There wasn’t much that got by Jessie Winters.
Though her hearing had faded, the 105-year-old woman could still read perfectly well; and every week she combed through the Sandy Springs United Methodist Church bulletin to see what she’d missed. One week, not long ago, Jane LaBan, a friend from church, stopped by to see the centenarian, who had a few pointed questions about what had been going on.
“She said, ‘Jane, I see they’ve changed the name of the Chancel Choir!’ and I said, ‘They have?’ because I go to church every Sunday and hadn’t heard anything about it,” said LaBan, of Sandy Springs. “And she wanted to know why the name had changed and she was quite upset about it. But the name hadn’t changed, a special group from the choir sang that Sunday, and that was the name she read. But since then, I haven’t seen anything but Chancel Choir listed in the bulletin,” she said with a laugh. “There was nothing wrong with her eyes or her mind.”
Winters, who lived in her Sandy Springs home until 2010, died Sunday at Unihealth of Brookhaven from suspected heart failure. A funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at Sandy Springs UMC, and burial will follow in the church’s cemetery. Sandy Springs Chapel is in charge of arrangements.
Born in Hamilton, Scotland, Winters came to the U.S. with her mother in the early ’20s. They settled in Detroit, and she got a job on the production line at Parke-Davis and Co., where she met William R. “Bill” Winters, the man she eventually married. The couple wed in the mid-’20s and worked through the Depression together, said their son, Robert K. “Bob” Winters, of Sandy Springs. The couple moved to the Atlanta area in the 1930s, where they eventually parented two sons. Their oldest son, William G. “Jerry” Winters, died in 2010, and they had been married for more than 30 years when Bill Winters died in 1959.
After leaving Michigan, Jessie Winters spent her time in Georgia as a working mom. She never remarried, but surrounded herself with friends from Sandy Springs UMC and her community.
“If you ever said that Jessie needed anything, everyone responded to help,” LaBan said. “And that’s because she cared about and took care of everybody. So when they could do something for her, people jumped at the chance.”
One of the things Winters was known for was her recipes, and her memory for her favorite dishes was talked about wherever her friends gathered, friends and family said. A week ago, LaBan said Winters ticked off her recipe for an ambrosia pie, complete with a crust from scratch.
Bob Winters said his mother didn’t cut corners in the kitchen, and she expected the same of him. Before his mother went to live at Unihealth, he said the cooking was up to him. There were certain dishes she expected to be prepared from scratch, like chicken tetrazzini.
“She’d tell me the recipe and expect me to follow it exactly as she said it should be. As soon as she tasted it, she knew if I cut corners and she knew what was missing,” he said with a laugh. “Her sense of taste was not off one bit.”
In addition to her son, Winters is survived by three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.
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