Donnie Williams, with Ryken H.S. yearbook picture (l), courtesy of St. Mary’s Ryken H.S.
Leonardtown, MD — When Donnie Williams was growing up in Leonardtown there were no after-school programs. So after school he hung out with his father, who was a plumber. Many of his peers weren’t so lucky.
Friends describe Williams as someone who went from zero to 60 in everything he did. Williams attended Ryken High School (then an all boy’s schools) and graduated in 1972. He developed his entrepreneurial drive from his father and from what he learned at Ryken and at Salisbury University, where he majored in Business Administration.
While at Salisbury, Williams created a new business on paper, a home security company, for a class project. He turned that idea into a real business, the first of its kind on the Eastern Shore. From there he branched out into real estate and other businesses, including a gym.
Williams passed away at the age of 59 on May 17, 2012, a short time after his father and mother. Williams zero to 60 spirit had made him a multi-millionaire. Before he died he sat down with advisors to create a plan for how that money would be spent. That was the genesis of the Donnie Williams Foundation.
Williams never had any children. He was adamant that the money from his estate be used on behalf of children in general and more specifically for children in St. Mary’s County, and in Wicomico and Worcester counties on the Eastern Shore, where he lived for most of his adult life.
Today the Donnie Williams Foundation is endowed with $20 million, with additional monies still to be added. Foundations are required to dispense at least five percent of their total value yearly, or one million dollars in their particular case, accounting to Donnie Williams Foundation President Mark Granger, a Salisbury certified public accountant.
Granger told The Bay Net that the foundation wanted to make its first award to the county that raised Williams. That decision was carried out with a big splash Dec. 9 with the handing over of $360,521 to St. Mary’s County Public Schools for after-school programs for 2016.
Granger and his wife Kimberly Roemer, foundation board member and secretary. were long-time friends of Williams. They appeared at the Dec. 9 school board meeting to present the check and tell the board a little bit about the school system’s new benefactor.
Granger told the school board, “Southern Maryland was in his (Donnie Williams’) blood. He knew how to work hard because he learned it here.” Roemer, who gave the zero to 60 example, said he became a health addict later in life and needed a place to work out so he started a gym. That’s the way he was all his life.
Granger and Roemer then left the school board meeting to visit Donnie Williams’ high school, now called St. Mary’s Ryken, a coed Catholic high school.
St. Mary’s County School Superintendent Scott Smith told the foundation representatives, “I can’t wait to come back and tell you the impact the programs had on our children.” The program for the use of the monies is being developed by Coordinator of Special Programs Mark Smith and other school system staff.
Granger told The Bay Net that it is the foundation’s intention to make annual awards to the St. Mary’s school system.
Contact Dick Myers at dick.myers@thebaynet.com