SYRACUSE – Eight months after the death of longtime member Dallas Winchester, his friends on the Wawasee School Board sat down with his family to swap memories.
Winchester, who served on the board for 10 years, died on Thanksgiving Day 2010 while hospitalized for cancer. The school board announced Tuesday the creation of a scholarship in his name for students going to vocational school, which was an interest of his.
The scholarship will first be awarded next year and run for 10 years, paid through the Wawasee Foundation. Schools Superintendent Tom Edington also gave a plaque recognizing Winchester's decade with the school to his wife, Elizabeth Winchester, who attended the meeting with their three daughters.
His longtime friends at Wawasee characterized Winchester as reliable, loyal and hardworking. He was dedicated to his family, to the school and to Milford, where he worked as utilities superintendent, they said.
“I don't think he looked at the board like a hobby. He saw it as something that needed to be done by someone who was concerned,” said member Mary Lou Dixon. “There's not a meeting that comes that I don't miss Dallas.”
Winchester took a firm stand once he made up his mind, recalled board President Mike Wilson, but was also “man enough to meet somewhere in the middle” when someone came to him with different ideas. Edington remarked that he had a talent for reading people and “knew when someone was feeding him a line.”
“It worked for me,” his oldest daughter, Brittany, said with a laugh. She also remembered how her dad was shy about buying perfume or other gifts for her mom, so would give her the cash to pay for it.
He liked being on the board and talked about his colleagues often, she and her mom added. “It was his home away from home,” Elizabeth Winchester said.
While at his second home he talked about his family often, his face lighting up every time, board Secretary Rebecca Linnemeier recalled.
“He always called you his girls,” she told his family.
