Former Sun-News linotype operator celebrates 100th birthday in Las Cruces
When Jessie Winters moved to Las Cruces with her family in the 1960s, she would set aside her nomadic life and establish a home for the rest of her 100 years.
Winters celebrated 10 decades on June 27 with friends and family at the Calvary Baptist Church.
A life of traveling to get to Las Cruces
Winters was born in Pittsburgh in 1923. She grew up during the Great Depression, dropping out of school after the eighth grade to get a job and help support her family. She was only 16 but lied saying she was 19 so she could get the job.
The job was working as a typist for a government office in downtown Pittsburgh. Winters’ daughter, Teresa Womelsdorf, said her mother did not know how to type at the time but learned by doing. Winters continued with this work ethic all the way to Las Cruces.
After leaving her typist job, Winters worked as a waitress at a soda fountain.
“When the manager quit she became the manager,” Womelsdorf said in a message. “Which she loved because she said she could boss people around.”
Winters was introduced to the man who would become her husband, Robert Winters, when she was 19. They married six months later.
Womelsdorf described her father as a free spirit and the couple moved often. Robert Winters was a linotype operator, in charge of the typesetting machine used to print newspapers and magazines until around the 1970s and 1980s. He would find operating jobs wherever he and his wife found themselves.
“He would quit a job, go home, tell Mom, they would pack up, get out the map and move to the next city,” Womelsdorf said in a message.
By the 1960s, the couple had two children, Womelsdorf and a son, Ken Winters. Jessie Winters said her husband saw an ad for a job in New Mexico and traveled to Artesia, but did not quite find what they were looking for. Soon after, the family traveled west to Las Cruces.
“We went down to Las Cruces for an interview,” Winters said. “And he was there forever. I says, ‘take a look kids, it looks like this is where we’re going to live.’ I’ve been here ever since.”
The children were young and it was time to settle down.
A second linotype operator position became available soon after the family moved and Winters applied for it. She recalled that she did not have any knowledge of the work, but interviewed anyway. After she got the job, her husband taught her how to operate the machine. The two worked side by side at the Sun-News throughout the 1960s.
“She said that they got 30 minutes for lunch. She would buy my dad a hamburger at the burger joint around the corner, and then she would gobble up a sandwich in 15 minutes,” Womelsdorf said in a message. “She would then go shopping for the last 15 minutes of her break. She would go to Woolworths where they sold 3 yards of fabric for $1. They had to wear dresses to work so she would make her dresses to have one for every day of the week.
"The linotype machines broke down often and my dad taught her how to fix them. She would climb up on the machine and fix it but her dress would get dirty. So she always wanted to have five clean dresses to make it through the week.”
Winters described the years working at the newspaper as the “good times.”
Life after the Sun-News
Jessie and Robert Winters parted ways after 27 years of marriage and both were eventually put out of work when the printing business evolved away from linotype machines.
Winters went on to earn her GED in 1971 – she was in her 50s – and continued her education at Liberty Bible Institute in Lynchburg, Virginia, now Liberty University. According to Womelsdorf, Winters completed courses via correspondence and graduated in 1991 at the age of 68.
She became quite involved in the church and volunteered with the children during Sunday service at Calvary Baptist Church. Her job was rocking the babies each week, which she loved to do.
Winters has five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren now.
“I never left here. This is my home,” Winters said.
Womelsdorf traveled back home to Las Cruces in June to celebrate her mother’s birthday at the church. Many longtime friends also joined in the celebration, congratulating and reminiscing with Winters.
When asked how she felt about turning 100, Winters said, “I couldn’t believe it….The Lord promised me a long life and he’s given it to me.”
And how she would like to be remembered?
"Just the way I am," she said.
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Leah Romero is the trending reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News and can be reached at 575-418-3442, LRomero@lcsun-news.com or @rromero_leah on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Former Sun-News linotype operator celebrates 100th birthday in Las Cruces
