Thu, Jan 08 2009
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Published June 27, 2008 07:38 pm - By Joe Zentis Life Stories BOB WILLIAMS was born in Butler in 1916. When his family moved to the east end of Greenville in 1924, many of the streets were just being paved for the first time. “The graders came in,” Bob said, “graded the road, put utilities in, then a cement base, then sand. Then they had a bricklayer come in. He was quick. It took five men to keep him supplied with bricks.” LIFE STORIES: Bob Williams’ life took him from land to sea to air By Joe Zentis The Herald GREENVILLE — EDITOR’S NOTE: This is another installment in our twice-monthly series “Life Stories,” profiles of everyday people who lend us insight into life and times in Mercer County.
BOB WILLIAMS was born in Butler in 1916. When his family moved to the east end of Greenville in 1924, many of the streets were just being paved for the first time. “The graders came in,” Bob said, “graded the road, put utilities in, then a cement base, then sand. Then they had a bricklayer come in. He was quick. It took five men to keep him supplied with bricks.” With the student population growing because of the First World War “baby boom,” schools were becoming overcrowded. Washington School was the high school until Penn High School was built in 1917. Columbia School housed grades one through eight. “But when I went there,” Bob said, “it held first through fifth. I went to sixth grade in the old auditorium of the Washington Street school building. In the wintertime we wore jackets, and the ink froze in the inkwells. Oras Williams, Bob’s father, was a watchmaker with his own shop. When the Depression hit, his brother bought him out. He took his family to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for the winter. “I developed asthma down there,” Bob said. “They said we needed to get into higher elevation. So we left there and came back.” Bob graduated from Penn High School in 1933. After a couple of years at Thiel, he joined the Bessemer Railroad, and worked at the extreme ends of it, both up at Conneaut Harbor and down at Mifflin Junction. Bob’s asthma continued to bother him. “At Mifflin Junction, they said my breathing was almost as loud as a locomotive.” However, his asthma gradually cleared up. By 1942 he was fit enough to be drafted. After about six months of training, Bob found himself headed for Hawaii on a World War I-vintage troop ship. “The evaporator that makes fresh water broke down, and we didn’t have fresh water for the week it took for us to get to Hawaii. We existed mostly on what liquids the food had, and fruit juices.” That turned out to be just about the worst part of his whole military career. He was assigned to the 298th Infantry, the Hawaiian National Guard. “Our position looked like it had been a movie set – palm trees, a wall, a pond, a beautiful beach.” 
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