Two in the morning.
That was how late Sallye Worthington and her staff worked every night in the weeks preceding Christmas so that every parent who had ordered a letter jacket for their son or daughter received it in time for the big morning.
"She had sons; she knew how they would have felt if they woke up on Christmas morning and there wasn't anything," said Jim Worthington, Sallye's husband of 65 years.
Sallye passed away March 3, but Jim didn't describe the service as a funeral. Instead, it was a celebration of her life. And what a celebration it was. Sallye touched a lot of lives.
Her legacy started with a simple request: create a more comfortable letter jacket.
Legendary Baylor School football coach Humpy Heywood approached her in the 1960s because the heavy leather of traditional leather jackets was fine in the winter, but too uncomfortable in the summer heat. She responded with 56 lighter jackets in short order. Soon, she was also customizing the uniforms and lettering for Baylor's baseball team, which was coached by her husband.
It grew into a bona fide business that would garner national attention, though Sallye never advertised. She preferred to let word-of-mouth carry her business, Worthington said.
"If Sallye had ever listed out everyone she'd done work for in her life, it would have been quite surprising, I think," Worthington said.
She fulfilled orders for the New York Yankees, the 1974 World Series-winning Oakland Athletics, the Boston Celtics, Southern Missionary College's nationally recognized gymnastics team in the 1990s, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, Ronald and Nancy Reagan and, of course, the student-athletes at Baylor School.
Worthington couldn't remember anyone ever having a bad word to say about his wife, but it wasn't just her craftsmanship that earned her a place in the community.
Many of the women she employed had come from hosiery workshops, where they worked long hours for little recognition, he said. When they came to work for his wife, the difference was night and day.
"They would make a mistake and then ask Sallye how she could take it so lightly," he recalled. "She would say, 'Well, would it make any difference if I came down on you and got angry? Would that cure this situation?' That was the kind of woman she was."
Ultimately, Alzheimer's disease claimed Sallye, but even her last words were a testament to her gentle spirit and lasting effect.
A few days before she died, one of Worthington's former players from the 1950s, Chick Granning, came from Florida to visit. Although Worthington had been the man's coach, Granning had specifically come up to see Sallye.
When Worthington and his guests returned from lunch, he brought them into the living room to visit with his ailing wife. She hadn't spoken for several days at that point.
"When we walked over there, her eyes got real big and she asked him how he was and said she was so glad to see him," Worthington said. "Chick just broke down crying. She remembered him."
Unfortunately, Worthington said, Sallye's caring nature led her to be taken advantage of later in life. As the disease took its toll on her mind, Worthington said people reached out to ask her for money or donations, and, wanting to help, she wrote more checks than he cared to admit.
That sort of abuse happens all too often to those suffering from the disease, he said.
"It was like Sallye was on a sailboat and I was on a sandy beach," Worthington said, describing the disease's progression. "When it started, I could reach out and touch her, but she drifted further and further away, and it got to a point where I couldn't reach her or help her."
Still, her love for the community and the community's overwhelming response to her passing is what's most important, he said. The crowd spilled into the hallways to hear her eulogy, generations of Baylor students for whom she'd made letter jackets - from 60-year-old grandparents to recently graduated students - in attendance to make the service into what Worthington said Sallye she lived her life as: a celebration.
"I think that's how she'd want to be remembered," he said.
Email Shane Foley at sfoley@timesfreepress.com.