Stephen Thomas Williams

Stephen Thomas Williams

July 16, 1953 – September 7, 2018

Steve Williams was a good soul. Even in his later life at Pleasant View Nursing Home, he was characterized by his doctor as friendly and giving. He often shared pizza lunches with his colleagues, there. Steve was born in Houston, Texas, which was named Boom Town, USA by Reader’s Digest in the early 1950’s. Our parent moved there because of that fact and had three little booms of their own. Carole, Steve and I were stair-step children, all born in Houston, 2 years apart. When we visited our cousins in Indiana we added more cousins to the stair steps. There were 14 cousins on my mother’s side. We had four more cousins on my dad’s side in Texas.

Steve was a somewhat active little boy, but sweet to his little sister and rough with his big sister. After my parent’s divorce, my mother went back to work. My mother hired a series of housekeepers and babysitters. After school one day, he tried once to get me to do his math homework. He taught me what to do and then went off to play.

We moved to a small town about an hour from Houston to the Southeast. My mother thought it would be less turbulent there for Steve than in the bustling city of Houston. This was after an event, where he walked home from downtown Houston eleven miles all alone to get home through all kinds of neighborhoods. He once told me that people had knives and guns but he just thought that they were toys. We only stayed in Wharton for a year, but I do remember my father staking Steve and I driving before we left. We were 12 and 10.

In Indiana, where many of my mother’s family lived, it was a challenge for Steve. We lived in West Lafayette, where my mother worked at Purdue. Most of the kids in the class were professors’ kids and the curriculum was difficult. Steve was on the Swim Team there for a while. In Texas, he had played other sports including football and archery. He learned to play the guitar and my uncle Jamie taught him to play chess. After years of struggle in school, he dropped out. When he was fifteen my mom tried to get him some help and moved us to South Bend, Indiana to be near a social worker run clinic for teens. Steve moved with us but began to hang out with people at the local park more than at the clinic. He started to travel, he hitchhiked to Chicago and then spent time in Boulder, Colorado, San Francisco and Quebec. He used to practice basic French phrases at home. He returned home periodically and then after we had moved to New Castle, Indiana he came to visit us there. I still don’t know how he survived during his travels. For many years, he stayed in a hospital in Madison Indiana or one in Staunton, Virginia.

He was friendly with his colleagues, cousins and family. He also stayed in contact with Carole and me and when she and I graduated from college and situated in the Washington, D.C. area. He thought of our homes as his and visited occasionally.

Later in life he became afflicted with some serious illnesses but recovered successfully. After one bout of pneumonia and a fall, a doctor thought he was brain dead. He recovered and coherently shocked the doctor, “Thank you for saving my life.” In the last period of his like he stabilized and finally died quietly in his sleep at the Nursing home in the Mt. Airy countryside. On my last visit to see him, he said it was, “ A miracle to see me.”

There will be a graveside memorial service at Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Indiana at 1:00 pm on June 24, 2023. A short time of visitation will be at Armes-Hunt Funeral Home and Cremation Services, 415 S. Main Street, Fairmount, Indiana at 12 Noon before the memorial service.

Memories and condolences may be shared at www.armeshuntfuneralhome.com