When Others Might Be Slowing Down,

Joe Williams Is Turning Over A New Leaf

By Nancy K. Crevier

He is a long-haul truck driver, a ballroom dancer who has shared the delights of fancy footwork with hundreds of students over the years, and he has chronicled stories he made up for his boys when they were young. He is an artist who has studied at Wooster School, Silvermine Guild Art Center, and with artist Richard Schmid. He is a Pentacostal minister and a storyteller. He is 69 years old, an age at which many of his contemporaries are starting to slow down. But Newtown resident Joe Williams is nowhere near ready to take it easy.

While others his age are beginning to watch their steps, he is branching out, literally and figuratively. Hauling himself up into the tops of trees, 100 feet or more above the ground, Mr Williams has revived a skill he nurtured as a young man in Pennsylvania: taking down and tending to trees. He tried to retire, but, “Going fishing every day didn’t do it for me,” he says.

He attributes his enthusiasm for life and his versatile talents to one thing: his faith in God.

“I’m just a tool in this world,” he says. “I like to help people that need a helping hand.” As a man of great faith, he feels that doing for one another is a form of grace. It was for this reason that he got out from behind the pulpit many years ago.

Sitting in Andrea’s Bake Shop on Queen Street one fall morning, his sturdy hands enveloping a cup of coffee, he ponders his purpose for returning to a line of work that can, at times, be dangerous — even for men half his age.

His return to tree work came about through helping others. When Tony Posca, owner of Andrea’s, needed the area behind the bakery cleared, Mr Williams, a regular customer there, pitched in. Vincent Rigoli, a baker at the shop, hired Mr Williams to take down a tree in his yard and was so impressed with Mr Williams’ work that he then referred him to his sister. “What really amazed us,” wrote Mr Rigoli in a letter to Mr Williams, “was your climbing ability. You climbed 50 to 75 feet trees without any hesitation or problems. Your expert prep work of climbing, and placing the lines and ropes upon the really large trees was fascinating.” Through word of mouth, Mr Williams has found himself back in the business.

Tree care is one way, Mr Williams says, that he can put his faith into action. He sometimes charges for the tree work he does, but not always.

“I like to help poor people who can’t afford to have trees properly taken care of. If I do charge, I try to charge affordable prices,” says Mr Williams.

He takes his work seriously. “You have to study and learn the fundamentals of things, if it is dancing, art, storytelling, fishing, or taking down trees. You need to know the tree, you need to know how to shape it, trim it, how much weight it can bear, even the woods around it. Trees are beautiful, like big flowers,” he says. “They’re wonderful. Think about it — without them, we wouldn’t have clean air.”

It saddens him to see the lack of concern people show for trees when building. “People come along and cut all the trees down, instead of looking at the tree and thinking about where to build a house with the trees. You have to get rid of the trees that are dangerous, of course, but [builders should] try to integrate the trees into the building process.”

He shakes his head in dismay. “And then they hire me to put nearly full grown trees back in the ground. I don’t get it.”

He is not afraid when he is tethered to a trunk, closer to the clouds than the ground, but he is always conscious that he is in a precarious position. “I’m focused on the health of the tree and on making it into the best shape that I can, but up in trees, I’m cautious. I keep tied in on a safety rope.”

He is not averse to swinging from one limb to another, though, or even from tree to tree if need be, although he is not as apt to do so as he was 30 years ago. He recalls a job in Pennsylvania that had him swinging from one tree to the next down a tree-lined avenue. “I didn’t even come down for lunch,” he laughs. “They’d send me up my lunch and I’d nestle down in that tree and even take a nap until it was time to go back to work. It was peaceful up there. Sometimes birds would come close by, there would be squirrels chattering. It was nice,” he says.

He does not find it surprising that as he approaches his 70th year of life that he is involved in a strenuous, physically and mentally demanding job. “You can do whatever you want, with God’s help. I put Him first, and then my neighbors,” he says. “That’s where I get my strength. I couldn’t climb way up in a tree without Him. I don’t find it so extraordinary that I’m up in trees at age 69, not at all.”

As he talks, other customers come and go from the bakery, most of them pausing to greet Mr Williams warmly. “He’s a real gem,” says one customer, recalling how Mr Williams, a neighbor, shoveled out two feet of snow from her walkway when she was late getting home from a flight. “I expected to get home at 2 am and step into knee-deep snow, and instead, he had come by and plowed me out. He’s always doing nice things like that,” she says.

Another customer squeezes Mr Williams’ hand in greeting, saying, “He is one of the nicest guys around,” while another teasingly threatens to tattle old tales.

“I was a bad boy,” laughs Mr Williams. His life as a boy was not easy. Bounced from one foster home to another in the Danbury area, he was “pretty much just a slave on farms. They would work me so hard, and try to keep me from doing my homework, so I wouldn’t get ahead. I did real well in the tests, but [my teacher] Mrs Goodsell told me, ‘You have to do your homework.’ I told her that I couldn’t, [my foster parents] wouldn’t let me. But I worked hard and I was an honor student.”

He could have chosen a path paved with bitterness, but instead, Mr Williams chose to make the best of what he had. It was during this difficult period in his life that he turned to God. “I had no one to go to when I was young. I heard about one who would forgive all. I’ve been a believer since. That’s how I made it.”

He is an inspiration to the many friends who clasp his hand, who give his shoulder a hug in passing, who stop to share a word with him as he finishes his morning coffee. They are in awe of his many talents and endless goodwill.

Mr Williams shrugs off the high praise. “I don’t do any of this for my glory. I just want to be out there, helping. I’ll [take care of trees] as long as God gives me strength. I love it.”

How long will he ride the branches? Mr Williams does not hesitate to answer. “When I get to be 100, I want to put the star up on the Christmas tree in Ram Pasture.”

As he says, it is all about having faith.