Ben Howard Williams

COLUMBIA - Funeral services for Dr. Ben Howard Williams, colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.) will be held Wednesday, December 24, 2008, at 2 p.m. in Greenlawn Mausoleum Chapel with full military honors and entombment to follow. On-line condolences may be sent to www.mem.com.

The family has entrusted Greenlawn Funeral Home with the arrangements.

Dr. Williams died December 23, 2008. He was born in Hampton, Tennessee, December 2, 1922. He was the son of the late Benjamin Harrison Williams and Maude Van Huss Williams. He was a member of Shandon United Methodist Church in Columbia, SC. During WWII he served in the Pacific on Saipan with the U.S. Army Air Corps Intelligence tracking B-29 attacks and retired from the U.S. Army Dental reserves with the rank of colonel in 1982.

Dr. Williams attended Milligan College and was a graduate of the University of Tennessee Dental School, Memphis, Tennessee, and he was a Member of Delta Sigma Delta Fraternity. Dr. Williams taught Dentistry at UNC, Chapel Hill and he also had a private dental practice in Elizabeth, Tennessee. He completed a 2-year residency in prosthetics in 1962-64 at the VA Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and he retired from the Dorn VA Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1983.

Dr. Williams was predeceased by his wife, Mary Proctor Gilpatrick; his sisters, Mary Christine W. Justis, Elizabeth Marian W. Love and Georgia Beatrice W. Alexander.

Surviving are his sister, Phyllis Ann W. Lovette of Elizabethton, Tennessee; his children, Ben Howard (Betty Jean) Williams, Jr. of Bartow, Georgia, and Ellen Williams (Bill) Hanson of Americus, Georgia; grandchildren, Morgan Quinn Hanson, April Heather Williams, and Wendy Newsom; a great-grandchild, Triston Newsom; several nieces and nephews whom will all miss him dearly.