Margo L. Winegar

Our mom, Margo Lynn Winegar, passed away on the morning of August 12, 2026. She was 78.

She was born right here in Ellensburg on November 25, 1947, to Ralph and Sadie Riegel, and she never once saw a reason to leave. Seventy-eight years in the Kittitas Valley, among the same people she grew up with.

She married our dad, Gary Winegar, on August 3, 1968, when she was twenty years old. In 1971 the two of them went into a partnership in the family dairy with Gary's folks, Truman and Phoebe, and Mom raised the two of us out at "the little dairy on the countryside of West 15th." She watched that place turn into Winegar's Coffee & Creamery over the years. She and Dad had fifty-four years together before he passed on September 26, 2022.

For about thirty years, Mom worked up at Central. First in the Registrar's Office, then over at the Facilities Management Center, one of the main secretaries in both. If you went to Central or worked there in those years, you probably met her. She was the one behind the desk who actually fixed your problems. Thirty years of people walking in stuck and walking out fine. When she finally retired, she came right back to work at the bakery with us, because sitting still was never really her thing.

What we'll remember most about her is that she showed up. Whatever was going on with either one of us — and there was plenty over the years, including more hospital rooms than we can count — Mom put down whatever she was doing and came. She fought for her kids, every time, and she taught us how to do it: ask the next question, don't take the first answer, and never let somebody go through it alone. These last few years, when it was Parkinson's coming after her instead, she met it with that same stubbornness, and we got to give some of that support back to her.

She was preceded in death by Dad, and by her parents, Ralph and Sadie.

She leaves behind her sister, Linda Sax; her daughter Richelle Winegar-Higdon and husband Kevin, of Ellensburg; her son Kori Winegar and wife Vickie, of Ellensburg; and five grandchildren.

We'll celebrate Mom's life on Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. at Mercer Creek Church in Ellensburg, with a small reception at the church afterward. That's four years to the day since Dad passed. We think she'd say she waited long enough.

Mom, thank you for all of it. We'll see you again.