Winona Wood of Pea Ridge recently shared memories of her life.
She was born in Muskogee, Okla., in a hospital elevator. Her parents apparently had not chosen a name for her, and a Cherokee nurse suggested the name Winona, which is Cherokee for "first born daughter," she said. She was raised mostly at Gateway. She went to school at Seligman, Mo., then to Clintonville, which consolidated. Then she went to school at Bayless, which consolidated with Pea Ridge. It was there that she met her husband, Jimmy Wood, a Pea Ridge native.
They married when he was 17 and she was 16 in June 1952. Jimmy volunteered for the draft and went into the Army for two years while Winona finished high school. Then they moved to California and he went to school on the GI bill and worked a full-time job while she worked as a teller for Bank of America and for an aircraft manufacturing company as a personnel clerk.
When they had been married 11 years, a law surfaced in Arkansas that said if a man under 18 lied about his age to get married, the marriage wasn't legal. The couple decided to remarry in 1963 in California. Their two sons were present at the hastily-arranged wedding, with the younger one's cowboy boots resonating against the pew as he swung his legs, Winona said.
"(Jimmy) died three years ago, and we were just short of 62 years of marriage with the '52 marriage, which is the one we always counted," she said.
Jimmy's mother was ill, so the couple moved back to Arkansas in 1963. Jimmy got a job with Gerber and then with Norge appliance company as an electrician. Winona worked at City National Bank in Fort Smith. Jimmy got hired by American Airlines and they moved to Tulsa, where Winona worked for another bank. She was in banking for about 25 years, she said. American Airlines transferred him to Texas and then back to Tulsa. She went to work for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma. They both retired in 1994.
The couple bought an RV and were on the road for more than two years, Winona said.
"He loved to go. I'm not a traveler. I don't even like to go to Wal-Mart. I like to be there, but I don't like getting out there and going. We enjoyed seeing so many different places of interest and taking our kids and grandkids," she said. "I enjoyed all of it."
The couple moved to Pea Ridge in 1996.
"I think we just got bored," she said. "My husband always, always wanted to come back to Pea Ridge, Ark."
In 2001, Winona formed a committee to work on finding where class members were to form a reunion. The committee held a reunion for the classes of '49 through '55.
"It was a fine, fine turnout. Everyone had such a good time," she said. They held another reunion in 2004.
In 2004, she was recruited to join Granny's Quilts of Love, a group that makes and donates quilts to Arkansas Children's Hospital. The group has made almost 24,000 quilts since 2004, she said.
"I just think it's fabulous. It's been a phenomenal 14 years. The good Lord intends for us to do these quilts, I think," she said.
She has three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and one on the way in March.
"Blessings galore. They are so special. You just enjoy your grandchildren so much," she said.
Community on 03/29/2017