On Sunday more than 1,200 members of New Haven’s public schools “family” gathered to mourn the sudden death on a basketball court of one of their own, 24-year-old Lance Christopher Williams.
The son of Clemente Leadership Academy Principal Leroy Williams and Patricia Williams died suddenly on July 6th while playing basketball at Hillhouse High, where, he, like his father, had had an illustrious sports career.
Neither the still unknown or undisclosed cause of death — by all accounts Williams was in good shape and had no known medical condition —nor the terrible loss was the theme of the moving service that filled up the Beulah Heights Pentecostal Church to overflowing.
As congregants swayed to inspirational hymns (“We’ll understand this better by and by”) and readings of Christian comfort (“Oh death, where is thy sting!”), white-bloused ushers circulated among worshipers distributing tissues from floral boxes. Lance Williams was celebrated as even more than a stellar young basketball and football player who had worked hard and had achieved his goal of making the team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tom Fleming, Williams’ football coach said, “This service feels like we’re in the locker room at Hillhouse getting ready to play.” He reminded the audience that Williams took his faith seriously. He decided to be baptized at age 17, at Christian Tabernacle Baptist in Hamden, where his father is a deacon. He always brought his church clothes to practice, if practice was on Sunday (mea culpa, said Fleming), so he could go directly to services or to Sunday school.
Friends close and casual all characterized the young Williams as a Christian athlete, one who put his faith first.
Touching on the terrible mystery of a worthwhile life cut short, one of the eulogizers, Clydette Messiah, brought the worshippers to their feet in an applause of praise. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take,” he declared, “but by the moments that take your breath away.”
Another poignant moment occurred when all the young men with whom Lance had played ball were asked to stand up and be praised and acknowledged, him through them.
The throng celebrating young Williams’ life reflected the deep New Haven roots of the family. Still basketball-tall Bruce Campbell, for example, came by to pay his respects and also to mingle his sports memories. He played on the same Wilbur Cross basketball team as Leroy Williams in 1972.
His son was playing with Williams when the sudden death occurred. “He just went up and came down, and it was almost as if he were dead when he hit the floor,” Campbell reported. He paused, and then said, “It is a death in the family. Who can understand it!”
One who tried was also a friend of the Williams family, also from the old days. Bob Laemel came up from Austin, Texas, to pay his respects. Laemel retired in 2004 after 30 years with the public schools, the last 17 years of which he was director of athletics (and the last two heading up the first Special Olympics in town). He had hired Lance’s father to coach basketball while he was teaching at the Troup School.
“We stayed close to the family,” he said, as the service inside wound down and the casket of the young athlete was being prepared to be brought out. (The family requested no photographs of the service or the casket.) “It’s a terrible and unique thing that occurred. All New Haven athletes, you know, get carefully checked out medically before they play. At UNC, over his career there, Lance would have had to have 25 or 30 exams, and they’re careful. There must have been something just undetected. What a shock!”
Lance Williams had recently been working as a teacher’s assistant in the NHPS. “He was a well known and well liked young man, not only because of his father, but very much in his own right,” said Board of Education Chairman Brian Perkins. “He will be missed.”
Perkins said there might be a Board of Education tribute to Williams, but plans were not yet definite. For a full obituary previously printed in the Independent and for information where memorial contributions might be sent, click here.