Dec 23, 2007 3:22 pm US/Eastern
A Somber Holiday For Family Of Missing Woman
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
A normally joyful Christmas celebration of family and blessings will be more solemn this year for the family of Stepha Henry who disappeared during a trip to South Florida nearly 7 months ago.
"This Christmas won't be much of a Christmas," said Stepha's father, Steve Henry.
The 22-year old Stepha and her 16-year-old sister Shola flew to South Florida just before Memorial Day to celebrate Shola's birthday. They were staying with relatives in North Miami who later told police they saw Henry on May 29 getting into a black car driven by a man.
In the 7 months since her disappearance, Henry's family has given up their summer barbecues, observed her 23rd birthday in September with prayer and held a sad Thanksgiving dinner.
"We were all in tears," Sylvia Henry, Stepha's mother, recalled of the Thanksgiving dinner at the family's home in Brooklyn. "It wasn't the same."
Now the Henrys are facing their first Christmas without the John Jay College honors graduate.
"Last Christmas, Henry had a gift for seemingly everyone, even for aunts, uncles and cousins in New Jersey," her mother said. "She also did much of the holiday cooking."
This year's family celebration will be much more low-key, with a scaled-down dinner and not a lot of gift exchanges, said Sylvia Henry.
"It's going to be very said," she said. "We are not in the mood right now to celebrate anything. We're going to be mellow and prayerful. We will not celebrate in a big way as when Stepha was here."
Miami-Dade County police have examined abandoned cars and traced signals from her cell phone but still haven't figured out what happened to Henry. The case remains open and investigators are still reportedly following leads.
Sylvia Henry had vowed to stay in Florida until she found out what happened to her daughter, but returned to New York in November because Shola was taking her sister's disappearance especially hard.
Henry says her daughter's grades have dropped, she's become withdrawn and shuns conversations about her feelings and Stepha. Shola has also started visiting a therapist. The sisters, though roughly six years apart, shopped, dined out and saw movies together, Henry said.
"She's going through some emotions that if it wasn't her birthday, she wouldn't be missing," said Sylvia Henry, who has left her bank job and plans to return to Florida soon. "She feels bad and depressed about it. Sometimes she cries."
Henry refused to entertain the possibility of her daughter's disappearance remaining unsolved. She said she talks with Miami-Dade police detectives on average three times on weekdays.
"I allow them to rest" on weekends, she said this past week. "I'm still hopeful. I'm still praying and hoping."
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
