Jim Williams’ home was a treasure trove for the children in his east Denver neighborhood.
In the garage was a wingless airplane that he eventually repaired and flew, a quarter-midget racing car his daughter drove and a figure-eight track for bicyclists.
Williams made stilts for his daughter, Cindy Williams, and her friends.
“We had a blast,” she said.
Jim Williams, 83, died Oct. 23 at a Denver care facility. He had been diagnosed three months ago with cancer.
Williams, who taught for 28 years at elementary, middle and high schools in Denver, built his house in east Denver and another near Bailey and conducted sightseeing tours around town and throughout the state.
His daughter said Williams would take her and other kids to race horses on a track at a site now used by Buckingham Square Shopping Center.
The owner of a small bus, Williams took friends and families on excursions and during the summer worked for sightseeing companies. He loved regaling passengers with Colorado history.
Williams could take “some pretty funny routes” through the mountains, including one that was a “one- and-one-half-lane road over a pass with no guardrails,” said Brad Halloran of Parker, Williams’ nephew.
The mountain route put Williams’ wife, Kathryn, “on the floor, she was so scared,” said Halloran, a United Airlines pilot.
Williams was also “a fix-it guy” and made furniture, cabinets, tables and cases for mantel clocks, Halloran said.
“He was a kind, sweet soul,” Halloran said.
James M. Williams was born March 18, 1924, in Adena, Ohio. His family was poor and Williams started working in the local coal mine.
Academically he was ranked almost at the bottom of his high school class. He didn’t study, figuring his life would be in the mines, his daughter said.
At 19 he joined the Army Air Forces, and “when they gave him the IQ test, they found out he was sharp,” Cindy Williams said.
After the war he was chosen as one of the men to guard the Nazi leaders who were on trial at Nuremberg, Germany. Williams was sergeant at arms and supervised the other guards. Their duties included searching the prisoners for written messages and cyanide pills, Cindy Williams said.
Returning to coal mining after the war, Williams met Kathryn Henderson, who worked in the mine office. They married in 1947 and adopted their daughter in 1956. Kathryn Henderson died in 1994.
The family moved to Colorado and Williams attended the University of Denver under the GI Bill, earning a bachelor’s degree in education.
He also received a master’s in psychology from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sisters, Dena Heacock of Massillon, Ohio, and Gloria Vanwy of Sebring, Fla.; and two brothers, Kenneth Williams of Cambridge, Ohio, and Okey Williams of Albuquerque.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
