Winnie Paris was a 22-year-old sailor in the U.S. Navy and as headstrong as a bull as she looked the captain of the USS Philippine Sea in the eyes and refused to follow a direct order.
The commander of the ship likely had little to no experience telling women sailors what to do – Paris was only the ninth woman to board the cruiser when she joined its crew in 2003 – and therefore might have lacked the readiness to respond to an insubordinate female.
So there he and the Texas-bred Paris stood, as she explains it, locked in a showdown of wills on a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser.
“He told me to do something, and I told him I didn’t work on my birthday,” recalls Paris, now 43 and a Realtor with Keller Williams.
One can only imagine what went through the captain’s mind as he processed this decree by a sailor on his ship. Whatever his thoughts, he tailored the words his calculations produced to opening Paris’ eyes to a hard truth.
“He said, ‘Winnie, you have a problem with people who are in a position of authority over you,’” Paris remembers. “And I said, ‘I probably do.’”
Paris traces the development of her mulish response to authority at that age to her parents granting her every wish as a child. She was the youngest of her mother’s children, as well as the only girl among her siblings, so she grew up believing not that the world happened to revolve around her but that it should. After all, she was the gravity that bent the will of others in her favor.
Paris even joined the Navy to spite her mother and father, she admits.
“I wanted to show them I could be self-sufficient.”
Paris’ captain was not easily bowed by her obstinacy, however, and with good reason: the USS Philippine Sea didn’t embark on easy missions, and he needed his crew to fall in line to not only protect their country but also to safeguard the lives on his ship.
Initially as an electronic warfare technician and later as a cryptologic technician, Paris played a key role in the execution of the cruiser’s missions. Her responsibilities required her to have top secret clearance and to do things many people would find difficult, she says.
“I made places go boom.”
Paris is emotionless and unapologetic as she says this. Anyone looking for either a glint of cowboy pride or a glimmer of remorse will be disappointed. It’s not that she didn’t experience trauma or distress, it’s that years of therapy helped her to move forward.
Likewise, Paris’ ongoing relationship with her captain helped her to at least be open to authority, she says.
“I was going to do what I wanted to do, and he was going to have to deal with it. But that was the wrong mindset. So, we had to sit down and find level ground.”
Paris and her captain didn’t achieve détente overnight, but by the time she completed her four-year stint with the Navy, she was seeing the world through fresh eyes.
“The Navy matured me. I had come from a place of privilege, but I met people who had joined the military to have an income, a place to live and food to eat. It opened my heart to others.”
Paris also emerged from her time in the Navy convinced she disliked working for other people.
“I like my freedom. When you work a nine-to-five, you have to be there at a certain time, and someone tells you when you can eat lunch and how long your break can be. That doesn’t sit well with me.”
Paris hardly has to say this. She’s seated in her office at KW on Lee Highway, where she’s hung the real estate license she earned in 2021. Although the building looks as though it was dipped in red paint after the walls were raised, and even though many of her fellow Realtors are wearing red, she rows against the tide by surrounding herself with yellow.
A complete inventory of the color near her person would be exhaustive, but even a casual glance around the small space would spot her yellow shirt, yellow chairs, yellow watch band, yellow desk pad, yellow envelopes and yellow binders, as well as the painting of sunflowers framed in yellow, the bursts of yellow in the 50 or so black-and-white photos that cover her walls and the miscellaneous yellow décor.
Even Paris’ candy jar holds a handful of yellow jellybeans. If the sun were in the mood for company, it would find her office to be a welcoming space. (Paris also owns a yellow Sharpie, but who doesn’t?)
Since Paris says her favorite color is orange, why the preponderance of yellow? So no one forgets her, she claims.
“You’ll never forget the Realtor in yellow,” she smiles, brightening the room even more. “A year or two before I earned my license, I was walking along a street in a yellow sundress when a stranger stopped and said, ‘Yellow looks amazing on you.’ A few other folks complimented my sundress a few minutes later. So, when I became a Realtor, I thought, ‘I’ll wear yellow every day.’ It’s a branding thing.”
Paris was initially opposed to the idea of becoming a Realtor. She settled into a role as a stay-at-home mom after the Navy and intended to open a shelter for battered women, so when her husband, Ramon, suggested her personality was suited for real estate, she balked.
“He said, ‘People naturally gravitate to you,’ and being stubborn, I said, ‘Whatever.’”
Ramon won in the end, and Paris discovered she loves to make connections, both for herself and for her clients. People at her church became her clients, and her clients became repeat customers, and her repeat customers started referring her to others.
Paris expanded her sphere even further by becoming a go-to source on social media for local recommendations, whether someone needed a seamstress, a plumber, or a venue for a date.
“I want to be of value no matter what someone needs so they already trust me when they find out I’m a Realtor,” she says. “It’s not about dollars, it’s about helping people and making them happy.”
Paris says she gives her clients “her best – head to toe.” At the same time, she predictably says she’s not always on demand.
“I’m not a Realtor every day. I’m also a mom, wife, friend, Girl Scout leader and church volunteer. So I have to disconnect from work and take care of myself mentally, physically and emotionally so I can also give my family my best, too.”
For that reason, Paris doesn’t always answer her phone.
“If my phone vibrates when I’m not working, and it’s not someone who lives under my roof, I’m probably not going to respond right away. Speaking with other Realtors, my boundaries are higher than theirs.”
Although Paris’ aversion to authority has softened in the 20 years since she went toe-to-toe with her captain aboard the USS Philippine Sea, it persists. This is evident not only in her choice of career, or the prevalence of yellow in her office, or in the way she shields her personal time, it’s also visible in her relationship with the One to whom she devotes her Sunday mornings.
“God is going to get His time, even though He has a crazy sense of humor,” Paris laughs. “I said, ‘God, I need to have all my children by the time I’m 35. And at 37, I gave birth to a third human being. I said, ‘God, maybe you didn’t hear me, but this wasn’t the plan.’
“I have no regrets, of course; my son is an amazing child. So things do seem to work out when I let someone else take the lead.”