Winters named 2015 Alumna of the Year

During her years at Holton High School, Doris Hill Winters made it a point to stay active.

Winters served as vice president of the HHS Student Council, was a cheerleader, a member of the massed chorus, the girls’ glee club and the orchestra, and she sold advertising for the school newspaper, The Holtonian.

That was before her graduation in 1940. Even today, Winters makes it a point to stay active — no easy feat for someone who’s 92.

“I’m very active in Fullerton,” said Winters, who was named this year’s Holton High School Alumna of the Year during this past weekend’s HHS alumni activities. “I’ve been on the St. Jude Medical Center board, I’m a director with the Fullerton Civic Light Opera Company, and I belong to the local Baptist church, I’m on the finance committee and I’m still active in the choir.”

Winters still gets back to Holton at least once a year, usually staying with her cousin, William Hill. She also still attempts to keep in touch with the few members of her class that remain.

“I think there’s still one or two more of us left,” she said. “I heard that two of us passed away recently.”

Winters was born on a farm about five miles outside of Holton, the daughter of John and Harriet Fricker Hill.

“My father taught school for a little while,” Winters said. “He decided he didn’t go for that, so he went into farming.”

She grew up on that farm with her brother, Joe Hill, and she attended Lone Star Country School for eight years, then went on to Holton High School, where she kept busy with a myriad of activities before graduating in 1940.

Following her graduation from HHS, she moved with her mother and brother to Santa Ana, Calif., where they lived with Winters’ grandmother, Clara Fricker. Winters began her college career at Santa Ana College, then transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles, or UCLA, where she majored in business administration.

“I also did some graduate work at Long Beach State,” she said.

Business was the focus of Winters’ career, having worked for an uncle for a year as an office manager at his fertilizer business before going on to work for a prominent Fullerton family who eventually made her a trustee of the family estate.

She would also marry Duane Winters, a former high school teacher and coach from Iowa who came to California with the U.S. military. Duane would go on to carve his own niche in municipal government and as president of the California League of Cities before his death in 1993. 

Winters was surprised to be named this year’s Alumna of the Year, joining her classmates Doris Tudor Shoff, Forrest Brown and Harold Riley in being honored with the annual alumni award.

“I was floored,” she said.