When Lucille Williams' family sits down to dinner today, they won't have her pecan pie, a favorite of her son-in-law, which she baked every Thanksgiving for more than 30 years. And they won't have her guaranteed-never-dry turkey, kept moist by the stick of butter she smoothed between the skin and the breast meat.
But they will have a lifetime of memories and the example of a woman who always valued family, survived tough times and never lost her ability to smile. Williams was 92 when she died Oct. 21.
"Her perseverance to me was so admirable," said Dennis Jones, a cousin and family historian. "She never let herself get down in the years I knew her. She was always very up. Very, very positive about life. I just never knew her to have a bad day."
Williams had her share of days that would have crushed many people. An Onslow County native and the oldest of 11 children, she was widowed in her early 20s. Her twins were taken from her and put in an orphanage, which her family says was customary at that time when the mother had no means of support.
It was World War II, and Williams managed to get a civilian job at Camp Davis near Topsail Island. Military deployments had left work available, and she started out in the laundry, moving up to become a supervisor. The base provided buses from Wilmington to Camp Davis, and never one for idle hands, Williams became an expert seamstress, sewing clothes on the daily rides.
Williams now had a job, as well as support from her family; her son and daughter were returned to her. Mary Lee Wisely of Fuquay-Varina remembers being reunited with her mother and brother.
"We were glad to be together," she said.
Williams remarried. "She fell for a handsome, dashing officer at Camp Davis," said her youngest daughter, Susan Dellinger of Raleigh.
The family settled in Richlands, and another daughter, Perry, was born. But after returning from the war, Williams' second husband died in an accident. Now with three children to support, the second-time widow, not yet 35, became a bookkeeper in Jacksonville.
Dellinger said her mother, a child of the Great Depression, did more for her children than many mothers and fathers together.
"She was just a really hard worker who did a lot for everyone," Dellinger said. When Perry needed braces, Williams drew on the skills she had mastered on the bus trips to Camp Davis and began taking in sewing.
From ball gowns to wedding dresses to handmade Valentines created with scraps of Christmas red velvet, Williams could create nearly anything. When she wanted to give a gift but didn't have much money, she would buy a pair of socks from the dime store and sew on lace or ribbon to make it special.
Dellinger was born after her mother married for the third time. Williams was selling a car, and Dellinger's father "sees the ad and ends up marrying a widow with three kids!" That marriage was the longest, lasting 17 years before he died of cancer.
For all she lost, Williams seemed inspired to give. When a single mother who worked as a cocktail waitress needed someone to care for her child, Williams kept the baby six days a week. When Dellinger left for college, Williams took in college students as boarders, encouraging a young man fresh out of the Marines and unsure of his future to finish Coastal Carolina Community College and continue his studies at N.C. State University. She became so close with another young woman, a boarder who went on to marry a man in the Coast Guard, that Williams flew to Alaska, where the family was stationed, for a visit at age 70.
"Mother never really judged people. I think because she had such hardship, she accepted people as they were," Dellinger said.
Still, Williams could be intimidating. Alan Skinner, her pastor at Grace Fellowship Christian Church in Wendell, said preaching in front of her was like being a student speaking before a professor.
"She was so well-spoken , so well-read," he said. "She was the real deal. If that's bad grammar, she'll spank me for it one day."
As for perseverance, "Lucille was the epitome of that," Skinner said. "We do overcome. We do survive."
But she never dwelled on her losses.
"She never bemoaned the fact that these things happened to her," said Barbara Gutknecht, a friend in Williams' later years. "If she didn't feel well, you'd never know it."
Williams often helped others at the senior apartment complex where she lived in Wendell. Less than two weeks before her death, she drove a younger couple, in their 70s, to a dinner club because they needed help transporting a walker.
"I don't think any of us have ordinary lives. I think all of our stories are rich in some way," Dellinger said. "I think mother's story is a particularly good example in that way."
Williams is survived by three daughters, 11 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren, six siblings, numerous nieces, nephews and other relatives. Her son preceded her in death.
