 Home | Recent News | Farmington | Lessons Fathers Taught Paid off 17 Jun 2007 Intentional or Inadvertent Lessons their fathers taught them paid off As a child you never know what will stick in your mind and surface later as a worthwhile lesson learned from your parents. With Father’s Day on the horizon, residents of Presbyterian Manor of Farmington took the time to reflect on the lessons those key male figures in their lives taught them.
Georgia Neff, 90, remembers her father, George S. Wininger, as a “man of deeds, rather than words.” A Manor resident since October 2005, she is from Esther, Mo. Her father worked for St. Joseph Lead Company in what is known as the “Lead Belt” of the country in southeastern, Mo. The area is the world’s largest producer of lead, and it was in that area that Wininger made a living for his six children. Says Neff: “I never remember him being out of work.”
Her father grew up in the backwoods of Virginia in Scott County. As a youth, he decided to head for Missouri where he had a sister. He walked out the gate of his then home taking nothing with him, says his daughter. He ended up in Louisville, Ky., where he worked for a couple of years on his journey west. By 1900, he arrived in Bonne Terre, Mo., where his sister lived. Two years later, he married Neff’s mother.
Wininger didn’t finish school, but Neff remembers him taking all kinds of correspondence classes, most of them math, she says. He was a civic-minded man who even in retirement served as a judge in the court in Farmington. Indeed, when he died, he was still in office. He had also served as secretary/treasurer of Esther Baptist Church for 30 years and on the Esther School Board for 20years.
Since her mother died so early, her father was her chief role model. Neff says that he taught her “three important lessons enclosed in one. The first was to obey and trust the Lord. My father loved the Lord. He was in church at each service, year in and year out, serving in any way he could.
“He was loyal in every aspect of his life, to his Lord, to his work and to his family.”
He encouraged her to “depend on myself for all my needs. As I matured, I realized there was nothing more important than these three lessons,” which he modeled for her throughout his life.
Those lessons were valuable to her as she reared her own sons. “I strived to remember the things my father taught me. Being dedicated to my Heavenly Father, loyal to all, and self-reliant.”
He sent her to school in Cape Girardeau to attend college after graduating from high school. Though she didn’t graduate right away, she did so after she married and attended summer school for five years. She became an educator, teaching in Ironton, Mo. The lessons her father taught her became her life script.
Bill Sutton, 78, has been a Manor resident for three years. His father was an oil worker in Bartlesville, Okla. He remembers growing up in the Depression. They were “tough times,” he says. One of five children (two brothers, two sisters) in his family, he served as a principal inspector of aircraft and airline accidents.
He went into the Army Air Corps at the age of 16, ended up in the officer candidates’ school, and after his service launched his career as an inspector which took him to the Bahamas, New Orleans and Chicago. He had two sons and a daughter of his own. They have given him five grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren, he shares with pride.
The lessons he learned from his father? “Truth. Honesty. Treat women and little girls with respect,” he says. He hopes he’s passed those traits and qualities on to his children.
For Betty Luig, 86, a relative newcomer to the Manor, her father’s teachings likewise have had a long-time impact. The critical thing he taught her was to “complete any project” she started.
“He always encouraged me to finish what I started and helped me with my goals,” she adds. She began college around the time of World War II and married a cartographer who was with the Defense Mapping Agency. While that interrupted her education, she did go back to school.
“Eight years and three children later,” she went on to complete her college degree. By then she was a single mother, but she ended up getting her master’s degree and teaching certification. She specialized in the teaching of elementary reading, and practiced in some pretty tough inner city schools, she explains.
Her father, she recalls, was a very honest businessman. “He always used to say ‘If a man cheats me out of $500, he’s smarter than I am. But if he cheats me out of a nickel, he’s a crook.”
Martha Nichols, 90, remembers well the lessons her father taught her. She had three brothers and a sister. They were taught by their father, a native of Germany who served as a St. Louis frog and switch foreman for the Eastern Railroad Co., to “be on time; to eat everything on our plates; and not to waste anything.”
Eventually, he became a janitor at various public schools. A hard-working man, Nichols remembers that he saved his money and with $2,000 in his pocket, he built a one and a half story house for his family. He was so beloved by the children at the schools where he worked that when he died, his funeral procession “passed by those schools.”
As for Nichols, it may be that penchant not to waste anything that led her to the antique business, “a very interesting” experience and a shop she ran for 25 years in Arnold, Mo.
In a special memory of her father, Nichols, a Manor resident for two years, recalls that he took her to the St. Louis World’s Fair--by horse and buggy.
These seniors provide some proof that lessons--whether intentional or inadvertent—taught early in life may have lasting value. For today’s fathers, these snapshot experiences offer proof that lessons children learn stay with them all their lives.
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