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| Like you just lost your TV dad. |
I just watched him do a local interview just a week ago. Man, this was hard.
I am an 80s baby. I grew up watching sitcoms. One in particular was 227.
It starred Marla Gibbs, Regina King, Jackée Harry, Alaina Reed Hall, Helen Martin and Hal Williams. The show focused on Mary Jenkins, a homemaker who was the apartment gossip in Washington, DC. Her husband Lester Jenkins was a successful Black construction owner and developer. They raised their rebellious but sweet daughter Brenda. Their neighbors were the landlord Rose, the flirty Sandra and the sarcastic but wise Pearl.
It was NBC for five seasons. It had backdoor pilots to Sandra's new life and Brenda and Calvin going to college.
Hal Williams, 91 has passed away. He was like that strong Black TV dad.
I looked up to him similar to my dad. Working hard to take care of his wife and kids.
Williams died July 15 in California after an illustrious multi-decade screen career. But before the world came to know him as Officer "Smitty" Smith on the sitcom show "Sanford and Son," he called Columbus home.
A native of the area, Williams was born on Dec. 15, 1934, in Columbus. He started his acting career by performing in Ohio theater shows until he packed up his bags in 1968 and set his sights on making it big in Hollywood. Beyond his role in "Sandford and Son," Williams was also featured in "The Waltons" and "227," among many others.
“I didn’t tell nobody but my parents, who thought I’d lost my mind,” Williams said in an interview with Columbus Monthly for a past feature. “I said, ‘My career has come to a stop in social work. My marriage is failing. I’m extremely unhappy. What’s the one thing I want to try to do?’ … I was scared to death, but I said, ‘If I don’t do this now, I know I will never get the guts to do it.’”
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| The definition of a Black family on television. |
While the change of heart was unexpected for some of the people in his life, Williams told Columbus Monthly in 2022 that he always had the itch to become an actor. When he moved, he was a then-recently divorced father of three. He left his children in Ohio with his parents until he bought a home, and they relocated to join him in California.
While growing up in central Ohio, Williams bounced between living with his great-grandmother in Fort Hayes and spending time at his parents' home, which was located where the Easton Town Center is now situated at the intersection of Steltzer and Morse roads.
In the interview with Columbus Monthly, Williams said he used to hunt rabbits around his house because there were so many open fields. He attended Franklin Junior High and East High School in the 1950s, where he participated in the track team and performed in school musicals. While there, he also delivered newspapers for The Columbus Dispatch.
Before moving to California, Williams worked with children in the central Ohio juvenile detention system. He was also employed for a time at Franklin Village, an 80-acre property in Grove City that was a residence for children from troubled homes operated by Franklin County Children's Services.
He later went on to develop script proposals for shows, including one titled "Residential Center," inspired by his time at Franklin Village. The operation, which was located on Gantz Road, closed in 1996, according to the Franklin County Children Services' website.
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| NBC made Black sitcoms a success with 227. |
After taking the leap and heading to Hollywood, Williams spent multiple years attending auditions and working on films while working a separate everyday job. When the schedules conflicted, he would skip work to make it to set on time and convince his boss that he was visiting family in Ohio.
“I would write a letter asking for an excuse to be gone, then take it upstairs and drop it in the Ohio mailbag, and then they’d see there was a postmark from Columbus. I got away with it for almost three years,” then-83-year-old Williams said to Columbus Monthly.
“One morning, they said, ‘The postmaster wants you to stop by his office.’ So I walked in, and he said, ‘Halroy, you’re not fooling anybody. You’ve been taking your sick leave and all your vacation and saying you’re in Columbus on family business. But I saw you on Sanford and Son in a cop uniform last Friday night. You’re either going to throw Uncle Sam’s mail, or you’re going to go be an actor.’ So I quit.”
Williams died in his home in Rancho Mirage, California from natural causes after a prolonged illness.
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