Thirty seven years after opening The Wooden Spoon, Gwen Workman has died after a brain bleed left her hospitalized last week.
Gwen Welk Workman died at 5:13 a.m., according to a Facebook post made on her behalf.
The store stayed open today, “as Mrs. Gwen would want it to be.”
According to an earlier Facebook post, Workman was rushed to the emergency room on Friday morning with a “massive brain bleed.” The post said a breathing tube was removed on Saturday afternoon.
Workman bought and restored The Wooden Spoon’s home, the oldest in Plano. While preserving its heritage, she shaped the store to preserve her own, selling Scandinavian goods “in the middle of Cowboy country,” we wrote when we featured her in 2014.
As The Wooden Spoon says “let’s all keep the spoon stirring.” Wooden Spoon staff will be keeping the shop open and encouraging customers to come by and share their stories of Workman and the shop.
We’d also like to help compile some of these stories to gift. If you have a story you’d like to share with us, comment on social media or email me at alyssa@planomagazine.com with the subject line ‘Remembering Gwen Workman.’ We will be sharing some stories to social media later this week as well.