A Daughter’s Thoughts

Grandpa and Grandma Winkel (left, bench)

The greatest gift a man can give another person is his name. I will be eternally grateful to Andy and Madge Winkel for taking Dad into their home and raising him as their own. Their selfless act gave all of us a family and a family name that we can be proud of. Dad considered them his family and chose not to look back into his past.
From the time I was a child I have always thought of Laura as a terrible person. I could not understand how she let my father have such a turbulent early life. Since finding more about her life, I have changed my opinion of her. I believe she had her own struggles that set her on a path of mental anguish. Laura was married and widowed at the age of nineteen, and it seems that was the beginning of her struggles. There are records showing she was in the Poor Asylum in 1911, which would have been right after her husband’s death. She gave birth to Dad in 1913; I’m not sure where she was living at that time. The records from the Asylum show both she and Dad were there in 1917. Laura came and went several times from the Asylum, but she was an inmate when she became pregnant with her second child in 1925. His name was Charles William Wininger, and his father was Elza Tredway. Charles died while in the asylum at the age of eight months.

I know she was in a mental hospital because Dad went to see her. After he got saved, he thought he should reach out to her. I believe that was in the late 1940s or early 1950s. I always thought Mom said she was at Muscatatuck State Hospital, but after reading about the hospital, I’m not sure the dates correlate. If my older brothers were still with us, they would probably know.
According to her obituary, she was a resident of the National Health Enterprises, Bedford Indiana at the time of her death.

I gave Dad my baby doll to hold while he was napping.