In tribute: Longtime Clovis resident always had kind word

CLOVIS — Rada Winkles always had a perfect stitch, a perfect story or just a kind word, locals who knew the longtime Clovis resident said.

Winkles, who died June 2 at the age of 80, gained many friends along the way in a life spent in eastern New Mexico and west Texas.

The Hereford native, who retired in Clovis following more than 20 years at the Texico post office, could be found frequently at the Plains Regional Medical Center gift shop as part of the hospital’s auxiliary.

Rhonda Murdock, an executive assistant at PRMC and its volunteer supervisor, came to meet Winkles when she arrived 26 years ago. While some auxiliary members might want to dabble in a few different areas of auxiliary work, Murdock said Winkles was just fine working her thousands of hours in the gift shop.

“She was just so friendly,” Murdock said. “She was always smiling. All of the staff loved her. All of the auxiliary loved her.”

The auxiliary, due to its size, would often hold meetings at the Baxter-Curren Senior Center, and Winkles would still visit those meetings even after her time with the auxiliary ended a few years ago.

Brenda Hankins, program coordinator at Baxter-Curren, said over her 10 years it was rare to see a Tuesday where Winkles wouldn’t come in to be a part of the quilting group.

Her stitches were always perfect, Hankins said, and her ability to weave together a story was pretty close to perfect.

“She always had something good to say about everyone, always,” Hankins said. “She had the most fascinating things to say about her life. She’d talk about things that happened in the ’30s. She made it so real. It wasn’t facts out of a book; she was telling me her memories when she was there.”

Jean Fisher, another frequent quilter, said Winkles was great at everything she stitched and it was always a joy to see her on Tuesdays or visit her house and smell the most well-maintained rose bush she’d ever known.

“We had a lot of fun out there,” Fisher said with a laugh. “We solved the world’s problems if anyone would have listened.”

Hankins said the quilting group would charge nominal amounts for “quilt top work,” which basically meant finishing a quilt that got interrupted for some reason, and the proceeds would always go right back to the program.

But much of her Tuesday work is now spread across the city, with the sales benefiting the auxiliary’s scholarship fund.

“She was always making us these beautiful quilts we could auction off,” Murdock said. “We could always display them in the lobby. They were always intricate.”

Winkles was also a faithful Gold Star Mother, who donated family keepsakes of her son Harvie Winkles III to memorials and attended the Clovis Memorial Day ceremony for 50 years until pandemic-related mass gathering restrictions prevented a 2020 ceremony.

Her son enlisted in the Navy in 1966 and received a Navy Commendation Medal after he was killed in action two years later in Vietnam.

“I think it’s wonderful people take the time out to remember,” she told The News during the 2019 service, “but I don’t need a separate day. I remember my son every day.”

Winkles was preceded in death by Harvie III and her husband Perry, and is survived by son Terry Winkles, daughter Beverly Ford and six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.