After nearly 40 years in business, Dr. Roy Jerome Williams, Jr., is retiring from his business, Williams Medical Practice at 3409 North Union Blvd.
He’s leaving the medical field at a time when a global pandemic has highlighted health disparities for people of color. He hopes the epidemic will encourage health care professionals to address race-based shortcomings in healthcare – but knows he’s done his dead level best to provide quality services to people in neighborhoods who share his hue and life experiences.
Williams is a proud family member of black doctors who have provided services to citizens of St. Louis for three generations. His grandfather, William R. Williams, MD, had a private practice at 16th and Franklin Street near downtown St. Louis. His father, Jerome Williams, Sr, initially had a practice at St. Louis Avenue and Marcus in the Greater Ville area before moving the office to the Union Blvd. site in 1965.
According to family lore, Williams’ grandfather, who received his medical license in S. Carolina, was supposed to be the first black medical director at Homer G. Phillips, which opened in 1937. Homer G. was the only hospital for African Americans in Missouri and the first teaching hospital west of the Mississippi River that served doctors of color. Someone “more politically-connected” got the administrative role and Williams’ grandfather, he said, uprooted his family and moved to South Carolina in protest.
“To see patients grow up, to know their grandparents, parents and their children, to take care of them all… well, that’s something I don’t take for granted.”- Dr. Roy Jerome Williams, Jr.
Turns out, Williams’ father, came back to St. Louis after attending Morehouse College in Atlanta. Before graduating, he joined the military and attended Meharry Medical College, an HBCU in Nashville TN., where he studied medicine. From there, Williams Sr. trained at Homer G. Phillips and eventually served as the director of outpatient care before starting his own practice.
Roy Jerome Williams, Jr. was born at Homer G. Phillips in 1951. It was a time when the still segregated city had its largest population to date of almost one million people. As with many other industrialized cities, black and white St. Louisans lived in separate parts of town and abided by separate and unequal rules for African Americans.
Williams never forgot his father’s sage advice to “always be there and always give back to the community.” He was inspired by his father’s decision to turn down advancement at Homer G. Phillips and start his own practice dedicated to serving people of color. Williams, the oldest boy of his parent’s five children, vividly remembers riding in his father’s car as he made house calls. The first and only time he tasted squirrel meat was when one of his patients bartered health services for the urban “delicacy.”
“His patients ran up bills, and my father was not as diligent on collecting as he should have been,” Williams fondly recalled.
There were strict rules in the Williams household that revolved around his father’s practice. For example, Williams recollected, family dinners were always on hold until his father came home in the evening before returning to work in the wee hours of the night:
“We kids were probably running around hungry at six or seven o’clock, but we couldn’t eat until dad came home so we could eat together as a family.”
Williams’ formative years occurred during the tumultuous civil rights era. His father believed that medicine was an honorable profession but told his son he’d never get rich as a black physician. Instead, he urged Williams to seek another profession based on his belief that unknown opportunities were about to open for black people.
Williams, a stellar student, was the first African American to enroll in John Burroughs School, a private, college-preparatory school in Ladue in 1965. From there, he enrolled at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts seeking an undergrad in economics. He was one the 110 black students out of the 1,100 enrolled at the school in 1969.
Williams said memories of house calls and his father’s words about “giving back to the community,” stayed with him. So much so that halfway through his sophomore year at Harvard, he switched to pre-med and enrolled at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. He returned to St. Louis to start his training in Internal medicine at Barnes Hospital and the Washington University School of Medicine.
Williams became the second person of color selected as the Chief Resident in Internal Medicine, where he organized training programs for residents. With a golden administrative trajectory basically guaranteed, Williams surprised his superiors with the decision to join his father’s practice in 1982. After only three weeks, his father turned the practice over to his son.
Today, about a month from retirement, Williams has no regrets. He cherishes the experiences passed down from his grandfather and father of caring for generations in their own community. In a society of disproportionate health disparities for minorities; where access to quality health care is a luxury for some and not others, Williams said he takes pride in the first-class service he’s provided over the years:
“To see patients grow up, to know their grandparents, parents and their children, to take care of them all… well, that’s something I don’t take for granted.”
Williams and his wife, Marva, have 4 children, 3 grandchildren and another on the way. His youngest daughter is a pediatric anesthesiologist who’s “enamored with the West & East coasts,” Williams said, indicating that there will be no 4th generation of Williams running the practice.
He’s hired two physicians to take his place and is spending the rest of this month introducing them to patients and helping them make a smooth transition. Even in this day of health care options, it’s important that people can walk or ride the bus to receive services his practice offers such as mobile mammograms or one-on-one dietary and nutritional information. He wants his practice to continue following his father’s wise advice:
“Always be there and always give back to the community.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess Fellow.
