Remembering Kevin Spencer Winn 

by Loni Ford Winn & Vance William Winn

Today I spent a couple of hours picking raspberries in our raspberry patch. I can’t pick raspberries without thinking of Vance’s mother, Thora. She also had a large raspberry patch and would pick raspberries and then make the most delicious jam. Then my thoughts wandered to Vance’s brother Kevin. Today, July 5th is his birthday. I only knew him a few short years. He was born in 1951 and died way to young in 1982 at the age of 31. I asked Vance to write about one of my favorite stories. This happened when Vance was about 6 and his younger brother Bob was about three years old. Here is what he wrote.

“My older brother Kevin had a very active mind. He didn’t think like the rest of us. He always noticed the funny in anything. One summer day just across the driveway from our raspberry patch was a performance stage Kevin had made. He decided to do a magician’s trick and so he stuck little Bob in a makeshift playhouse made out of straw. He had a little trap door set in the back so that Bob could move away, then he stuck a piece of bacon out there so I and all the other little kids would think he had turned Bob into a piece of bacon. When he lifted up the canvas top Bob was gone and the bacon was there. Then our dog Laddie came running in and ate the bacon in one bite. All the little neighbor girls (Robin Shaffer and the Bowen’s) when running home crying thinking the dog ate Bobby. Kevin got in trouble but that’s just the kind of guy he was, he was always thinking out-of-the-box and was funny. He always had a funny thing to say or different take on the situation.”