In “Pentecost2017,” Stream editors share personal stories of the ways their fellow believers have changed their lives. Here senior editor David Mills praises a good man who loved God and kids like him.

You’ve never heard of Al Williams. He died three Januaries ago, at 91, surrounded by his family. You’ve never heard of him because he never did anything to bring himself to public notice.

But he changed many lives, some a little, some a lot. Mine was one of them. I thank God for Al Williams.

A Man of Obvious Goodness

He lived in the town in which I grew up, a college town in Massachusetts. He worked at the local university making things for the psychology department. Al was apparently a kind of mechanical genius, and so psychologically astute he helped the professors design their experiments.

The job didn’t pay very much and he lived simply with his four children. He and his wife sharing one cramped attic room, his three boys crammed into the other.

Al had cable tv when few people did — it was expensive back then — so that he could watch the Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, and Celtics. I don’t think he missed a game unless he was at church. He was a Baptist deacon, who attended an old, small, and very conservative church in the country outside town.

And he was a man of obvious goodness who loved our Lord with a directness and simplicity I had rarely seen then. I didn’t really see it for what it was, not for years. He loved others too.

Circled Round His Table

He loved the Boston teams but, as I realized only years later, he also watched them because the games gave young people a reason to drop by. He kept a gallon or two of vanilla ice cream in his freezer and every visitor got a big bowlful. (That itself was no small expense for him.)

You would sometimes find circled around Al’s television two or three kids who’d come by. Maybe a would-be hippie, a guy who lived to work on his muscle car, and a cheerleader. Or maybe the dweeby guy from the radio club and an intellectual-type who felt himself of superior insight to everyone else.

Some of those young people, some time in the fourth quarter or the seventh inning when they felt comfortable, would ask a question or make a statement, usually religious. Al would answer them, always gently and always shrewdly and always in some way that made the attraction of knowing Jesus Christ obvious, and not only obvious but compelling.

I found his answers did so, anyway. Others did too. Many of his arguments never convinced me, but his life and words showed me that he knew Jesus and that knowing Jesus made a man happy and good. And if Al knew Jesus so well, the rest of us could get to know him too. Even I could, the smart-alecky and annoying teenage boy I’m sure I was.

His youngest son Joel became a very good friend. Why, I don’t remember, because we didn’t have much in common. After I left for college, my friend was found to have cancer and I watched him and his father as for two years he fought what wound up to be a losing battle.

They both showed a nobility in suffering and a trust in God when the doctors gave them many reasons to fear. That was to me a witness to the reality of the things they said.

The Effects of Godliness

I mention Al here partly so that genuinely good man should have some written memorial. It’s the least I can do. I also mention him because several of us at The Stream are sharing stories of the ways other believers have helped us. Al helped me more than I could see then.

I also want to say something about the effects of godliness. We need good arguments, of course, though a lot of Christians who think about these things now say we ought to give up on apologetics. They say that ideas don’t do any good, that arguments don’t change lives. They’re quite wrong yet also half-right.

Arguments can push you along where you don’t expect or want to go. But still, nothing breaks down your barriers to belief and opens your mind and heart like genuine sanctity.

I went a very different direction than Al would have wanted. But I saw the truth in Catholic heroes like St. Thomas and John Henry Newman and G. K. Chesterton and so many others partly because I saw Jesus Christ in Al Williams.

Slightly edited after pubication.