Brenda Winter witnessed some great views during her career of traveling with Kellwood, but today her favorite is from her back patio looking over her large collection of blooming plants.
“I think the caladiums are my favorite,” Winter said pointing to the large pink and green leaves. “They last longer than the others, they’re colorful and they’re pretty all summer.”
Winter’s plants are neatly arranged in a series of pots along her back patio. Due to the hard ground around her house that sits atop a hill in the Chickenbone Community, Winter said container gardening has always worked better for her.
“I love the pots and this wall that my husband (the late Bobby Winter) built is just the perfect place for them,” she said.
Winter, 79, is retired after nearly 50 years of working for Kellwood and Calhoun Apparel, for the last three, in Calhoun City.
“I started at Calhoun Garment Company in 1955 as a sewing machine operator,” Winter said.
She worked her way up to plant manager and was soon managing programs for 13 Kellwood plants. By the mid 1980s, that meant regular trips to the Dominican Republic to visit facilities there.
“We had a big Lee jeans contract, and we did a lot of that work there,” Winter said. “What I remember most was that it was very hot there. We had no air conditioning, and I couldn’t speak Spanish, so that made it hard.”
She traveled to the Dominican for three weeks at a time and would return home for one week.
“I did that for a year,” Winter said.
She then began a similar schedule but traveling to facilities throughout the Southeast such as Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama.
She served as production manager of the Calhoun City plant for 10 years, which she described as “the hardest job I ever had.”
It was during this period where she would make regular visits to Mexico to check in on facilities there.
“I would fly in to Mexico City and then we would bus from there to the towns where the plants were,” Winter said.
After years of traveling, she became more and more fond of home and Calhoun County.
“There truly is no place like home,” Winter said.
Her husband Bobby died of lung cancer in 2004. She retired in 2006 and stayed home to care for her mother, Lala Yancy, who lived to be 104.
Winter said her pride and joy these days are her two grandsons and seven great grandchildren from her daughter Jan and husband Mike Easley.
She stays busy these days teaching piano at her home, with a dozen students currently. She also plays weekly for her church in Randolph.
“I’ve thought about moving to town several times, but when it comes to brass tacks this is home,” Winter said.
And it’s there that she has rekindled a love for flowers, most of which she roots herself to keep growing the collection.
They provide plenty of color to her patio, draped in shade from the tall oak trees, and decorated with birdhouses (made by Smokey Barefield) and other collectibles.
“It just seems like a great place for this,” Winter said.