Henry Winzig, age 96, died Thursday, August 31, 2017 at Park View Home in Woodville.

FUNERAL service is Saturday, September 2, 2017 at 10:30 a.m. at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Spring Valley.

VISITATION is Saturday from 9-10:30 at church prior to the service.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 20, 1921, Henry Frank Winzig was the son of Frank and Mathilda Winzig.  They were members of Assumption Catholic Church, where Henry first met Mary Weckauff.  He graduated from Cretin High School in St. Paul before attending metal working school in California and going to work for Northwest Orient Airlines.  When World War II broke out, Northwest assigned him to the Army Air Corps in Alaska, where he assisted in the war effort to ferry airplanes across the Arctic Circle.  When he enlisted in the Navy, he was assigned work as a metal worker and airline mechanic in California.

After the war, he returned to work at Northwest and married Mary Weckauff at the old St. Michael’s Catholic Church in St. Paul.  Their first home was on Juliet Avenue in St. Paul until they built their own home on a large parcel of land in West St. Paul.  Before they sold the back half of the land, the hill was long enough for their kids to have some serious fun tobogganing. 

Henry and Mary raised seven children, Jerry (Judy), Margaret (Don), Jo (Jim), Ralph (Laurie), Reneta, Celeste (Bruce), and John (Conni).   Henry was blessed with 26 grandchildren and 43 great-grandchildren.  He loved gardening.  For years Henry experimented with grafting apple trees, grew grapes (which his dad used to make wine that he aged in homemade wooden barrels), currants and gooseberries for jams, kohlrabi, lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, potatoes, onions, raspberries, blackberries, and a host of other plants.

Henry lost his loving wife Mary to a pedestrian/car accident in 1982.

He was intensely interested in, and had opinions about, politics and current events.  Even if you disagreed with him, you usually had to concede that his opinion was more informed than yours.  He was also an airline mechanic who was informed about domestic and foreign economics, including bond prices, pork belly futures, commodity prices, and financial indexes.  He will be sorely missed.