UTech honours dead midwifery student with degree

For four years, Judene Henry dedicated herself towards achieving a Bachelor of Science degree in midwifery from the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech, Ja.). However, before she could walk across the stage and collect her academic award, death intervened.

The 26-year-old died in May, but not before she had earned a second-class honours degree.

"Every time me think about Judene, me cry," said Novelette Phillips, Henry's mother who collected the degree on her behalf during at ceremony at UTech, Ja. on Tuesday.

The degree was awarded posthumously to Henry, who the university described as a high achiever. Phillips was glad to be collecting on her daughter's behalf but wished things were different.

"It was very hard because when I think about the fact that she was almost done and she just gone," Phillips told THE WEEKEND STAR. "I'm still proud of her and I will frame the degree and put it up in my house." Henry, who lived in Lawrence Tavern, St Andrew, was the first in her family to attend university, a feat relatives were proud of.

"Me and her father worked to send her to school but it was really hard because I'm a domestic helper and her father never have a steady job. He would do a little work here and there," she said. "I invested a lot into her to send her to school because I said to myself that what I don't have in life I want my children to have it."

The grieving mom believes that her daughter's death was as a result of an evil spell put on her by "some people who don't have a good mind for other people children".

Dreamt of doing great things

"Because dem see my daughter a strive, them cut her down," Phillips said. "The doctor seh she suffocate and died and me never do no autopsy on her because a never want them to cut her or anything like that. But believe it or not, some people where I live are confessing that they killed her."

She said that prior to her untimely death, Henry was a healthy young woman who dreamt of doing great things. Her passion was medicine and she loved children, hence her decision to study midwifery.

"Is the first Judene ever sick and is some spot me see come out on her skin, and me carry her go doctor. The doctor say she have cancer and I tell him it's not cancer because we did a lot of test before and it never show nothing like that," she said.

"Up to two weeks before Judene dead, she deliver a baby in our community and strong Judene just take down so and dead, and it give me more reason to believe that they did something to her," the mother said. She is not gung-ho about Christmas this year.

"Every Saturday I go to her grave and clean up so she can be clean, and plant a lot of flowers, just to keep her nice," Phillips said. "Right now, I don't have a Christmas. I don't business about it because Judene is not here. Normally, she would help paint up the house and fix up because I would have to be at work, and me and her would also go downtown and shop, and whatever she want, I buy it."