1930s
Robert George Williams ’39
Robert George Williams ’39, a physician who practiced radiology in Santa Barbara, Calif., for 35 years, grew up in Scranton, Pa., where he was born on Aug. 27, 1917. A son of Ivor H. and Anna Marie Houck Williams, he entered Hamilton in 1935, following preparation in Scranton public schools. A coal miner’s son, his college education was made possible with scholarship support, for which he would remain eternally grateful. Bob Williams joined Lambda Chi Alpha and soon made his mark on the Hill, both in athletics and academics. He ran track and became assistant manager of the track team, and managed the tennis team in his senior year. In addition, he wielded an épée as a member of the fencing team and served as the team’s captain when he was a senior. He also found time to play his trumpet in the College Band. Determined to become a physician, he pursued a premedical course of study. On the Dean’s List for four years, he won the Holbrook Prize in Biology, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received his B.S. degree in 1939 with honors in biology and chemistry.
Bob Williams thereafter enrolled in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he acquired his M.D. degree in 1943. While “a struggling medical student earning money as a professional blood donor,” he met Elizabeth M. Bruner, a nurse. They were married six months later, on June 4, 1942, in her hometown of Metuchen, N.J.
His internship at Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn shortened by the exigencies of World War II, Bob Williams went on active duty in 1943 as a first lieutenant with the U.S. Army Medical Corps. For a time he was stationed at the 142nd General Hospital in Calcutta, India. He was discharged from military service as a captain in 1946, after the war’s end. Having already received some training in radiology at the Army’s School of Roentgenology in Memphis, Tenn., he pursued that branch of medicine with residencies at New York Hospital and Memorial Hospital, both in New York City. At that time, one of his patients was baseball legend Babe Ruth, and Dr. Williams was among the last physicians to treat him before his death in 1948.
In 1949, Bob and Betty Williams settled permanently in Santa Barbara, where Bob began his radiology practice with the Santa Barbara Clinic. In 1970, he entered into private practice with Donald Hebert, a fellow physician, and maintained that practice until his retirement at the end of 1983. The first physician to perform mammography in Santa Barbara, he was also one of the first in the city to administer chemotherapy to a cancer patient. He found his professional life rewarding and was reluctant to retire.
Far from embracing idleness in retirement, Bob Williams volunteered for many years with Direct Relief International, organizing shipments of donated medical and pharmaceutical supplies destined for the needy throughout the world. A past president of the Tuberculosis and Health Association, and active in various radiological societies, he also did volunteer work for the Cancer Society. For relaxation, he either took to the golf links or played selections from his large record collection of Big Band music.
Robert G. Williams, an ardently devoted alumnus, died at his home in Santa Barbara on Aug. 30, 2013. He had celebrated his 96th birthday only three days earlier. Predeceased by his wife of 60 years in 2002, he is survived by two daughters, Lynn Eichert and Barbara Hall; a son, Glenn R. Williams; and four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His family, as well as his patients, will long remember Dr. Williams “as someone who always treated everyone with kindness and respect.”
