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| A week
after this photo was taken, I was in the Navy. I am standing, third
from the right. Coach Herbert "Hoppie" Johnson holds the
ball. |
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Dunbar
Center basketball team. 7 April 1943. Williams is third from
right, second row. |
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Over
the years I have written about or drawn upon those three years
I spent in the Navy. The closest I came to being killed during
the war, when arms were raised specifically against me, not
just a bunch of people climbing a beach or working through a
tropical forest, was when Americans, sailors, placed a .45 to
my head and almost pulled the trigger. No Japanese bomber pilot
rifleman or machine gunner ever did that. |
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"SOUTH PACIFIC." Typescript poem. Signed by Williams. 1974/1981.
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Camp
Robert Smalls, Great Lakes Naval Training Center; with Williams's
signed inscription: "To My Best Girl - Mom from Jon."
May 1943. |
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Autograph
letter, signed. From Williams to his mother, Ola Mae Williams.
June 1944.
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| This
was my first night back in the States after two years in the Pacific.
My sons have noticed that I looked quite drunk. The journey home
had entailed three days bread and water in the fire control room
of an LST, and ten days as a Prisoner-at-Large in Hawaii. The first
offense was for washing in fresh water; the second for admiring
the wonderful way civilians lived – which admiration had carried
me off limits. |
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Williams, far left, in Oakland, Calif. Early 1946.
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Williams
with friend Eric Simmons in Thornden Park, Syracuse, N.Y.
Summer 1946. |
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With
Cousin Arnetha Smith Cook, left, and wife Carolyn Clopton Williams,
right. Taken on Williams's honeymoon at the Club DeLisa in Chicago.
1947.
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| "Jon"
was far more dashing than John, so I used it a few times, perhaps
influenced by the movie actor Jon Hall, who used to play in those
"'typhoon" flicks with Dorothy Lamour. I was even thinking
of a great pen name back then - William A. Johns. |
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Williams
when he was president of the Syracuse University chapter of the
NAACP and president of the Delta Zeta chapter of the Alpha Phi
Alpha fraternity. 1949.
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Williams with brother, Joe, and son Greg. March 1949.
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Mother,
Ola Mae, and stepfather, Albert Page. April 1950.
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Helen,
Joe, and Ola Mae Williams. 16 April 1950.
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Williams
as a graduate of Syracuse University. 1950. |
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Williams's
family on the front steps of Aunt Elizabeth Page's home in Syracuse,
N.Y. 1951.
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POEMS.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Privately published by the author, 1953. “Limited
edition,” The author’s first book.
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| I
typed Poems on a mimeograph stencil in the offices of Doug
Johnson Associates in Hotel Syracuse. I worked there as a copywriter.
How many copies I ran off I do not remember. The story that has
me selling copies on the street corners of Syracuse is false. I
carried them to three or four bookstores, whose owners or managers
were kind enough to take them. I don't think they sold any copies. |
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