Winifred Gregory led an extremely full life

Stephen Gregory's favorite memory of his wife, Winifred "Win" Gregory, is her life. Every phase of her extraordinary life was full.

"There's a certain thing in this life, it's like the breeze blowing through the trees. You're not aware of it, but you just feel the softness surrounding you, and that's what Win did," Stephen said. "She just enveloped you in this warmth of being."

Win died Dec. 26 from illness at the age of 85, after a very full, active life.

She was always very good in school, a beautiful girl, according to her childhood friend Justin Rice who still lives in Win's home town of Wallace.

"She was one of my favorite people, I grew up down the street from her," said Rice. "We graduated from high school in 1936. Her father bought her a brand new, yellow Buick convertible."

He recalled that her father owned a dance hall called Howarth Hall. When they were about 10 years old, he attended a costume party there with a full orchestra.

"We had on pirate's costumes that my mother made. It was quite the party," said Rice.

Win's father, Chester Howarth, was a stockbroker. As far as the family knows, his father was the first stock and bond broker in Idaho at the turn of the 20th century.

"He was blinded in the mines," said Win's daughter Carol, of her great-grandfather. "He needed to support his large family. He started selling local mining stocks."

The mining stocks weren't traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

"The penny stocks went from hand to hand. They call it on the curb. That's how he started," Stephen said.

"She (Win) was a very good mathematician and bookkeeper. When she was three years old she would go into the board with her dad, and she could read the board. She would have been a stockbroker except she was female."

Carol said her mother saved up all of her weekly allowances until she had enough money for her father to buy her a couple of stocks in Washington Water Power. She was 4 years old.

"She wouldn't go to the movies on Saturdays. She put all her money away," Carol said. "She had a jar she kept all of her money in."

Stephen said she never lost that frugality. She would do without but was extremely generous.

Win was interested in drama and singing as a young girl, and this was encouraged by her family and peers. She graduated from the University of Washington with bachelor's and master's degrees in drama with a minor in psychology. Singing, however, was her passion.

She sang it all, according to Carol. She left for New York after college to pursue an opera career, and was sponsored on her journey to New York by Mrs. Steinway, of Steinway piano fame. Steinway introduced Win to Mr. Bing, the director of the Metropolitan Opera, according to family members.

"She came into this world singing," Carol said.

She was still a young girl, just barely out of her teens. Bing told her that there was no question that when her voice matured, about ten years, she could make it as a prima donna of the opera.

That was too much time for her, so she decided to go into musical comedy.

"She had perfect pitch," Stephen said. "She had a retentive ear. She could hear a small portion of a song and finish it. The reason she didn't go into opera ... if she had one flaw in her nature, and that's about the only flaw I can think of, is she did not have patience for the mechanical learning process. Even in school, she was an A student, she didn't have to struggle."

She stayed in New York for another five years before moving west to Los Angeles to be closer to her ailing mother. In Los Angeles she did live theater, and that's when she met Stephen, who was also a stage actor. They met in a play called "As The Twig is Bent" in 1951 or 1952.

Stephen said that the play was a biracial play and relatively controversial for its time.

Win and Stephen were married in 1955. Win had gone back to school to get her doctorate degree in philosophy. She finished just short of her dissertation. She was also a successful real estate agent in Los Angeles.

They moved to Coeur d'Alene in 1985 and purchased the historical Robert Early McFarland home, built circa 1905. They are the fourth owners and the first to use the home as a bed and breakfast. Win was proud of the fact that it is the "oldest continuously run same-owner B&B in Coeur d'Alene."

Win and Kathy Sims, the former owner of the Blackwell House, started the holiday B&B tour 13 years ago. The tour takes place the second Sunday of December every year.

The tour was their way of saying thank-you to the community. Stephen said that people are curious about certain buildings, and so they get in a rhythm and look at them all. Many of the same people come back each year making it a part of their holiday tradition. The Gregory's McFarland house was part of the tour this year, even though Win wasn't there. Carol said she wanted the show to go on. Stephen and Carol will also carry on the B&B business.

Win was the president of the Coeur d'Alene Lodging Association four years in a row and created and chaired the association's initial fundraiser Easter Food Baskets by the Dozen for the needy. She was awarded the Woman of Distinction Award for Tourism and Hospitality by the Women's Forum in 1999 and 2002.

As if this isn't enough, Win also created A Taste of the Coeur d'Alenes. In it's 16th year, the event moved dates and locations twice before finding its home in City Park the same weekend as Art on the Green and the Street Fair. It has food vendors from California and as far away as Missouri. Carol will carry on with the management of the Taste of the Coeur d'Alenes.

"If she got on to an idea she wouldn't release it," Stephen said. "Win had probably the greatest capacity to be Olympian and persuasive." He added that she was a private person, yet a wonderful public speaker who delivered awe-inspiring speeches without using notes.

"She could fill a room and whisper, and they'd hear," he said. "I have been brought to tears" by some of her speeches.

Win was also an impressionist painter and had a passion for the color red, her favorite color. She wore red yearround.

"She was always dressed to the nines," Carol said. "She always dressed appropriately."

Her favorite flowers were long stem yellow roses. Stephen said that her grave is adorned with yellow roses.

A member of Unity Church of North Idaho, Win was an ordained minister, earning the title Doctor of Divinity. With all of her philosophy and religious credits, she was ordained through the ministry of salvation.

Win was not one to talk about herself according to Stephen. For her, it was all about the doing.

Copyright 2004 Cowles Publishing Company
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