August 22, 2023
Written by Linda Goodrick

Our Grandmothers Against Gun Violence members have so much to offer and have done so much in our community since GAGV began in 2013, I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoy telling you their stories: Winona is a native of Seattle, and in 2023 had her 70th birthday and grew up on Cherry Street in what used to be our Central District. Her parents transferred here from Chicago when Boeing recruited her dad. They were a middle-class family in this mostly black and brown community. Her dad worked 2 jobs for over 30 years and her mom, the homemaker also ran a daycare in their basement where she later cared for Winona’s son, so she could attend the UW and get her BA in Social Work and Social Justice, then her master’s in Clinical Social Work. During this time Winona worked 4 hours/day at the PNB phone company to help support herself and her son. Winona’s first husband was her childhood sweetheart, but it didn’t last. She met the right life partner the second time around and they’ve raised 9 children in their blended family of their 2 biracial children and the 7 others in the 44 years they’ve been married. She finds a special joy in all situations where blended voices are brought together.

Winona’s hero is her late mother who couldn’t finish high school because she was the oldest of 13 and had to go live with her grandparents in Arkansas when she was 11 to help on their tree farm. She finished her GED later at Seattle Central, then earned her AA degree in Childhood Education and opened her own WA State Certified Day Care. She was the Mrs. Fix-It in their family and was very community minded, setting that example for Winona.

Rev. James Bigham at Mt. Zion Baptist Church introduced Winona to GAGV. He was working with Grandmothers on their video and communication needs and thought that Winona as the Church’s Health Minister Co-Chair should attend and get involved. He said this group of women are worried about gun violence in our community after the Sandy Hook massacre and the group doesn’t include many women of color. Winona did get involved, joined with both feet in 2014 and helped it become a more blended group. She encouraged her friends from church, Sarah Dean, Beverly Fletcher and the late Cherie Rowe Proctor to join as well. She also recruited her friends from the LINKS service organization, Dr. Constance Rice, Frances Carr and Hazel Cameron. Winona is a bridge builder and collaborator, who values inclusion. For a GAGV meeting she helped organize our first Speakers’ panel of Pamela Van Swearingen, co-chair with Winona of GAGVs’ Diversity Committee, State Senator John Lovick and a dad who lost his son to gun violence. She has distributed GAGV information by hosting the Information Table at her alma mater, Garfield High, Class of 1971 and at Meany Middle School. She is back co-chairing the Diversity and Partnership committee, as it is now known as well as working with the legislative and governance committees.

Winona’s secret talent is hosting Bellevue College’s radio station www.KBCS.fm as a volunteer media interviewer and co-host of the Gospel and Blues shows. For over 18 years she and her friend Oneda Harris rotate as hosts of the Saturday morning “Gospel Highway” and Wednesday night Blues show. It all began after she was recruited to be the Manager for Clinical Trials and Outreach at the Fred Hutchinson Center to bring in people of color and marginalized patients with chronic health conditions like sickle cell anemia and other diseases requiring high-cost care. One of their therapies is musical intervention. That seed of using music to lift peoples spirits inspired Winona to learn how to share music on the radio.

A bonus from the ten years she worked at the ‘Hutch’ was two separate invitations to visit the White House by the Surgeon General. She also treasures the engraved invitation she received to President Obama’s Inaugural Ball. During those years at the Hutch she attended a Clinical Social Workers’ Conference in Atlanta and had the good fortune to meet the featured speaker, Representative John Lewis. Later she joined him on one of his annual, anniversary Peace Marches across the Edmund Pettus bridge to commemorate the first march seeking voting rights in 1965.

Motivation comes from Winona’s prayer life. She is a Bible study fellowship international class leader and every Saturday from September to May will find her at group leader training followed by the Monday night Zoom classes for the 15 women who are part of her section.

Inspiration comes from Pat Wright’s Total Experience Choir’s song “If I Can Help Somebody” (then my living will not be in vain) and from the words of the late Shirley Chisholm: “We should strive to be the best of who we are and who we are matters.” In 1968 Ms. Chisholm was the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress and in 1972 was the first woman to run for the Democratic party’s Presidential nomination.

Winona’s work with the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast Program is noted in the UW’s Labor and History Department. It was started in Seattle by her teenage friend, Carolyn Downs. “The Black Panthers” movie had opened Winona’s eyes to the story of the slaves’ trip from Africa and their powerless lives in the South in contrast to the African heritage in their Motherland of Africa. Wikipedia tells us the Black Panther Party was active from 1966-1982, that J. Edgar Hoover vilified the Party, that some describe it as more criminal than political, but others describe it as the most influential “force against de facto segregation and the U.S. military draft during the Vietnam war”. Winona’s interest was their social programs: education, community health and free breakfasts.

I understand Winona’s comment that she needs to learn to say, ‘No’ when asked to serve on another Board or work with another committee because the need is great and she has what every organization wants: good ideas, connections, and the ability to understand others. She learned quickly how to work in a multi-cultural world and interact comfortably with those who haven’t had much contact with people of color. Her diverse volunteer work has benefitted many groups. She feels her greatest achievement is yet to come because she wants “to serve the least, the lost and the most marginalized people” until she has no more to give. Thus, her work continues, she is a founding member of the WA Equity Now Alliance and is presently working hard on next steps to ensure all students can have an Equity based admission to universities. She vehemently opposes the Supreme Courts’ recent decision to ban race-based admissions. She agrees with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas that students must be able to ‘tell their story’ in their college applications. This will allow the admissions committees to consider why a student could be under-funded, under resourced and what factors outside of race should inform their decision.

Winona remains an active GAGV member and feels strongly that we must remain vigilant, get more support from Congress and more laws on the books supporting gun control. She would like to revive the “Concert Across America to End Gun Violence” last organized by GAGV in 2016 to remember all the victims. There were many participants such as the Mt. Zion Baptist Church Choir, the Total Experience Gospel Choir and our own Mother Pluckers with several of their grandchildren as singers.

Winona’s life force is summed up by Dr. Maya Angelou 1928-2014, writer, poet and civil rights activist who wrote: “I am so grateful to be a Black woman, I would be jealous if I were anything else.”