Suffolk, Va. - 81-year-old Shirley Winsor spent most of her life working in an apron. Now, that's what she'll be wearing for eternity.
"We started talking about it, and we looked at each other and said, 'in her uniform!' There was no 'plan B.' There was no other option. That was the way she would have wanted it," her daughters, Patti Philipps and Nyberg tell NewsChannel 3.
Shirley will be buried in her uniform to honor the 36 years she worked as a waitress as George's Steakhouse in Suffolk. She started just two months after it opened in 1978.
She stayed there until just a few days before she died of congestive heart failure.
"If you knew my mother, you would say, 'OK that makes sense. She's going to be buried in her uniform because that's who she was," her daughters said.
Restaurant owner, John Taglis, says he can't remember Shirley taking off more than a couple of days at a time.
"I said, 'Shirley, why are you coming back?' She said, 'It was boring, I had to come to work!' That was the first time I saw someone cut vacation to come to work," Taglis told NewsChannel 3.
But to Shirley, her job wasn't so much "work," as it was spending time with her second family.
She loved it so much that she joked with the Taglis brothers about what to do if she were to pass away.
"[She said] I'm gonna tell you spread the ashes around this restaurant! That's Shirley!" Taglis said.
And when she did die, her daughters say the answer to 'what she should be buried in' was an easy one.
"I think she told us. I think she put the idea in our heads from wherever she is. There was never a doubt," the daughters said.
Plus, there's no doubt she'll always be remembered at George's.
