Wayne Williams

1947 - 2008

Wayne Williams, M.D., passed away Friday, July 18, 2008, at home in Fort Worth after fighting a 10-year battle with prostate cancer.
Service: 2:30 p.m. Monday at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. Private inurnment.
Memorials: In lieu of flowers, please send donations in memory of Wayne Williams, M.D., to the American Cancer Society, Prostate Cancer Research.
Born Feb. 22, 1947, in Greeley, Colo., to Martin and Opal Williams, he was raised on a farm at the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains where he learned the values of hard work, integrity, and the importance of every individual's contribution.
Dr. Williams attended a three-room country school east of Greeley for his elementary years. He was in student government and a scholar athlete in high school and lettered in football at Colorado State University. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals but instead chose a degree in medicine which he received in 1975 from University of Colorado.
After a family practice residency where he was chief resident at Baylor University in Houston, Wayne moved to Eldorado to raise his family in a rural environment where he could teach them the rewards of hard work, skills like welding and cattle management, flying, bulldozing, easy laughter and a can-do spirit on their ranch. He built miles of fence, barns, and an airplane with Mat and Alexis, and enjoyed looking at all the projects and remembering their times.
Over the next 20 years he opened, managed and sold urgent and family care, and worker's compensation clinics in San Antonio and San Angelo. His first clinic, The San Pedro Minor Emergency Clinic, was part of the landmark case by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing hospitals to have clinic networks. He served as Home Health Medical Director, Director of Tom Green County Indigent Health Care, Medical Director for the Certified Detox Program, and actively practiced medicine in emergency rooms and clinic settings.
Dr. Williams always said the best years of his professional life were here in Fort Worth. As chairman of the Department of Community Medicine, he worked with what he strongly felt were the best physicians he had ever known. Through their competence, patient care advocacy, and ability to work as a team, the physician group nurtured and allowed him to enjoy life on a whole new level. The family firmly believes he outlived the original prognosis by years because his peers and support
staff were so wonderfully committed to something bigger than themselves-superior care for the medical needs of the people of Tarrant County. He was also enriched by and enjoyed life with new and lifelong friends, special golfing and fishing buddies. Wayne loved his life and was very grateful for all of it!
Wayne was preceded in death by his parents, Martin and Opal Williams.
Survivors: His wife of 39 years, Lynn; his children, Mathew of Boston, Mass., and Alexis of Chicago, Ill.; his sisters, Elva Alma of Sydney, Australia, Ann Black of Ellensburg, Wash., and Carol Bailey of Fort Worth. Wayne leaves behind a vast number of relatives and friends.