I would hope that in every person’s life he or she has someone who they know helped them at a crucial time and to whom they are forever grateful.
I entered Governor Dummer as a junior in 1963 and had a corridor master who was cruel and eventually fired. It was a rough way to start at GDA but fortunately I made the basketball team and the coach was someone I quickly came to revere.
That fall President Kennedy was assassinated and the nation was shaken to its core. As we gathered in front of televisions to watch the news coverage that November afternoon, Dave Williams pulled those of us on the basketball team away and had us practice.
I think many of us did so while fighting back tears and feeling that we didn’t want to be in the gym, that somehow it was wrong to be carrying on as if it was just normal day. It didn’t take years for me to realize that it had been exactly the right thing to do.
Dave Williams always seemed to do the right thing and another incident that season I particularly cherish. A classmate’s father was the team dentist for the Boston Celtics.
I don’t know how much dental care professional basketball players required but the connection had a real benefit for those of us on the basketball team. Through Jeff Kane’s father we occasionally got free tickets to Sunday afternoon games at the Boston Garden.
But an even bigger thrill was when Celtics players actually came to our games and it was with “Hondo” Havlicek in the stands one afternoon that I missed an opportunity to change the outcome of the game. I missed a shot at the buzzer and we lost by a point.
I was sitting glumly in the locker room when our Celtic go between informed Mr. Williams that John Havlicek would be happy to come to one of our practices and give us some pointers.
We all perked up and I’ve never forgotten Dave Williams’ heated reply– “You tell John Havlicek that I don’t need another coach of this team!”
Again, that response seemed unreasonable to me at the time. Who wouldn’t want one of the best players in NBA history giving you some personal attention?
But it didn’t take long for my disappointment to turn into even greater respect for my coach and teacher. Havlicek was a great player but to me Dave Williams was a great man!
The following season when I had the honor to be co-captain with my classmate John MacKenzie our team won the Private School League championship.
We had talent and I won’t claim that Mr. Williams was the greatest basketball coach when it came to teaching or strategizing the game, but he molded us into that winning team by treating every player equally.
No one was ever allowed to be a prima donna nor to display even an inkling of bad sportsmanship.It was was an experience and a lesson I have valued my whole life.
And there’s one more story that I have told many times to make a point about how we should put things in perspective when it may seem our whole life is going to be determined by one moment.
Dave Williams was also my corridor master my senior year and my history teacher. We were preparing to take a test– a big test that would determine much of the last grade the colleges we were applying to would see.
Some of us felt that weight heavily and Mr. Williams realizing that said this to our class. “I know that you think this test is important but in the scheme of things, many years from now, it will not be important in your lives at all.”
The words have stuck in my head ever since and the real tests in life have been both ones I could prepare for and others for which I couldn’t. Some I know I’ve passed and others I feel I’ve failed. But I do know this. Mr. Williams was right about THAT history test 50 years ago.
Dave Williams had the admiration of every student he taught or coached and he had it because he cared about every student he ever met.
pawnedaccordion 