Katrina's Lives Lost: Lawrence Ray Williams, 1949-2005 Submitted By: N.O.V.A January 2006 Source: Times Picayune 01-24-2006 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** When Gail Williams walked out of her house to visit friends, she was somewhat miffed that someone had parked a big Lincoln on her mother's walkway. "Whose car is that?" she asked a neighbor. The question, asked 25 years ago, led to an introduction to Lawrence Ray Williams, the man she would marry. "When he walked out to move his car, our eyes met . . . and, oh my God, I forgot all about his car blocking my mother's driveway," Williams said. He became the father to Gail Williams' two children, Whanne and Kristy, and they had two more -- Gloston and Lawrence III. They built a home in Violet, just up the street from where Williams had parked. "He was a needle-in-a-haystack kind of husband, a rare find," she said. "The needs of his family always came before his." That generous spirit was one of the reasons he built the screen- house for his wife. "I'm an outdoors person, so he built me a place where we could cook, play music and sit outside with the whole family," Williams said. Lawrence Williams worked at Mobile Oil Refinery as a scaffold- builder until he suffered a back injury in a car accident four years ago. He loved fishing, watching football, listening to jazz - - and romance. "If I had one dollar for every time he told me he loved me," Gail Williams said, "FEMA wouldn't have to give me anything." She and her husband ate by candlelight several nights a week. "I loved his smile. He had perfect white teeth. And his laugh," she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, "kinda turned me on." Lawrence Williams, 56, was smiling that August day he waved goodbye to his family. He knew they had to evacuate for their own peace of mind, but Williams felt he would be safe right there at home. When he refused to leave with them, Gail Williams put out his flashlight, extra batteries, rain gear, canned goods and water before she left. "I'll be safe. If anything happens, I'll climb that pole outside," he told his wife. And that's exactly what he tried to do when the waters started to rise, as an 80-year-old uncle watched him from a second-story window down the road. Williams struggled to climb as he battled the water, but then grabbed onto a door floating by. According to the uncle's account, the door flipped over, and Williams went under. When the waters finally receded weeks later, Gail Williams went back to what was left of her home where she found her husband's shirt, raincoat and boots stuck in the mud near the pole. His billfold was across the street. "He couldn't swim, so I think he was trying to lighten his load," Williams said. Rescue workers found her husband's body tangled in a fallen tree. His remains were positively identified on Jan. 6; the family gathered for his funeral in his hometown of Baton Rouge eight days later. This time Williams did for her husband what he had done so many times for her: She arranged flowers for him, the flowers that surrounded his casket.