Ramona Gomes Cordeiro

A visitation for Ramona will be held Tuesday, February 25, 2025 at 9:00 AM at St Anthony of Padua with Service to follow at 10:00 AM. Burial will take place at 1:00 PM at Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery.

Ramona Gomes Cordeiro passed peacefully in her sleep January 14, 2025. Born November 7, 1926 to August Phillip and Eva Reis Gomes, she grew up in Kapahulu with her two older brothers, Norbert and Cyril Gomes. She learned to play piano by ear and enjoyed watching the Marx brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and Shirley Temple movies. She inherited her father’s thespian skills and inclinations as she and her siblings would return home from the theater to mimic the antics and music displayed on the big screen.

She graduated from Sacred Hearts Academy Class of 1945 and by her own admission would clown in French class imitating exaggeratingly the nasally sounds of the instructor.

She loved entertaining family and friends as well as innumerable patients of many nursing homes over the years. She especially enjoyed seeing patients reacting to her lively honky-tonk and ragtime piano numbers.

Ramona was an avid researcher and member of the Portuguese Genealogical Society contributing significantly to the database that exists today with the society. She and cousin Barbara Jean Abreu spent scores of hours winding through yards of microfiche at the Hawaii State Archives connecting family lineages via ship manifests, obituaries, birth, and marriage announcements.

Ramona married William Norman Cordeiro in 1949 who predeceased her by 22 years. She is survived by sons Norbert (Joleen) and Alan (Glenda) Cordeiro, sister Willene Wailani Bell, grandchildren Wayne (Pili) Cordeiro and Eva (Micah) Costa, and Eric (Vicky) Cordeiro, and six great-grandchildren.