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MEMORIES OF SEARCHING BY GLENN WILLIAMS Born June 1, 1938, I am the eighth child of Charlie and Lucille Williams. All my life I have had a strong desire to explore, investigate and learn new things. Other words for all this include restlessness and searching--and maybe not knowing what you're searching for. Mother told me that I did not begin talking until well past the time when I should. She said that my first word was "open" which I spoke as I handed her a box of tire patching rubber that I had found in the glove compartment of the car. For as long as I can remember, I have had a tool box and have been a tinkerer. When we lived at 624 Clark Street, Mother let me have a closet underneath the stairs where I set up my "workshop". Model airplanes which I had made hung from the ceiling of the bedroom and model ships I had built were on display as well. Fascinated by flying, I built and flew model airplanes powered by miniature engines fueled by a mixture of naphtha and oil using a hand tether. Several years later, I tried to demonstrate the skills I once had and immediately flew Eddie Wade's major Christmas gift nose first into the ground (just goes to show how quickly we lose our skills). When I was about 14, I built a miniature circus wagon and entered it in the handicraft competition at the Rocky Mount Fair. I was very proud of the red ribbon that I was awarded (looking back, I suspect that anyone would have won for anything entered). That sense of wanting to learn and see new things led me to leave home and join the Navy within a few days after I graduated from Rocky Mount Senior High School. Mother didn't want me to join the Navy but I think she knew that it would probably "tame" me--and she was right because I grew up while gaining some experiences of a lifetime. The Navy had guaranteed me that upon finishing boot camp I would be sent to an aviation electronics and guided missile school which, in their view, was equal to an electronics engineering degree program. Before I got out of boot camp, however, I was nominated for fighter pilot training at the Naval Aviation Cadet School in Pensacola, Florida. Upon completion of boot camp, I was sent to Kingsville, Texas, for aviation prep school and pre-flight training. As a part of the pre-flight training I was given extensive physical examinations at the Naval Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was there that the Navy and I discovered that I am red/green color-blind (I always knew I had a color vision deficiency but hadn't considered it would be a problem except in trying to match my socks!!). That discovery led to a big disappointment for me in that the Navy doesn't have color-blind pilots. Further, once the Navy realized I was color-blind, electronics school was eliminated for me as well. As a result, I went to a school to learn accounting and became an Aviation Storekeeper. My dreams of flying were not all lost, however, because I went aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Lake Champlain, and spent three years. Aboard the Lake Champlain, I was a member of the flight crew of the ship's plane and, although I had to sit in the back instead of in the cockpit, I was catapulted from and landed on the ship several times while it was at sea in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. God blesses us in many
ways--one of them being unanswered prayers. Had I become a pilot, I
would likely have been in the Naval Aviation Fleet in the mid-sixties,
just as the United States' presence in Vietnam began to build. Not being
admitted to the NAVCAD School, I was discharged when my four years were
up and I ended up in Greenville, NC instead. In the fall of 1960, I
enrolled at East Carolina University where I met another of His blessings,
my wife Patsy Ann Edwards. Patsy is the daughter of Raymond Willis Edwards
and Mary Lee Bobbitt Edwards. Although we had never met, our parents
were friends from their teenage years. Although officially a business major, my Navy experience led me to study accounting at East Carolina. Upon completion of a year of graduate study in economics, I joined the Charlotte office of Arthur Andersen & Co., an international firm of accountants and consultants headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. I became a Certified Public Accountant and have spent my entire business career with Arthur Andersen. The Firm offered me many challenges and opportunites to prove myself as well as the chance to see more of the world since I traveled extensively on its behalf. One of the most exciting assignments I ever undertook was in Indonesia in the mid-seventies where I worked directly, day to day, with members of President Suharto's cabinet. My job was to advise them on how to separate the state-owned telephone company from the post office. As a part of this engagement, I worked with other Arthur Andersen from offices around the world as well as with people from the World Bank and the Agency for International Development. In 1977 I was elected a partner in Arthur Andersen and in 1981 I opened the Raleigh office and served as its managing partner until 1989. Prior to relocation to Raleigh, I was based in the Greensboro office for eight years and the Charlotte office for ten years. When I gave up management responsibility for the office in early 1989, I began to spend most of my time working with civic and charitable organizations. The things I am involved with include United Way of Wake County, Inc. where I am Treasurer and serve on the Board of Directors and Fellowship of Christian Athletes of North Carolina where I am a member of the Board of Directors. In addition, I am a member of the Board of Directors of Camp Oak Hill and Retreat Center and Wake County Unit of American Heart Association of North Carolina. On behalf of Arthur Andersen & Co., I served for several years as treasurer and member of the Board of Forest History Society of North America, Inc. and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Humanities Foundation of North Carolina State University. Although I was never in scouting as a boy, both Chuck and Mark were; so I got involved because I believed it helped them and other boys their age. I later became president and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Occoneechee Council Boy Scouts of America. Glenn has been involved
for a number of years in educational initiatives directed to children
from early elementary school to college. He has served as Chairman of
the Board of Advisors of the School of Business and as President and
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the East Carolina University Business
Foundation. He is a founder and has served as Chairman of the Board,
since its founding in 1983, of BB&T Center for Leadership Development
at East Carolina University. He is also a founder and Chairman of the
Board of Directors of Raleigh Housing Authority Scholarship Fund, Inc.
which guarantees middle schoolers who live in public housing that if
they will stay in school and are admitted to college, their costs of
going to college will be provided by the Fund. The Fund also provides
after school tutoring for first through fifth graders at each of the
public housing sites in Raleigh. Glenn serves on the Boards of Directors
and is Treasurer of both Cities in Schools of North Carolina, Incorporated
and Wake County Communities in Schools, Inc. The focus of Cities/Communities
in schools is school dropout prevention and they provide co-ordination
for business, social services and the school system at the school site.
He also serves on the Board of Directors of Inroads Triangle North Carolina,
Inc., an organization which provides work opportunities and college
funding for outstanding minority students. Patsy, the children and I are members of Forest Hills Baptist Church where Patsy teaches Sunday School and serves on several committees. All of us are involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes. We never know from day-to-day how the events of a day will ultimately affect us. If we study events of our lives, however, we can find things that have a lasting influence on virtually everything we do. When I was in the fourth grade, we moved from Sugar Hill, which is about halfway between Upper Town Creek Church and Temperance Hall, to a farm house owned by Monk Worsley near Brake's Station, a rail siding located about 3 miles from Rocky Mount on the Plymouth line of the Atlantic Coast Line Rail Road. Moving there contributed a great deal, I believe, to my "search" or desire to experience new things. The house was very
small, especially for a family the size of ours. There was no electricity
or plumbing when we moved in. It only had four rooms and ultimately
Mother, Daddy and nine of us kids would live there for over four years.
In 1989, I took Mark and Melanie there (it appeared to have last been
used by vagrants) and they were amazed that we had lived in such a small
place. Of course they recognize that it is a great deal different now
from what it was like when we lived there. They realize, too, that in
1948 we were not much worse-off than most others. A lot of memorable
events occurred at the Worsley house--many very happy ones and some
of the saddest of, perhaps, our entire lives. I think about that place
and the memories are almost overwhelming. Mother would pack picnic lunches
and Oliver, Milton, Gene Coley and I would go through the woods to the
Worsley farm pond and spend a summer afternoon fishing. We would help
Mother weed what seemed, at the time, to be several hundred acres of
garden (it was Phillip's job to drive the borrowed mule to do the plowing)!
In the late summer we would pick cotton in the field in front of the
house. In the fall Cleo would bring Charles and spend the day grading
tobacco with Mother and would ride a bicycle down that long dirt path
in the mud and rain to pick up the mail. Both Cleo's family and our
own were able to have some of the extras as well as the necessities
with the money she and Mother earned grading tobacco. It was here that Milton and I really began to develop a special closeness that lasted as long as he lived. It began here as we shared our first bicycle and played together with our air rifles. In later years, I would teach him some driving skills that Mother and Daddy certainly would not have appreciated! He and I were the only ones to attend Rocky Mount Senior High School and I was the one to drive us to school each day. Years later, we would be neighbors in an apartment complex in Charlotte. He and Susie came to Charlotte to operate the Kress lunch counter but justify after a few months for a better opportunity. Kim was born during the few months they were in Charlotte. Milton became a man's man. He loved fishing more, I believe, than anyone I've ever known. No fisherman would ever outfit his boat more completely than Milton's. In his younger years, Milton was quite a hunter as well, having gotten his first rifle when he was about 14. Horace would come to our house there at the Worsley place to tell us during supper one evening that Aunt Mae had died of a second heart attack. She had been sick for several weeks and we had visited her only a couple of weeks before. Mother took it very hard and looking back, I think she knew why Horace was driving up, even before he came in the house. The first close exposure I had to personal tragedy, and perhaps the saddest day of all our lives to that point, was the June 20, 1950, fire that took Aaron's life. The loss was a life-changing event for all of us. He was, at the time, the youngest of the boys and, for no real reason that I can recall now, I thought he was Daddy's favorite. Aaron was very bright and quick and was the center of attention even though he was eight years old and there were two younger ones at home. One of my most vivid memories is of the day we moved into the Worsley house. It was around the beginning of the year, although it was not an especially cold day. Oliver, Phillip and J. D. were helping Daddy with the move. I don't remember where C. T. was or whether he had returned from the war at that time but he did come there and live with us until he was married. I believe Aaron, Milton, Shirley and Nancy were staying with Margaret while we moved that day. I remember that Daddy and the older boys had unloaded the first load and had returned for another, leaving Mother and me to begin setting up. As you would expect of any fourth-grader, I was not doing much "helping" but was getting in a lot of exploring. There was a huge old two-story barn behind the house and I climbed over, under and through it before returning to the house. I also took time to go at least a few yards into the dense woods behind the barn. After exploring the area, I returned to the house to share with Mother my excitement at all that I had discovered. I found her, sitting in what was to be her and Daddy's bedroom, crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she said that she didn't want to live there. I tried to find out what she meant but she didn't offer much in the way of explanation. Mother brushed off the questions, returned to her get-it-done manner and, as I recall, had everything ready for the next load of our belongings when Daddy arrived with them (I'm sure she was outwardly happy and smiling when he got there!). Although at the time I didn't understand why she was crying, I have thought about that incident many times in the years since. It became obvious to me much later that she thought we were taking a step backwards (in my wind we did) and that maybe all of us deserved something better than what we were moving into. That exchange with Mother that day has had a profound impact on my life, instilling in me a very strong desire for self-improvement. I suppose I learned from Mother my sense of determination, optimism and drive. She was a very determined person and was one of the most upbeat, positive people that I have ever known. She was seldom "down" and never very long at any one time. It was hard to be anything but positive when she was around because she wouldn't tolerate a negative attitude--her outlook was infectious. Through the several crises of my life, just as she did that moving-in day at the Worsley place, I have tried to remain upbeat and positive because I believe "there is something better" which was all Mother ever wanted for any of us. |
