SALLY JO WINEBRENNER - A TRUE & FAITHFUL FRIEND

I paused at the window to peek out at the sweeping landscape and woody hillsides across the courtyard.

“Do these people really live here?” I thought to myself. 

The home reminded me of Dave’s grandparent’s 13 bedroom cottage on Mackinac Island MI. We had spent our honeymoon there, on the west bluff of the island just up from the historic Grand Hotel. It was a fairy-tale place for a honeymoon. Rather unreal. Now here I was in New York, feeling those familiar hints of overwhelming historic charm.

We had just recently moved to upstate New York, where my husband, fresh out of law school, would serve a year-long clerkship for the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Ellsworth Van Graafeiland had selected Dave as one of his clerks (the other clerk, incidentally, was Jay Powell, who is currently the Chair of the US Federal Reserve). While the Second Circuit Court heard cases in New York City, the Judge’s chambers were in Rochester. We were fortunate enough to rent a home in a quaint little Rochester suburb called Pittsford. I was twenty-one years old and pregnant with my second child. On this particular late summer evening the ladies’ organization in our church had an activity which included a tour of the home of Sally Jo Winebrenner. I knew no one there, quite literally, but mustered the courage to go in an effort to try to change that.

Sally Jo and Bob Winebrenner had opened the doors to their remarkable home with such grace and elan that even this newcomer girl bulging with baby felt like a well-seeded cherished old friend. The home was not only immaculate it dripped beauty and charm from every nook and crevice. That fateful day was life changing to me, not because of the place, though we are constantly changed by the beauty we encounter. I was unaware at the moment that the voice of Sally Jo Winebrenner would be an eternal source of comfort, guidance and confidence for me. It echoes in my head still and triggers my heart all these decades later.

 

I have since tried to evaluate why this particular woman was so pivotal in my life. We have remained friends since that one shared year in upstate New York. My current thinking is that I was new to adulthood and independence. Married young, and anxious to jump into motherhood before I had really grown into a functional adult (sorry kids), this journey to New York was an awakening. Dave was gone to Manhattan one week of each month when the judge heard cases. And during the three weeks he remained in Rochester the judge liked his clerks to be in the office until 7 pm, so my helpmeet was gone, with our only car, all day and into the late evening. I lived in an unfamiliar house in an unknown place with a baby and another on the way. My mom was in Pittsburgh and siblings all lived in other states. Looking back on it I feel a tender compassion for that girl who was me four decades ago.

Enter God, and his instrument, Sally Jo Winebrenner. Within a few weeks the bishop of our congregation called me to be a counselor in the church Young Women’s organization. Sally Jo was president. She has asked for me as a counselor. Don’t you think it rather risky to ask for a gal still wet behind the ears to teach and nurture girls who were just a handful of years younger than her? Sal was an adventurous gal. I should have known that by looking at the spaces she and Bobby took on as designers, renovators and decorators. Still, I suppose I had enough sense of self to accept the job and not wither under the emotional weight. Sally Jo never once indicated any worry about my abilities. She whispered confidence in everything we did, in everything she said. At least this is my memory of it. I was not her child, and she did not make me feel like a child. She had this magical way of making me feel like an equal. I have tried to emulate that in my own interactions with people younger and older than I am. I’ve since served as president of young and old women’s organizations in our church and how I serve in those capacities is based on how I observed her. 

Sally Jo and Bob in the era when we first met.

Bob and Sally Jo stretched their discipleship well beyond their church involvement. There is an indelible portrait in my personal history, stuck in my head and not in a photo album, that I am pretty certain will be played in that virtual life-film people talk about being shown to us when we die. It’s a warm spring evening and we are on the lawn at High Point, the same house where I first met Sally Jo. She and Bob have swung open the doors again. The Aherns, and others who shared the Winebrenners’ heart-space, are there. We sit out on the plush lawn, a refreshingly wet New York breeze flowing over my skin. Sally Jo walks out and places a guitar in my lap. “Sing for us” she says, as she scoots a lawn chair over close to me. This singular act represents who she is to me. She is the sort of soul who basks joyfully in the light of others, unaware that so often what she thinks is “their light” is mostly a reflection of her own. And her light, frankly, is a reflection of her God’s. She does love her God! 

In recent years Sally Jo has used the internet to offer bits of
hope, faith and encouragement on social media.

When we finished our stint in New York Bob and Sally Jo had another gathering at High Point and honored us with hand bound journals. Dick Ahern had wrapped them so beautifully we didn’t want to unwrap them. That journal is completely filled with life moments from the subsequent years. I look at its cover and feel that sort of melancholy happy/sad tugging at my heart, returning to the moment when it was fresh and new. And yet grateful for the experiences that have filled its pages. Sal and Bob always knew the perfect token of love to give someone.

The young Winebrenner family.

Winebrenner kids... lovely people, every one!

We moved back to Pittsburgh, and then to Utah. In those decades since we parted our paths have crossed intermittently; an afternoon tea at my mother’s place, a meeting for birthday lunch (our birthdays are in the same week of March). Sally Jo had me come to Pasadena CA to sing for her ladies group or her Relief Society, or maybe both, I don’t recall that detail, though I do recall the women and their marvelous dynamic. And I remember gathering red peppercorn twigs from her lawn. I put them in the garland coming down one of my staircases at Christmastime. I recall the lovely details of their various homes where we visited, in Pasadena, and on Mitchell Street in Pittsford, and then (lucky us) in Provo Utah when they finally bit the dust and left their beloved hometown of Pittsford just to be closer to their children and grands. Little cherished details like a fresh vase of peonies on the bedside table, down filled easy chairs and tiny silver frames on a lace tablecloth filed with cherished faces and places. I have a collection of very old finger sized sheep, Putz and carved and wooly… all different, gathered around a small manger at Christmastime. Sally Jo has a similar flock at her house at Christmastime, each lamb representing a member of her posterity. So much of Sally Jo is what I want to be part of Cori. Kindred hearts, I think. Like Dianna and Anne of Green Gables; bosom friends. 

Of course, there is so much that I have not acquired that I admire about her. I will never, with this neurodivergent mind of mine, have the gift of tidiness and completing tasks that she has. I dream of being as grounded and faithful as she. Everyone needs someone to look up to that doesn’t make you feel like its unattainable. Sally and I do share a romantic heart, and an unquenchable thirst for all things sentimental. That, and the fact that she has her Bob as I have my Dave. We do share the emotional safety of being loved and loving someone true and steady. We both acknowledge this as a rare gift.

Most people will say I should be writing in past tense about her, because this week our Sally Jo leapt into the arms of her Lord, and then immediately into the enfolding arms of her Bobby, somewhere in a Heaven-space. The only thing that softens the blow of the loss of her is picturing that reunion. I imagine the two of them setting to work beautifying Heaven. It was a double loss when Bob Winebrenner died a couple long years ago. Especially for his family. We who love him had our own personal grief for him being gone from sight, but we also had the vicarious sorrow at the separation of him and Sally Jo. We ached for her. She handled the separation with the same apparent grace she evidenced when I first met her at High Point. She certainly was grace personified! But I also know her heart, and imagine her pillow wet with quiet tears. We are just so delighted with our faith that the two of them are in each other’s arms once more.

Not knowing the effect of time or space that will be part of the next realm, I am only projecting my imagination on what she might be doing right now, but I do hope she will find my mom up there and give her a hug and share a bit of laughter. I have every confidence that there will come a time, in some other realm beyond our view, when Bob and Sally Jo Winebrenner will throw open some heavenly door and welcome us into a divine, radiant and holy space beautified by their presence. 

Please, God, make it so.

They make wherever they are feel like home.

Family.

Building faith, one generation at a time.

Turning work into play.

Home is wherever Grammie is.

https://www.bergmortuary.com/obituaries/Sally-Jo-Winebrenner/#!/TributeWall