Along the Way: The musical legacy of Germaine Williams

The importance of music along with her many other wonderful qualities will be recalled in the celebration of the life of Germaine Williams immediately prior to the closing rites of the Mass of Christian Burial at Kent’s Saint Patrick Church at 11 a.m. Friday, May 27.

Germaine Williams, the wife of the late Charles Williams II, died on her 99th birthday, Feb. 28, 2022 after visits by family and friends. The matriarch of the Williams family, which for more than a century played a prominent role in Kent and beyond, Mrs. Williams is remembered for the elegance, kindness, and talent she contributed to the life of the community.

She was a devoted member of Saint Patrick Church and proud of her alma mater, Saint Patrick Elementary School, which she maintained educates young people as well any elementary school. Gifted musically and with her son, Charles “Pete” Williams III, enrolled in Saint Patrick Elementary, Mrs. Williams conducted a boys choir at Saint Patrick Church for approximately 10 years in the late 1950s and 1960s.

“She had a beautiful soprano voice,” Timothy DeFrange, a deacon at Saint Patrick Church, recalled this past week, “and she taught so many of us to sing in harmony.”

DeFrange, a retired librarian who served Aurora City Schools and Our Lady of the Elms, is musically talented and, playing a guitar, has performed sacred contemporary music for contemporary church services. He said he and his three brothers benefitted from the choir direction of Mrs. Williams when they were enrolled at Saint Patrick Elementary School.

“There are so many of us from the Kent area who benefitted from her dedication,” he said. “Attorney John Flynn, Joe Steinert, Pete Williams, the Frisina brothers, the Pudloski brothers, the Watt brothers, the McCafferty brothers and others. DeFrange said the Saint Patrick Boys Choir performed primarily for church liturgies and a few Catholic choir festivals.

A special treat, DeFrange recalled, was the choir’s daylong summer visit to the Benedictine Abbey in Atwater. “It was out in the country and a great place for us to picnic and play after the abbot said the Mass and we sang the Mass parts.”

DeFrange said that Mrs. Williams used to sing for weddings. “People knew she had a beautiful voice.” The musical talent continued in the family. Her daughter, Mary Wetterlin, not surprisingly, became a gifted pianist and will accompany a hymn during her mother’s funeral Friday.

In addition to her work at Saint Patrick Parish, Mrs. Williams became a devoted supporter of music education at Kent State University. She was a charter member of the Kent State University Symphony Orchestra Society, the non-profit group formed to support the KSU Symphony Orchestra. Donations over its 50 years have created a scholarship fund that provides more than $50,000 annually to young, aspiring musicians.

“A wonderful hostess, she and her late husband, Charles, would host musical soirees at their home. She also served as chair of our Scholarship Committee, leading decisions and providing prudent guidance about how much we could give students,” said Dr. Larry Andrews, chairman of the society and the retired dean of the Honors College at Kent State.

Andrews said Mrs. Williams also founded the Kent chapter of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Committee, after Blossom Music Center, the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra, opened in 1968. She served for 25 years on the State Board of the Blossom Friends of the Cleveland Orchestra.

“She was unfailingly generous,” Andrews said.

The passing of Mrs. Williams in many respects represents the end of an era in Kent. Her husband, Charles, and their son, Charles “Pete” Williams III, for years successfully managed the Williams’ Brothers Mill, a multi-generational, family-owned business located in the heart of Kent from 1879 until 2016. As local business operators, the Williams family played an active role in Kent. Williams Bros. Mill, one of the last independent flour mills in Ohio, was sold to Star of the West in 1999. Star of the West moved operations in 2016 to Willard, Ohio.

Charles “Pete” Williams III makes his home with his wife, Virginia Apperson, in the Atlanta area. Mary Wetterlin resides with her husband, Sam, in Edina, MN. Another daughter, Elizabeth Adams resides with her husband, Dave, in Albuquerque, NM.

David E. Dix is a former publisher of the Record-Courier.

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Along the Way: The musical legacy of Germaine Williams