106-year-old woman from Machias dies

MACHIAS – Helen Winslow loved cumulus clouds, coffee and a good exchange of handwritten letters.

She loved the beach at Roque Bluffs, which may have reminded her of growing up on the bay in Jonesport, and spending summers on the backside of Great Wass Island.

And even though she entered the Marshall Care Center nursing home seven years ago, she never gave up hope of one day returning home to her house – “in about a month” – on Gardner Avenue.

She also planned on getting both her car and her driver’s license back.

Monday night, she died – at age 106 years and 10 months. She is believed to have been one of Maine’s oldest residents.

“We lost a living connection to the 19th century,” said David Whitney, a Machias businessman who is her grandson.

Born in 1899, Winslow lived on her own until she was nearly 100.

She died surrounded by her family, including her daughter Ginnie Whitney and Dale and Ginnie Whitney’s three grown children.

One of them, Helen Ardito, drove beyond the speed limit from Pennsylvania to reach Machias in time to see for one last time the woman she was named for.

She arrived four hours before Winslow died.

“She was waiting for me,” Ardito said.

Whitney family members gathered Wednesday afternoon to share memories of the woman many in town also came to call “Garligar.”

She gained that nickname 46 years ago when her oldest grandchild, Ardito, could not pronounce “Grandmother.”

Ginnie Whitney brought out her mother’s yearbook from Graceland College in Iowa – Class of 1922. She had never before played basketball, but was lauded in the college’s team photo her freshman year: “Helen has been one of our best players from the first,” the caption read.

She met her late husband when she couldn’t return to Maine for the summer break. She went to the Iowa farm of her roommate, and her future husband – then still in high school – lived on the farm next door.

The Winslows had lived in Machias since 1928, when her husband became the town’s dentist. Both he and a daughter were killed in an accident in 1943. Winslow returned to teaching in 1945.

In 1954 she took a “fourth year” at the Washington State Teachers College in Machias – now the University of Maine at Machias.

Winslow spent years in teaching, starting in the 1920s and retiring for good in 1965. She never lost her zest for either teaching or more learning herself.

“One of the girls at Marshall Care Center said Garligar used to correct her grammar,” Ginnie Whitney said. “That was the teacher in her.”

She was mildly curious about the Internet, once asking, “What do they mean, e-mail?” That’s also where her interest in the Internet ended.

She took many days away from the nursing home, when her family brought her up to Bog Lake in Northfield – she and her husband had built a camp there in 1936.

She also loved outings to Roque Bluffs, or to the White House restaurant in Jonesboro.

But she always returned, cheerfully, back to the nursing home.

“We can’t say enough about the Marshall Care Center,” Ginnie Whitney said. “Those girls who helped her were so sincere and caring. She was a night owl, and she liked to have interesting conversations at 2 a.m.

“She had some good help there.”

A service of remembrance will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 29, at the Community of Christ on North Street in Machias.