Grymes honors MC's Julia Williams

In the spring of 1977 a young woman drove a banana-colored Datsun up the driveway of Grymes Memorial School to her appointment with Headmaster Joseph Y. Rowe. She lived all the way in Broad Run, just north of Warrenton. She was applying for the first grade position and had years of teaching experience, along with a master’s degree to recommend her.

I was the kindergarten teacher at the time, which was a part-time job, and fully expected Mr. Rowe to offer me the first grade position, though I hadn’t really expressed my interest in it.

Let that be a lesson, you need to go after the things you want in life, not expect them to come knocking at your door. So my first experience with this new stranger was somewhat uncomfortable — she was after the job I wanted!

In the end, she and Mr. Rowe solved the problem brilliantly. There were just enough students to have two small sections of first grade.

The next year, Julia Williams agreed to teach the kindergarten class, provided she could use the afternoons to put her master’s degree in counseling to use as the school counselor.

This was an amazing proposition. Our little school — and it was considerably smaller back then — would have a five-day-a-week counselor. Julia Williams, who for years now has lived in Madison County, became a special friend, an advocate for students, and an advisor and helping hand to teachers, for the next 26 years.

One of the things that makes Grymes so special is its traditions. Without a written history of the school, we don’t always remember how certain traditions began. For the record, many of them started with Julia Williams. She institutionalized the Christmas giving program.

In the beginning, she asked Grymes families to donate any clothes or toys they didn’t need, then she’d match up appropriate articles for family members we had been adopted through social services.

You can’t imagine the mess! It practically filled the library!

Once, when I was the librarian, I insisted I couldn’t do my program knee deep in old clothes and toys for three weeks, so she took it all to the newly renovated and larger science room.

It was a huge job – like the present day rummage sale. Julia Williams and her students from the honor council worked when they could while the donations trickled in until the Saturday before delivery when a big push was on. Then a few parents, a couple of teachers and her handful of students spent the day separating clothes and packaging them for distribution. She’d also solicit money from the faculty and some parent friends so that she and the students could go out shopping for one “fun” gift for each person and then necessities like underwear, hats and gloves.

They also received groceries worthy of a Christmas dinner. Right after the Christmas program, students and their parents delivered the “gifts.” After years of doing it this way, Julia Williams changed the program to be like the Christmas angel trees she’d seen in the mall. Our families would donate new items that came specifically from the adopted family’s wish list.

Today, upper school classes and their teachers make the deliveries. It wouldn’t be Christmas at Grymes without this program.

Julia Williams would never consider herself a fund raiser, but she was constantly doing it. She believed in diversity long before it became the buzzword. She knew we would all profit by striving for a school that reflected our community. She was instrumental in finding money to support the first African-American to graduate from Grymes. She was never bashful about raising money for financial aid.

To further support her endeavors, Anne Ueltschi, a special friend of Julia Williams and Grymes, established the Julia H. Williams Fund for financial aid. That fund is an important part of our endowment and Julia Williams’ legacy.

Julia Williams loved books and reading and wanted to strengthen our library. In 1982, she conceived of another program that encouraged reading and raised funds for the library. Inspired by the walkathons that benefit many nonprofit organizations, she started a “bookathon.” During the 27 years we’ve done this program, our students have read countless books and raised more than $30,000 for the library.

The Chesapeake Bay Trip was also a Julia Williams idea. Her concern that students needed to learn about the bay and have a memorable eighth grade trip led her to lobby for this experience. There was little support from the science department, because it didn’t correspond to the curriculum.

The science teacher would have no part of it. Julia Williams bucked the system as she could do from time to time. She volunteered to take the group and she volunteered her husband, Peter Williams, also. This year, for the first time, the seventh grade went on the bay trip because it does, in fact, align itself better with the curriculum.

Don’t worry, Julia, the eighth grade went to Gettysburg, a trip you led when you taught eighth grade history.

Yet another tradition she helped start was her eighth grade bonding trip, which was originally called Carrington’s Campout after Headmaster Bill Carrington. For years, Julia Williams and Bill Carrington took the eighth grade overnight to Camp Friendship in Palmyra to experience the challenges of a ropes course and plan for their upcoming final year at Grymes around the campfire. Some years later she and her husband opened their river home in Walkerton to the seventh graders for an overnight that included canoeing, camping in their yard and a community clean-up of the Mattaponi River.

Knowing how unique it is to have students ranging in age from 4 to 14 in the same building, Julia Williams led the faculty to start the Big Brother/Big Sister program where older students were paired with a little brother or sister. That program is now called the Partner Program. It is going strong and is well loved by both the older and younger students.

Finally, Julia Williams was responsible, along with Headmaster Bill Whitman, of starting the eighth grade dinner. This happened gradually over a couple of years. It started with Julia’s desire to recognize the accomplishments of each student instead of only those who won prizes at graduation.

For a year or two, Julia Williams spoke about each student during the graduation exercises. That was lengthy.

It was Mr. Whitman’s idea to have a special dinner. At the first dinner, Julia Williams spoke about every student.

The following year, the upper school teachers joined her so that each could recognize one or two eighth graders more fully. It has become one of our most cherished traditions.

I think Julia Williams prefers to think of herself as a teacher first and a counselor second. In addition to teaching a year in first grade and 12 in kindergarten, she took over the fledgling Family Life course after its first year in 1986 and started the seventh grade Ethics class a few years before she left Grymes.

She was our in-house tutor for 15 years and taught a variety of classes including sixth grade health, third grade science and a year of U.S. history. She was head of the honor council for 26 years and was always looking for ways to engage the older students. Her office became a hangout or seventh and eighth graders and their signature artwork covers the cinderblock walls even now.

Teacher, counselor, champion of diversity, lover of the environment, supporter of the disadvantaged, advocate of youngsters who had a hard time following the rules or were experiencing emotional challenges, Julia Williams supported, not only students, but teachers, parents and four heads of school. She could be headstrong and stubborn, in her quiet way, and she stepped on one or two toes in her defense of students, but she followed her instincts and her passions, and gave Grymes everything she had.

Despite serious health problems including a near-fatal car accident, complications from diabetes, and eventually a pancreatic transplant, Julia never felt self-pity. In fact, one would never know the trials she underwent. Not only did she not complain, she never looked ill! The students, the school, her amazing commitment and resolve were her focus.

Julia Williams left Grymes four years ago, but she continues to make her mark on her community by adopting local causes and teaching reading to adults through the Literacy Council of Madison County. In fact, this year she brought one of her students, a middle-aged woman, who had just started reading in the last year or so, to Grymes to share her newfound ability with the first grade. It was a heartwarming experience for her student and ours.

Julia, your energy, warmth and hard work still echo down these hallways. You have made a lasting impression and embody what makes Grymes the special place it is.

(Guest columnist Pat Barnhardt is the academic dean at Grymes Memorial School. The preceding is from a tribute she made to Madison County resident Julia Williams at the Orange-based school’s June 5 graduation ceremony. Williams also received the school’s prestigious Distinguished Service Award during the ceremony. Contact Barnhardt via e-mail at Pat_Barnhardt@woodberry.org.)