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E-mail StoryLois Henry: Greatest generation loses another
| Wednesday, May 21 2008 1:52 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 21 2008 7:34 AM
I was not lucky enough to meet Bob Williams.
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Bob Williams during his service in the Navy in World War II between 1943 and 1946. (Photo courtesy of the Williams family)
Bob Williams in about 1998.
But there may be a few more like him that we should keep an eye out for. They’re the kind of people who make life a little better just for having known them.
Williams died Monday much as he had lived, quietly and surrounded by family. He was 86.
Every day, it seems, we lose another member of “the greatest generation,” those who survived the Depression, won a war and carved out a new prosperity for the United States. In Williams’ case, he was also a key figure in one of Bakersfield’s entertainment hallmarks, minor league baseball.
But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Talking to his family, widow Betsy Williams and children Bob Williams, Laurel McMahon, Linda Gutcher and Steven Williams, you hear certain words repeated over and over about the elder Williams: integrity, hard work, responsibility.
It started early for him.
As a teen in 1935 he escaped the Colorado Dust Bowl and moved to California with his mom and sister. Williams, who’d only ever ridden a horse, taught himself to ride a bicycle so he could hold down two paper routes to help the family.
He graduated from high school in Redlands in 1938 and went to junior college in San Bernardino, graduating in 1940.
Meanwhile, he worked as an apprentice for an electrician and also wrote sports stories for a local paper.
An editor let him know he was likely going to be drafted and advised Williams to enlist.
Williams, tall and extremely thin, followed the editor’s advice but when he tried to enlist in the Army, they wouldn’t take him because he had a heart murmur. He had more success with the Navy, which sent him to Georgetown University. He got a job with the Capitol police and worked at night and attended school during the day. After graduating he was commissioned as an ensign.
“They asked us what kind of an assignment we would like,” Williams told The Californian in 1994. “As I recall, I asked for duty on a carrier or battleship. We all wound up as landing craft officers.”
He piloted transports taking troops to and from the beach in the bloody battle for Saipan in the Mariana Islands in 1944. Nearly 3,000 Americans were killed and more than 10,000 were wounded. Williams received the Bronze Star.
After the war in 1946, he returned to his Capitol police job and graduated from Georgetown law school in 1949.
On a trip home to visit his mother, he roamed around California looking for the best place to start his law practice.
He settled on Bakersfield.
“He said the climate reminded him of Colorado, where he grew up,” McMahon said.
“Guess he liked dusty,” joked Gutcher.
“There was a job open here, too,” son Bob Williams said.
In 1950, Betsy Brown was teaching school in Petaluma. Her sorority sisters voted to send Brown to a convention in Santa Barbara. Their tradition held that any unmarried woman attending the convention would meet her dream man. So they put Brown on the spot and asked who her dream man was.
“Well, I’d never thought of a dream man,” Betsy said. “So I just described my father.”
He should be tall, she said, a lawyer, Republican, a Protestant, at least seven years older (because her dad was seven years older than her mom) and he had to love children.
She didn’t give the silliness a second thought.
At the conference, however, she walked into a ballroom just as a tall, lanky Navy man (who also happened to be a Republican, Protestant lawyer who was 28 to her 21 years and wanted a dozen kids) was walking out. The Navy man did a fast U-turn and asked her to dance.
That was in the spring of 1950. On one of their dates he hummed the tune to “Love Letters” and wrote her name in the wet beach sand.
They were married by September.
In 1952, they were living in Bakersfield and had an 8-month old baby when Williams was called again to serve his country, this time in Korea, where he worked as a Naval lawyer.
When he returned two years later, he told Betsy the Navy wanted to send him to Alaska.
That’s fine, she said, but she wasn’t going. No argument. He went on inactive reserve status.
“We never had a fight,” Betsy recalled. “Maybe a difference of opinion, but not the shouting kind.”
The government told Williams he would have to retire or reactivate and go to Vietnam.
With a house full of children and a growing legal business, this time, he declined.
He retired from the Navy in 1969 at the rank of Lt. Commander.
Williams’ early love of sports followed him all his life. In the 1950s when the Bakersfield Indians lost its major league affiliation with the Cleveland Indians, Williams got together with friends to set things right.
They raised $28,000 and created Bakersfield Baseball Boosters, Inc. to keep minor league baseball at Sam Lynn Ball Park. The younger Williams remembered minor league teams with affiliations from Philadelphia and Chicago and said his father was instrumental in getting the Los Angeles Dodgers to affiliate with a team here from 1968-1976.
Baseball was a family event for the Williamses. At every home game (70 nights a year!), the Williams kids would be on hand collecting tickets, selling programs, retrieving foul balls and taking food up to the press box.
Bob Williams worked with advertisers on new ways to promote the ballpark and increase attendance. He was voted minor league executive of the year in 1968.
As I talked to his children, McMahon’s cell phone rang as friends and former tenants called with condolences.
Rental properties were also a big part of the Williams family life, with the kids called on to paint, clean and repair apartments regularly.
“Oh, he had us kids working as soon as possible,” Gutcher laughed.
“His truck was always filled with tools,” his son Bob recalled. If someone called at dinner time because they’d lost their key, he would give them a hand.
There wasn’t a lot of down time in Williams’ life. He worked into his 80s despite serious heart problems that started in his 60s.
Then in 2002, he suffered a stroke. He recovered somewhat. But a second stroke in 2004 did irreparable damage and for the past few years, Williams was bed ridden at Glenwood Gardens.
His legacy, however, lives on through his children, all Bakersfield residents who’ve lived successful lives of their own based on principles exemplified by Williams.
“Both of our parents gave us such a strong foundation,” McMahon said. “It was a really secure and predictable environment. Not everyone gets that.”
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com