Warren Williams
RALEIGH - On Sunday, July 31, 2011, Warren Williams, 95, who had been admitted on Friday to Raleigh-Duke Hospital in Raleigh, suffering from pneumonia, expired. A native of Robeson County, and a member of Philadelphus Presbyterian Church, Dr. Williams held the rank of second lieutenant, as a navigator on a B-24 in the Army Air Corps in World War II. His plane was shot down on March 19, 1944, over Klagenfurt, Austria. He spent the balance of the war in a German prison camp near what is now the Polish city of Wroclaw. He later recalled the homesickness he had felt during this period when he heard the wind in the long leaf pines outside the prison, a sound that reminded him of his childhood in the Williams family home in Buie.
Following victory in Europe, he returned to North Carolina to complete a Ph.D. in history at the University of North Carolina on the GI Bill, and to start a family with Alice Rebecca "Becky" Butler of St. Pauls, whom he married in 1943. While in Chapel Hill, he made a life-long commitment to racial and economic justice and world peace. Teaching was Dr. Williams' calling. His ability to bring the past to life through compelling stories made him a popular professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia, Hope College in Michigan, Wayne State College in Nebraska, and at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, where he held faculty and administrative rank and conducted research, traveled, taught and wrote during the 60s and 70s. Upon his retirement in 1981, Dr. Williams began wintering in Raleigh to be close to home and family and summering in Quebec to continue his studies in French history and culture.
In 2010, without renouncing his American citizenship, he accepted Canadian citizenship, planning to continue spending part of each year there as he had done for about 30 years. At 95, Dr. Williams lived alone, drove his car and had plans for the years ahead. He was participating in an exercise class at Duke-Raleigh Hospital and told friends and family that he was feeling better than he had at 90. He was an avid reader and was "still learning" as the 88-year-old Michelangelo said about himself on his deathbed.
The next to the last of the eight children of the late Anna Duncan Smith and Shelton Brady Williams, he is survived by his younger sister, Anna Ruth Williams of (Buie) Red Springs; by his daughter, Anna (Butler Williams) Shannon Elfenbein and son-in-law, Don Elfenbein and grandson, Frank Shannon of Morgantown, W.Va.; son, James Warren Williams and daughter-in-law, Susie Jaacobson Williams and grandsons, Kristoffer, Jacob and Reed Williams of Seward, Neb. In death, he joins his beloved wife, Becky, who passed away in 1973.
A memorial service was held at Philadelphus Presbyterian Church, conducted by A.P. Cates Jr., CLP on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011. Memorials may be sent to Philadelphus Presbyterian Church, 2197 Buie-Philadelphus Road, Red Springs, NC 28377; or a charity of your choice. Cremation Society of the Carolinas Capital Funeral Home of Raleigh.