WILLIAMS, from page 3 Apartment owner dies
By TRAVIS PURSER Special to the Daily Press
After the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, when Norma Williams moved from the barren farmland of Nebraska to halcyon Santa Monica, things in her life started growing again.
It was 1946. Soon the post-war economy would be booming. And Williams would discover that the principles of farming she knew so well — hard work and patience — applied also to an important business here: the development and management of apartment buildings.
Santa Monica lost an industrious resident last month when Williams died at her home in Santa Monica. She was 93.
Starting from almost nothing, Williams and her family eventually operated more than a dozen buildings, a fact that sometimes pitted her conservative views against the city’s more liberal officials on the front lines of the long-fought rent-control wars. She also was an advocate who helped raise money to build housing for senior citizens. And, she was an inspiration to the congregation of the Santa Monica First United Methodist Church of which she was a member.
“My father knew how to make good money, but my mother knew what to do with it,” said her son, Gale Williams, reminiscing recently at his house near Montana Avenue. She had vision, he said, while his father, a carpenter by trade, provided the nuts-and-bolts know-how of building apartments.
The family bought its first property in 1948 at 1447 Stanford Street, a lot with five, one-bedroom bungalows. By saving, investing, and shunning debt, every few years, they were able to buy more land and build a few more units, Gale Williams said. They built their last complex 33 years ago at 855 10th Street, where Williams lived for 30 years.
Along the way, she fought for the rights of property owners, twice filing lawsuits against the city, according to courthouse records, but both cases were dropped before trial.
At the age of 91, she celebrated the opening of the Upward Bound House, an apartment complex of 68 affordable units for seniors at 1011 11th Street. Williams helped raise money for the project, which was organized by her church.
One of her favorite adages was “busy people are happy people,” a concept she instilled in her sons by encouraging their participation in choir, scouting, church and paper routes.
Williams was born on Oct. 26, 1908 near Danbury, Neb. She was preceded in death by her first husband, George Williams, who died in 1972, Kenneth Whitney, who she married in 1984 and her siblings, Leota Pencall, Beth Evans and Perry Johnson.
She is survived by her sons Gale and Norman Williams and by her sister Bernice McGuire.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 17, 2002. Read the original PDF.