My mother, Evelyn J. Williams (née Mullins), born in 1924, passed away an hour or so ago, January 17, 2013. She grew up during the great depression, graduated from high school in the early 1940’s, immediately went to work, contributing toward the war effort (WW II). Continuing to work after the war ended, she met a man by the name of Darwin Williams – they met at a “tip toppers” club for tall people (she was 5′ 9″, he was 6′ 5″). In 1951, she married Darwin. They bought a newly built home in Saint Clair Shores on Walton street in 1956. There are pictures showing the house being built with empty lots on each side of their house.
After my older brother, Keith was born in 1957, she stopped working, and a second son (me) was born, in 1959. She stayed at home, raising her two sons, until around 1965-1967(?), and went back to work, working at Midwest Paper Products in their accounting dept., eventually becoming a supervisor of that dept. She worked there for about 13 years. She then worked for a series of tax firms, doing income taxes for individuals (remember Shaklee products, she did the taxes for a lot of people who sold Shaklee). She always had a knack during that time to work so hard, she would forget to do her own taxes on time.
Sometime after turning 65, but probably closer to 67, she finally retired, and started taking a few vacations around the world. She was very happy to see her 2nd son get married at age 36, when she was 71 (and, everyone at the wedding in MN, meeting her for the first time thought she was 60!). She was still very active, going to the Metropolitan Beach Big Band concerts in the summer, or to the Redford Theater with her sister Laveda for organ concerts. When she turned 80, she started slowing down, and 2 years go, she finally moved out of her home on Walton street (after living there for 55 years!), into a nursing home, where she made several new friends.
Evelyn was known for her Rose garden in the backyard at Walton, having about a dozen or more Rose bushes. She collected china tea cups and saucers. She loved to decorate her house, by painting the walls or hanging wallpaper (sometimes painting a wall one color, and then not liking it, painting it a different color a few months later). Evelyn adopted her 2nd son’s puppy dog, Sneakers, after he moved out of the house after high school and quickly renamed her Sierra. When her son moved away from Michigan, she adopted his cat Rocky, and IMMEDIATELY renamed her Sheba. Lol.
Evelyn was an elegant woman, stylish, and, in the 60’s and 70’s, made a lot of her own dresses and clothes, on her sewing machine. Evelyn blazed the working woman’s “super mom” trail, working more than 15 years BEFORE it became “normal” for women to enter the work force after high school. She helped raise two fine young boys, helping them become two fine young men, instilling into at least one of them, the concept of “work in a profession where you love doing the work”.
Evelyn loved numbers and accounting, and would often take work home with her to finish at home. During the 60’s, she often volunteered at church, cutting up bed sheets into strips and then rolling them up for bandages for missionaries. She encouraged both her sons to play band instruments in school, to go out for sports, and to go to college.
When we were kids, she taught us about manual labor, taking us out to the farm to harvest green beans Evelyn would then “can” the green beans (and tomatoes). Evelyn was a good mom over the years, and will be missed, by her sons Keith (his wife, Julie) and Brian, her many nieces and nephews, her sister-im-law, Doreen, and her sister Laveda.
