At 91, former Marine Cpl. Ray Williams is still one of “the few and the proud.”
He’s not only among the dwindling number of living World War II veterans, but he’s also a member of another distinguished and rare group of World War II-era heroes — the Montford Point Marines.
The all-black Montford Point Marines are known by that name because they were trained at Montford Point, N.C., separate from white Marines at a time when the Marine Corps was still segregated.
In 2012, the Montford Point Marines – 19,000 served in that segregated outfit from 1942 until it was disbanded in 1949 — were awarded the collective Congressional Gold Medal, an honor approved by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2011.
A collective Congressional Gold Medal was awarded in 2012 to the 19,000 Montford Point Marines. Each member or widow received a bronze replica of the medal. Shelly Haskins, shaskins@al.com
His memory beginning to fail, Williams can’t recall a lot about his service days, but he does remember that he helped integrate the Marine Corps, a piece of military and civil rights history.
“At that time, they had nothing but white Marines,” he said.
Asked why he enlisted in the Marine Corps even though the country at that time wasn’t kind to black men, he simply said, “I had something to offer.”
He remembers training on a 90-millimeter anti-aircraft gun, which would cause him partial hearing loss, and living in wooden barracks with a pot-bellied stove for heat, while his white counterparts lived in brick barracks with air conditioning.
And he remembers his pride in serving his country, and his role in creating a Marine Corps where all are now treated equally.
Williams enlisted as the war ended, in 1946, and did most of his service at the Naval Ammunition Depot Marine Base in Earle, New Jersey, where he served as a military policeman.
He made the most of his two years of service, returning to his hometown of New Orleans in 1952, turning his GI Bill funding into business and secondary education degrees from Xavier University.
He later taught in the New Orleans school system, then went to work for NASA, overseeing the space command center at Michoud Assembly Facility, according to a 2015 article in the Redstone Rocket. He was also an entrepreneur in the grocery business.
He moved to Huntsville in 1999, and — having been ill when President Obama held a ceremony for the Montford Marines in 2011 — was given his Congressional Gold Medal by the Marine unit in Huntsville in 2012, and honored by Army Materiel Command Gen. Dennis Via for his service in 2015.
This display was presented to Raymond Williams in 2015 when he was honored by Gen. Dennis Via of the Army Materiel Command on Redstone Arsenal.
Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was his seven children. “All seven completed college,” he said proudly. They turned out to be lawyers, teachers, engineers and military veterans. One son retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and a grandson retired as a sergeant.
His son Kevin Williams, now 65, said having such a role model — “he never even got a traffic ticket” — meant everything to him and his siblings, and even the 12 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren who continue to excel in academics, sports and life.
“He’s a great man,” Kevin Williams said.
Haskins writes about points of pride statewide. Email your suggestions to shaskins@al.com, or tweet them to @Shelly_Haskins using #AlabamaProud.