Wichita East High students remember Jerry Winkelman, 'everybody's favorite sub'

Jerry Winkelman made history – and a lot of friends – at East High School.

“Whenever you heard you were having a sub, you pretty much hoped it was Mr. Winkelman,” said Alec Schillings, a senior at East. “He was everybody’s favorite sub.”

Mr. Winkelman, a former civil engineer, real estate broker and city manager of Lee’s Summit, Mo., who began substitute teaching at age 62, died Sunday of congestive heart failure. He was 77.

Mr. Winkelman moved to Wichita in the mid 1990s to help care for his aging parents, said his nephew, Kevin Himes. In 1999 he decided to work as a substitute teacher. He worked most days at East High and occasionally at West High and Metro-Meridian Alternative High School, district officials said.

“He loved the kids,” Himes said. “He wanted to influence their lives and teach them to speak up and be heard and follow their dreams.”

Most East students and teachers learned of Mr. Winkelman’s death Thursday morning and began sharing and tweeting memories of the popular sub.

“He loved history and truly enjoyed sharing his knowledge and experiences with students,” said history teacher Laurie McHenry. “The students in my hall – the seniors – are really sad and have been telling Winkelman stories this morning.”

Last spring, East High’s student newspaper, The Messenger, ran a full-page profile of the popular substitute with a photo of a smiling Mr. Winkelman, hands on his hips, and a list of 10 stories or features dubbed “Winkelman classics.” In it, he talked about his unsuccessful run for mayor of Merriam.

“The woman that was mayor at the time beat me,” Mr. Winkelman told the newspaper. “I didn’t mind that she beat me. She was a very nice lady.”

Sedgwick County Commissioner Karl Peterjohn said he knew Mr. Winkelman from the Pachyderm Club and other political and civic forums.

“He had great affection for this community and really had a heartfelt desire to contribute,” Peterjohn said.

“He followed what was going on in the community, both inside and outside of education. There were lots of issues he wanted to stay on top of, and he was not shy about putting a bug in an elected official’s ear.”

Many East students remember a story about how Mr. Winkelman met and befriended President Harry Truman. He also liked to talk about how he took several weeks off work in 2004 to try to catch serial killer BTK.

“According to Mr. Winkelman, he came closer in three weeks to finding BTK than the whole police department did” in decades, said East senior Brittan Brenner.

“I’m not sure how much is factual,” said Himes, who met his uncle for breakfast nearly every Saturday morning and knew his stories well. “But apparently he was right on BTK’s heels. He thinks he passed him one day in a Park City parking lot.”

Students remember Mr. Winkelman’s sweater vests and his smile. In his front shirt pocket, he kept a stack of 3x5 index cards on which he had written the capitals of obscure countries, the diameter of planets and other random facts, and he occasionally would conduct oral pop quizzes. He performed self-choreographed “rain dances” and invited students to join him.

Teachers say he didn’t always – or maybe ever – follow the lesson plan.

“In the words of the great Mr. Winkelman: ‘Today, Calculus I class, we’re going to explore China,’ ” one student tweeted.

Larry Smith, a social studies teacher at East, said Mr. Winkelman’s diversions from lesson plans drove him crazy at first.

“But I discovered that Jerry did really teach the kids – just not about what I had planned on,” Smith said.

“If the kids were talking about some fight at school, Jerry would turn it into a debate about violence in society. If someone was talking about a vacation they took, Jerry made it a geography lesson.

“Nothing on paper to grade, mind you. That would be too stifling,” Smith said.

When Smith first started teaching and needed a sub, he told the secretary, “Anyone but Winkelman.” More recently, he says, he’d ask, “If it’s not too much trouble, can you get me Jerry?”

The kids likely wouldn’t read the chapter they needed for class discussion the next day, Smith said. “But I also knew there would be a teacher in that room who loved kids, loved teaching and often gave my students a sense of wonder.”

Sherwin Salim, a senior, said he remembers when Mr. Winkelman subbed for his history teacher and “brought pictures of himself from the ’70s.

“He told us to cherish our childhood and don’t take our parents for granted,” Salim said.

Junior Brooke Talbott said Mr. Winkelman added his own fascinating, if odd, narrative voice-overs to videos he was instructed to play for her Advanced Placement U.S. History class.

“He was a cute old guy,” Talbott said. “Most subs just sit at a desk all hour, but he always interacted with us.”

Brenner, the senior, said she last saw and chatted with Mr. Winkelman at a grocery store over summer break. He told her she should go into pharmaceutical sales because of her personality and interests.

“It’s a sad day at East,” she said, “because he was a part of East High.”

A memorial service for Mr. Winkelman will be held 10 a.m. Saturday at Affinity Mortuary, 2850 S. Seneca.

This story was originally published September 25, 2014 at 12:26 PM with the headline "Wichita East High students remember Jerry Winkelman, 'everybody's favorite sub'."