Honoring
Arlene Elzadia Williams

Arlene Elzadia Williams (neé Harris) was born on September 28, 1931 and passed away November 19, 2025 at the age of 94. Arlene was born to Elzadia Orola and Robert Jesse Harris in Cleveland, Ohio, the first of two daughters. Her sister Janet followed three years later.

She attended A.J. Richoff Elementary School, where she began studying French in the second grade in a program for gifted students (then called “Major Work”). That experience led to a lifelong fascination with French language, literature, art, and culture.

Arlene attended Alexander Hamilton Junior High and graduated from Glenview High School in 1949.

After a short first marriage, she met and married Ronald Williams, a fellow student at Cleveland College of Western Reserve University. She and Ronald, the love of her life, had two children together, Robert and Rhonda. Arlene and Ronald were married in New Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1952, and in 1954 Arlene was baptized in New Bethlehem.

Arlene and her family spent most of their lives in the academic community—connected to Oberlin College, Ohio University, Western Washington State College, and Federal City College. Lastly, they spent nine years at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, where Ronald was President of the university.

Arlene was proudest of two things: first, her contribution to the lives of her amazing, loving, and kind children (both PhD professors) and the privilege of being their mother; and second, spearheading, with Virginia Kantner and other concerned citizens, the creation of Athens Citizens for Fair Housing (1964), a group of community activists whose efforts led to the enactment of Athens, Ohio’s Fair Housing Ordinance (Ordinance #0869) in the Spring of 1969, and to the establishment of Athens’ Human Relations Commission.

Arlene earned a degree in Art History and French from Roosevelt University in Chicago, and she travelled to ten countries during her life. She worked as an Assistant Dean at Columbia College in Chicago, where, in a program called “Year One Diversity,” she guided mostly first-generation college students along a path to college success. After she retired, she became a docent at the Art Institute of Chicago, and subsequently at the museum of Contemporary Art. Working as a docent, Arlene fulfilled a lifelong, overdue dream that had been encouraged by her mother.

Arlene loved art, books, cats, jazz, and music in abundance, with which she indulged herself whenever possible. She was blessed by the ongoing support of her family and friends, during and after the deaths of Ronald, her husband of thirty-three years; Rhonda, her remarkable daughter, who died at only forty-three; Janet, her dear sister; and Kendall, her cousin, all of whom preceded her in death. Arlene was also predeceased by her mother-in-law, Mary “Tuggie” Moore; her parents, Robert (“Papa”) and Elzadia (“Honey”) Harris and several other family elders. Only a handful of friends and relatives of her generation survive.

In the last twenty-five or so years of her life, Arlene came to understand her faith in and relationship to God. She studied, meditated, and prayed to enhance that understanding. Instrumental in that journey were her niece and nephew, Debra and Fred Middleton, whose gentle love kept her going. Special thanks to them.

Arlene had many names. She was called Grandmama, Mama, Granny Ar, or Auntie Ar, by her nieces, nephews and friends’ children. She leaves the dearest ones: her beloved son, Bob, her daughter-in-law, Sara, who gives the best hugs, her grandchildren – Bob and Sara’s daughter, Talia, and their son, Julian – and her sister-in-law, Marlene. Arlene felt that she had lived a good life. Just three or so years before she passed, she remarked that she had been to a lot of amazing places, the most amazing of which was the Sistine Chapel, where, she said, she was “especially moved by the image of God touching man.”