like to admit. She never once turned down a good plate of crab legs or a slice of cheesecake, especially not her own famous no-bake, five-ingredient lemon cheesecake.

Career

Ramona's hands knew many kinds of work, and she gave herself to each one wholeheartedly. In the 1980s, while raising a household of three little ones, she ran a small home-based business baking and decorating wedding and birthday cakes. In the 1990s, she welcomed travelers as a ticket agent for Pan Am and Eastern Airlines and even had a season as a real estate agent before settling into the 2000s as a tax preparer for H&R Block.

A Calling to Heal

Each of these callings brought her satisfaction, but Ramona found her work as an Integrative Healer most deeply rewarding. In 1993, she graduated from the Swedish Institute of Massage Therapy and in the same year, became a certified hypnotherapist. Years later, in 2025, she completed her training as a Shamanic Healing Energy Practitioner and, in the final two years of her life, served the community as part of the Healers' Network in Indianapolis.

Love as Legacy

Ramona's true gift was never any single credential; it was love, given relentlessly, generously, and unconditionally, especially to the downtrodden and the suffering. This was the deepest truth beneath the years of her hands laid to heal and in service of others. She taught her three children, and everyone else she encountered, to see the pain in the world without turning away from it, to recognize its energies, and to meet it with love and positive intention rather than fear. She did not live this perfectly, as no one does, but she lived it with purpose, day after day, in every space she entered, whether that space was a church pew, a living room, or a shamanic circle. It was the legacy she worked tirelessly to leave behind: not a title or a technique, but proof that one person, choosing love over and over again, can leave the world a little more healed than she found it.

Faith

Like a sunflower that cannot help but grow toward the light, Ramona's faith grew wherever God planted her, always finding belonging wherever she went. In 2025, she found her way to Emerge Church, and immediately her spirit felt at home, as though she had finally arrived at the place she had been growing toward all along. It was there, held in the deep, eternal, and unconditional love of that small but mighty family, that she armored up to battle ovarian cancer, never once alone, never once unseen. In May 2026, surrounded by the people who had become her people, she stood in the baptismal waters and declared, at last and fully, that her life belonged to Christ.

Her Final Battle

When cancer came, she met it the way she had met everything else in her life: with faith, with grace, with courage, and without surrender. Her family holds deep gratitude for Emerge Church, LIVESTRONG at the YMCA, and the Little Red Door Cancer Agency, whose tender care helped carry her through the hardest days. The coaches and community of LIVESTRONG's functional strength training program were especially crucial; their group chats and weekly meetups served as a source of continuous support and surrounded Ramona in a village that never let her walk the journey alone.

Those She Leaves Behind

Ramona leaves behind her 90 year-old mother, Yolanda; her children, Eugene Kenol (Lisa), Dr. Olivia Cronin (Justin), and Julie Alcaraz (Armando); her 12 grandchildren, Alexia and Alana (children of Eugene and Lisa), Henok, Mirlene, Dawit, Dean, James, Jacques, Nigel, and Ananya (children of Olivia and Justin), and Isabelle and Emma (children of Julie and Armando); her great-grandchild, Roman; and her siblings, George “Roger” Lawrence Jr, Meryl Lawrence, and Darryl Lawrence.

Her Unfinished Dream

Ramona carried a lifelong dream of climbing Machu Picchu and journeying through Peru with the shamanic healing community, but cancer took from her the chance to make that pilgrimage herself. Now her children will go in her place, carrying her name, her spirit, and the love she planted in them up through the clouds she once longed to touch. And in Peru’s Sacred Valley, among mountains that have watched over seekers, dreamers, and healers for centuries, some luminous part of her will finally arrive, resting in peace among the peaks she spent a lifetime longing to see.

Rest Now

Ramona was a healer, a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, a dreamer, and above all, a faithful teacher of love. She leaves behind a world softened by her presence, touched by her compassion, and forever brightened by the light of the love she poured so freely into others.

Rest now, Ramona, in the peace of God’s everlasting arms. Your healing hands and faithful heart have completed their sacred work. Your life was a light that time cannot dim. Your love lives on.

Services for Ramona will be held Monday, September 14, 2026 at Emerge Church, 211 S Merrill St, Fortville, IN 46040. Friends and family are welcome to gather for a public visitation from 11:00am - 1:00pm, followed by a service celebrating Ramona's life at 1:00pm at the church. 

Indiana Funeral Care is honored to be assisting the family with Ramona's arrangements.