Well-known Vernon business owner remembered

A week before well-known Vernon business owner Lynella Henke succumbed to cancer she was awarded Business Leader of the Year award by the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce.

Too sick to attend the Business Excellence Awards ceremony, her husband and business partner, Trevor Henke accepted the award with tears in his eyes.

The audience gave him a lengthy standing ovation.

On Nov. 3, Lynella died from cancer. She was 51 years old.

"Although she had been sick for four months, this abrupt end was very unexpected," a message posted to Vernon Teach and Learn's Facebook page said. "We are encouraged to know she is now at peace."

Lynella was born in Vernon and graduated from Vernon Secondary School before later attending Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops.

A devout Christian, in 1995 Lynella entered the ministry and worked as a homeless minister in BC and Montana until 2001 when a serious car crash left her with significant back pain.

The following year she married Trevor Henke and the newlyweds bought Vernon Teach and Learn from her parents Eric and Mavis Jackson.

Anyone who walked into the busy Vernon toy store would likely have seen Lynella working behind the till and staying remarkably patient as hoards of children often ran rampant through the store.

And she wasn't a pushover.

"I was livid," Lynella told iNFOnews.ca in 2019 after city officials pulled the plug on a 12-foot tall inflatable snowman she had placed on the sidewalk. The City said a permit for Frosty wasn't available, but media coverage and her persistence saw the snowman back on the sidewalk a few days later.

In August this year, the couple's lives were changed forever when they lost their 15-year-old daughter, Lynza, after she spent a month in hospital having been hit by a vehicle turning right while she walked across the street.

READ MORE: 'We know how to do this better': How Vernon pedestrians could be safer

An outpouring from the community raised close to $50,000 and the Lynza Legacy Award was set up in her honour.

Along with her husband and parents, Lynella is survived by her two daughters, Janessa and Myrissa Henke.

Lynella's funeral will be held Nov. 8 at the Creekside Conference Center and will be streamed live.

For more information go here.

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