Joseph R. Winchester always led by example
Published 8:50 pm Tuesday, May 31, 2005
By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Joseph WInchester's family will always remember their visit in the Oval Office with President Bill Clinton as "a dream come true."
It was September 1994 and Joe, as tribal chairman of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, and his daughter, Judy, had clearance for a ceremony restoring the tribe's federal recognition.
After being admitted, Mr. Winchester came back down the White House walkway to where others waited "with the strangest look I've ever seen on his face," recalls his oldest daughter, Paula Geer, who works at Ameriwood.
Mr. Winchester, who died at 78 May 29, had a knack for knowing someone everywhere they went - and for striking up conversations if he didn't.
A month ago, on an outing to Wal-Mart, his family waited while he carried on an animated 10-minute conversation. When they got to the car, his children realized Mr. Winchester just met the other person.
Mr. Winchester recently toured Dowagiac Middle School, for which Scott was lead architect for Fanning Howey. Joyce was able to see the artist's rendering before her death.
Though he lived at Sister Lakes more than 50 years, Mr. Winchester grew up in Dowagiac on S. Front Street, youngest of four sons. He started his education at McKinley Elementary School. In high school his mother used to fry up whatever fish they could catch and feed his hungry teammates.
Mr. Winchester always relished playing Buchanan, which for him was "the Winchesters against the Topashes," his cousins.
He and former Mayor Dr. James E. Burke, the city's longest-serving mayor, were 1945 Central classmates.
Mr. Winchester starred in football, basketball and track. He went on to play football in the Army in Germany after World War II ended. "Uncle Dick was in the ski patrol," Scott recalled. "Because Dad was from Michigan, a guy told him he was going to go into ski patrol. Dad had never skied before, so he got out of that."
Another brother, Harold, was recruited to play professional baseball.
Scott and Judy are the only brother-sister duo to win Dowagiac's All-Sports Award.
Paula perhaps learned that lesson most emphatically the time she and some friends from Chicago decided to pilfer watermelons from a produce stand. Her father marched her back, curing her of ever swiping fruit again. "That was a lesson in integrity. I never got in trouble again after that."
His grandson Joe, who "always thought of him as the iconic Native American," remembers the time "Papa Joe" kept his cool at his sister Jeanna's high school graduation in Florida when a huge black snake slithered into the house.
As others lunged with shovels, Mr. Winchester scooped it up in a cloth "like a snake wrangler" and released it outside.
No family get-together was complete without a "dip-off" challenging Mr. Winchester's status as king with his "secret" recipe of milk, creamed cheese and onion.
Besides his long involvement in tribal affairs, he was an early president of the Sister Lakes Parent-Teachers Association and a charter member of the Lions Club.
Paula, his little red-haired sidekick, remembers her father "going all over earth talking about Indians to schools, church groups and kids. I got carted with him everywhere. There's a picture of him in 1959 of him in full headdress and buckskin when he rode the Dowagiac float. Uncle Dick designed the first Indian headdress for the Chieftain band. The long headdress the drum major wore, Grandma sewed that."
Mr. Winchester was a Boy Scout leader before Scott was even old enough to join. The battery of Scott and Joe broke the car's windshield teaching the son to pitch, so the father was ever after kidded about not being able to catch.
Another time, Joe was chopping wood, took his watch off, then couldn't find it. Winter passed, spring came "and, of course, he missed one" playing catch, Scott recalled. "There's the ball, there's his Timex, still ticking."
As youngsters they remember their dad swimming across the lake. He learned to swim at the Mill Pond when his older brothers pushed him from the bridge.
Their mother, on the other hand, was deathly afraid of the water, which led to strict waterfront rules. He whistled once to summon them for supper. If he had to signal twice, "You better look out," Paula said. "He didn't get mad, we just lost our lake privileges. The rules were the rules."
One summer, Scott worked with his dad at Benton Harbor Engineering. "It turned me off to factories the rest of my life," he laughed. "He got up at 5:20 his whole life. He had to be at work at 7. The summer I worked there, we got down to the doggone coffee shop at 6:15. I didn't drink coffee," so he slumped at the counter, trying to squeeze in some more sleep.
Mr. Winchester served 35 years with the National Guard, which deployed him to Detroit in 1967 for six weeks during the riots. Every summer they'd troop to the Armory in Dowagiac to watch the convoy depart for two weeks of training in Grayling.