But like most advocates cutting a swath, Ramos has had to fight hard and long to get people to listen. The resistance never daunted the high-spirited and outspoken Ramos, who followed her heart in 1970 and began taking battered women and their children into her Hackensack home because they had no place to go. She housed hundreds over the years, defied court orders to remove them, threatened legal action, and pestered freeholders until she won Bergen County funds in 1978 for the first shelter for abused women in the country. Strengthen Our Sisters, of which Ramos is director. We were always overcrowded.
Some women still have nowhere to go.
She is truly an unsung hero to thousands of women and children whose lives she has impacted through her dedication and commitment. Ramos, who has three grown children, did not expect the honor. Dressed typically and with flair in second hand clothes from the shelter's thrift shop, she said she prayed for money to buy a badly needed house that sits next to another in the shelter program. The tenacious and impassioned Ramos qualifies on both counts. I just keep plugging until what's needed to be done gets done.