Final Rites Monday For Winnie Justin Phetteplace
Had Extensive Business Experience In This County
Death took one of Smith County's best and most favorably known business men last Friday when Winnie J. Phetteplace passed away at St. Joseph's Hospital in Concordia where he was a patient.
Funeral services were conducted from the Presbyterian church in Smith Center Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock with Ira N. Faurot, pastor, and Chas M. Good, pastor of the Community church at Gaylord, in charge. Burial was in Fairview cemetery.
The funeral hymns were sung by Mrs. Laura Morgan, Mrs. Carrie Williams, Mrs. Gladys Wurster and Mrs. Laura Burgess with Mrs. Frances Gibson as accompanist. The pallbearers were Russell Frazier, R. L. Brown, Harry Lloyd, Fred Horning, August Bechtold, Jr. and Clifford Hays.
Following is the biography which was read at the final rites:
Winnie Justin Phetteplace, son of James Orice and Hannah Eliza Phetteplace, was born October 20, 1879 at the homestead home of his parents in the Corvallis community 5 1/4 miles southwest of Smith Center, Kansas and departed this life at St. Joseph's Hospital, Concordia, Kansas, Jan. 6, 1950, at the age of 70 years, 2 months and 16 days.
Winnie attended school in the Corvallis district and was an active member of the erstwhile Corvallis church, carrying his religious enthusiasm and membership into all the duties and places of his later sojourn. His early training in duties, character and citizenship was none less than that given to the average farm boy in the average Kansas community.
On May 23, 1906 he was united in marriage with Amirah Kimball of the home community. To this union were born two children, a daughter, Melba Patterson of Ellsworth, Kansas and a son, H. Ivan Phetteplace of Smith Center.
In 1919 Winnie left the farm to being a business career that was to take him as far from Smith County as Sterling and Denver, Colorado and Topeka, Kansas, but most of which time was in connection with the People's Lumber Co. of Athol, Kansas; Smith Center Mill & Elevator Co. and his Evevator and Implement business at Gaylord, Kansas.
It is interesting to note that most of his business experience was had within a few miles of his boyhood home and at the times his business took him from Smith County he was never satisfied until he could return to be with his friends and neighbors near his home, which he loved most of all.
We must mention here of Winnie's love for children and young people and the pleasures he enjoyed when being with them, especially of his grandchildren.
Declining health had been taking his strength in recent years in spite of all that loving care and medical science could do to heal.
Those who remain to miss him most, find comfort in the thought that He who is the river of life and the guardian of this earth holds in His beneficient hand the eternal destiny of our life when its time on earth is done.
Those preceding him in death are his parents, one brother and three sisters. Those remaining to mourn his going are the wife, Amirah; daughter, Melba; and son, Ivan; seven grandchildren and several other relatives as well as a host of friends.
We note here the influence of his life on the people left behind will ever be a monument to his deeds and examples which he set.
Smith County Pioneer, January 12, 1950, page 1