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Even Julius Caesar is part of Williams family
reunions
By BILL WHITAKER
Believe it or not, descendants of Stamford's Morgan and Pearlee
Williams get pretty worked up about Labor Day.
No matter where they live or how busy they are, most drop whatever
they're doing to attend the Williams family reunion. They've done
it every year for 42 years and show no signs of giving this family
tradition a rest.
"It might amaze other people, but not us," said Mont
White of Abilene. "Everybody in this family loves each other
and is concerned with what's going on in each other's lives. And
we really like each other's company."
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Most amazing of all about this clan gathering: You will find
almost no one left at the Williams family reunion with the surname
Williams.
"Well, yes, I guess that's true," admitted prominent
Abilene businessman Harwell Barber, 71. "We really should
call it the White-Crawford reunion, at least if you go by the
numbers. They're 90 percent of this reunion.
"But then our grandfather and grandmother had six girls
and one boy and that's where this reunion got its start."
Only one descendant of the clan still has the surname Williams
- that's aging Billy Jack Williams - and he has no children. At
this point, however, no one has really considered changing the
reunion's name.
After all, the good times had their origins in the late Morgan
and Pearlee Williams and their brood. It's tradition.
SMELLED LIKE SIRLOIN
Although the Williams clan mounted family get-togethers before
1955, it was that year that began their string of consecutive
Labor Day reunions. The family gathered at the new home of Morgan
and Pearlee Williams to celebrate.
Morgan Williams was a jovial, upbeat individual who raised
greyhounds and was skilled as a butcher. One family member, now
in his 40s, remembered Morgan fondly because he "always smelled
like sirloin steak."
Besides tending to his farmland, "Uncle Morg" was
also famous for keeping young nephews and grandchildren in line,
and all without ever lifting a finger against them.
"There was a saying in this family," 82-year-old
Cleone White Willingham told me (and with a huge smile). "You
didn't send the Williams kids to the penitentiary, you sent 'em
to Uncle Morg's."
If you had a penchant for trouble, Uncle Morg would weed it
out. He might tie a rag to some distant fence post, then vow you
wouldn't leave the Jones County spread till the hard soil had
been plowed right up to that post.
"You went to Uncle Morg's," recalled 78-year-old
W.K. "Dub" White of Sherman, "you came back a nice
kid, glad to be home!"
ET TU, YOU BRUTE!
As younger family members moved off to distant stretches of
Texas and beyond, the reunions moved to far horizons, too. Still,
the older men recall long-ago reunions with great fondness, possibly
because, to quote one, "the women still cooked back then."
Reunions of times gone by involved not only a lot of home-cooked
meals but church services Sunday morning. Other activities were
conducted with a certain Church of Christ propriety. At the various
camps that reunions were once held at, the men slept in one building,
the women in another.
"Based on the snoring coming from the men's building,"
Madison Crawford recalled, "it was the only decent night's
sleep those women got!"
Things have loosened up considerably since then, to the point
that, at one of the reunions, some of the clan attracted family
notoriety by skinny-dipping in a motel swimming pool. But such
sins are still washed away with a Sunday morning church service.
David Lane, 40, of Abilene recalls the spirited skits the daughters
of Morgan and Pearlee would stage for kinfolks. One year they
even adapted Shakespeare's play <I>Julius Caesar,<I>
complete with a soothsayer who proclaimed, "Sooth! Sooth!"
And the famed assassination scene was done with disappearing
red ink.
Consider this entry from a family history about a reunion 18
years ago: "Jean Ann Crawford arranged the program. John
and Ed Bailey did a clever 'dog through hoop' vaudeville act.
Tom White made some impressive arm movements. Esther Crawford
imitated the Common Lune (sic). All received prizes."
Asked about the dog-through-hoop trick, Ed Bailey, now 29,
couldn't remember whether he played dog or master: "I just
know we were doing stupid human tricks!"
Frankly, all of this must have seemed strange to outsiders
or those who had unwittingly married into the clan, routinely
referred to as "outlaws."
"There's a rule in the family," quipped 42-year-old
Laura Cramer of Montgomery, toward the end of the 43rd consecutive
Williams family gathering at Abilene's Embassy Suites. "You
don't bring anyone you're even remotely thinking of marrying to
this reunion!"
Bill Whitaker, who triggered a family feud when he asked how
many daughters Morgan and Pearlee Williams had and a lively debate
broke out, can be reached at 676-6732.
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Copyright ©1996 or
1997, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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