Jon D. Williams wanted to be remembered as a dancer, not for teaching hundreds of thousands of kids and adults to dance in Jon D. Williams Cotillions.
“Dance was his life,” said his son, Jon D. Williams III, president of the organization. “My parents were wonderful dancers.”
Jon Williams was 93 when he died June 12 in Denver.
He and his wife, the late Vivian Williams, taught dance for decades, first in New York at the Park Avenue Studio owned by Fred Astaire.
“He was overwhelmingly optimistic and overwhelmingly energetic,” said Joanna Fischer of Colorado Springs, who has written a biography of Williams, “Best Foot Forward.”
“He was extremely personable, and he loved and respected children,” said his daughter, Gail Wofford, who lives in Upperville, Va. “He could talk to a room full of sixth-graders and they were totally quiet. He was magical with kids.”
She said her father and mother “didn’t just teach elite dancing classes. They taught courtesy, civility, common sense, the Golden Rule.”
The experience was to be “pleasurable,” said Wofford. “There was never denigration of the students, and no one was ever embarrassed.”
Jon and Vivian Williams were living in Houston, teaching at the Shamrock Hotel, when they visited the Colorado Springs’ Broadmoor Hotel, fell in love with it and the state, and moved here in 1949.
They opened Jon D. Williams Cotillions, first as an organization that taught dance to adults and children.
It expanded in 1975 to teaching social etiquette, said his son, who lives in Denver.
The company now has a branch, Executive Social Presentation, designed to help professionals present a better image in the workplace.
They also began a program years ago that teaches etiquette and social skills to Air Force Academy cadets.
The company now has programs in 50 cities, from Boston to Monterey, Calif.
Dancing came early for Williams, who started as a child. And he believed “anyone who could tap their foot could dance,” said his son.
Williams retired several years ago but kept his foot in the business.
He taught his last class June 2, Fischer said.
Jon D. Williams was born in Orangeville, Pa. He loved to listen to the big bands and watch the adults dance.
At a dance while in the third grade, he was apparently not doing well, Fischer recalled him telling her.
The girl dancing with him said, “Maybe we ought to sit down.”
Williams told Fischer, “I was determined never to be embarrassed again” – and he began taking dance classes.
Along with dancing, he had a sense for making money.
As a boy, he would buy toiletries at a local store, put them in his red wagon and go door to door selling them “at a profit,” he told Fischer. “Who could refuse a cute little boy?” Fischer said.
For a while, he worked in a carpet store, then entered medical school at New York University. He had decided to become a mortician after a friend said there was money in that profession, Fischer said.
But he began taking dance classes at the Arthur Murray dance school with an eye on becoming an instructor.
He dropped the medical aspirations “like a hot potato,” he told Fischer.
According to the history written for the company’s Web page, Williams’ first partner was Gloria Stewart, wife of actor Jimmy Stewart.
Arthur Murray told Williams that Gloria Stewart was too tall for him and pointed him toward a nearby debutante, Vivian Reynolds.
That was it. The two became dance instructors for Murray and also performed nationwide. They were married in 1938.
Their first studio in Colorado was at the Broadmoor, and the company still has cotillions there as well as in several country clubs in the Denver area.
Jon Williams always dressed well – “even to go to the grocery store,” said his son. “He believed when people were dressed correctly, it made a difference in their behavior.”
In addition to his son and daughter, Jon Williams is survived by two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his wife in 2002.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
