Researching Ray Williams

Williams was voted Young Welsh Sports Personality of the Year in 1977 after being placed in the junior weightlifting championships. He joined the army and served with the Royal Welch Fusiliers until 2003.

Returning to the sport, Williams won the Welsh weightlifting championships in 1983 and the Celtic Nations title the following year.

Williams won the gold medal in the featherweight class at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, beating David Lowenstein of Australia and Jeffrey Brice, a fellow Welshman.

In 2003, Williams was appointed as the first National Weightlifting Coach for Wales.

A talented player in his younger years, Williams played for London Welsh, Northampton, Moseley, and East Midlands. He was selected to trial for the Welsh national team as a flyhalf. Williams trained as a PE teacher at Loughborough College and coached the West Midland's region in England. He also staged courses to help teachers become rugby coaches and was the driving force behind the creation of England rugby's coaching manual in the early 1950s. Williams was appointed to the WRU in 1967, and began a transformation of Welsh rugby through conferences and courses which gave Wales more than 300 qualified coaches by the mid-1970s.

He became an administrator with the WRU in the 1980s and 90s. Williams was Tournament Director of the Rugby World Cup in Wales in 1991. He received an OBE for services to rugby in 1995. Williams was awarded the International Rugby Board’s Vernon Pugh award for distinguished service in 2014, just weeks before his death after a battle with cancer.

Williams was born, the seventh of seven children, on his father's Pickens County farm and became totally blind as the result of two childhood accidents.

Williams attended the South Carolina State School for the Deaf and Blind at Cedar Springs in Spartanburg County, graduated with honors, and was awarded a scholarship to attend the University of South Carolina. He became so proficient in navigating the USC campus that he guided other students at night. In 1923, Williams graduated magna cum laude and was valedictorian of his class. Before graduation Williams had already enrolled in the law school and so was able to graduate with both Bachelor of Law and Master of Arts degrees the following year. Williams had "a tremendous ability to concentrate. He once remarked that he knew that he would only get one shot at the material."

In Greenville, Williams prospered in his legal practice and entered a partnership with classmate James A. Henry that continued until 1983. In 1929 Williams married Genevieve Castleman Groom, and they had three children. The family moved to the fashionable Earle Street district and the family became members of Earle Street Baptist Church. Williams also bought a farm on Roper Mountain Road outside Greenville.

In 1936 Williams ran successfully for the South Carolina General Assembly and was reelected in 1938. In 1940 he was elected to the State Senate where he served until 1953. There he wrote a bill that created the State Agricultural Marketing Commission, inaugurating state support for farmers' markets; and he supported rural electrification, improvement of county roads, modernizing county record-keeping systems, and school equalization. In a contemporary newspaper article, James H. McKinney, Jr. wrote, "He sat quietly most of the time, rarely rising to speak, and when he did speak, he spoke quietly. But when he spoke the whole Senate grew quiet to listen to his soft voice."