Robert Walter Williams

A measure of a person’s legacy ought to account for what tools he was given early on to construct a life. By that measure Bob left a rich legacy. He was born into a large French-Canadian family that migrated from Quebec to Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Raised in a broken working-class home with little parental guidance, trapped in a gritty childhood existence, Bob joined the military at seventeen and found himself in war-torn Korea. At the military base, he met Chong Suk Yi (“Lee”), a beautiful, industrious woman. Unlike many of his fellow GIs who abandoned their pregnant “girlfriends,” Bob at nineteen chose to marry and become a father. He returned with wife and child to the USA, whereupon he and Lee ultimately raised three wonderful children. He dedicated himself for twenty years to military service, moving his family from place to place every year. He served his country honorably in Vietnam. He and Lee settled down for civilian life in the Sacramento region of California where he worked for another twenty years as a mail carrier, and they watched their children go off to college (and one to law school, another to graduate school). Bob was extremely proud of his kids. Raising them was his accomplishment in life. Though raised with no model for parenting, Bob was the epitome of stalwart reliability. Lee admired how her husband, for over two decades (before she herself died of cancer), never once complained of having sandwich-lunches with baloney, Kraft cheese, and mayonnaise between two slices of Wonder Bread. Some might call his stoicism a form of old-school masculinity, but it is more properly honored as bedrock courage and dedication to decency and honor. His children remember him in that way. But Bob was not only an emblem of grim determination. He loved sports, as a fan and as an athlete himself. His intelligence and wit, which was never nurtured due to childhood deprivations, came alive when he talked about sports. In his retirement, he excelled at bowling, pickleball, and shuffleboard. He gave far, far more than he received. And that was fine by him.

Bob is survived by three children, a younger brother and sister.