Robert Henry Williams III, died July 6, 2023, in Escanaba, Michigan. He was 98.
“Bob” was the son of Robert H Williams, Jr., and Betty Lou (Betsy) Williams. Born in Dallas, Texas, on his mother’s birthday, May 15, 1925, he was premature and one of the first incubator babies in that city.
His family lived in many mostly rural areas from Texas to Oregon and back to Texas. He and brother Don shared imagination, energy, and interests, and wished they were twins. Sister Linda was born when Bob was twelve and Don was eight.
Bob turned from the Boy Scouts of America and abandoned a nearly complete Eagle Scout rank in order to join the Army in 1943 upon turning eighteen. In 1949, after his discharge, he earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Denver, Colorado. There he met Lucile Babbitt of Riverside, Illinois, and they married in 1949. From Denver, the couple moved to Louisiana and then to Riverside, where he completed a Master of Arts degree in Piano Performance at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the first of their four children was born.
Bob spent ten years in southern California where he taught at several colleges, becoming a first-class accompanist and performer. By the time they moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, Bob and Lukie had four children: Kathryn, Martha, Givhan, and Kip. They lived there for nearly twenty years, and Bob taught at Colorado State University as well as having a large piano class, playing organ for First Christian Church, and always seeking opportunities to play or teach for extra money.
In 1977, after the children had grown, the couple moved to Texas for nearly thirty years. As Lukie’s dementia became clearer, Bob cared for her while maintaining a class of piano students and teaching at Schreiner University in Kerrville. In 2006 they moved to Escanaba, Michigan, to be near daughter Kathryn and the lakes and rivers that fascinated him. Lukie died there in 2008.
After a stroke in 2010 Bob moved to Stonington to live with the Morskis. Another stroke in 2020 made more skilled care necessary and he moved to The Bishop Noa Home under the auspices of U P Health System Hospice, where he lived happily for three years.
A lifelong outdoorsman and musician, Bob loved piano and played with passion and intelligence and had been accepted as a prospective student by legendary French pianist Robert Casadesus. He accompanied his sister’s violin playing and his brother’s cultivated tenor, and played with ensembles from dance bands to pit orchestras for opera and stage. A love of reading which sustained him nearly to the end gave him encyclopedic information about musicians and musical styles from Gregorian chant to the present, to the delight of his many students.
Bob was comfortable in all kinds of terrain. He camped, hunted, canoed and kayaked, built bows and arrows, stone flingers, and muzzle-loaders. He also loved to build things and made two harpsichords and a clavichord, and designed and built a series of small wooden boats, several of them still in active use.
Bob is survived by his brother, Don (Nell Osborn, dec.) of Canon, Texas; sister Linda Williams Day(John Newland) of Monson, Massachusetts; children Kathryn (Steven, dec.) Morski of Stonington; Martha (Drew, dec.) Nichols of Fort Collins, Colorado; Givhan (Omar White) Williams of Olympia Washington; Kip (Cathy Doyle) Williams of Pittsford, New York; and grandchildren: Brian (Kayla Reynolds) Morski and Caitlin (Corey) Kirchenwitz; Liberty (Eli) ImMasche; Bonnie Nichols; Verity Swaney; and Sarah Williams. Great-granddaughters Menolly and Amalia Kirchenwitz and Marryn V. Morski delighted him and he loved to watch them play. Victor ImMasche of Fort Collins was the last great-grandchild in his long life, born in 2023.
Cremation is handled by Skradski Funeral Home.