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In a letter to the Monitor, James Williams’s daughter, Jennifer Kravitz of Warner, said that her father, “is ALWAYS helping others and putting others before himself.”

Kravitz chose capital letters to emphasize her dad’s worth, but his resume of altruistic and selfless acts stood fine on their own and spoke clearly as to why she nominated Williams for the latest entry into the Monitor’s Hometown Hero series.

What Williams didn’t know until recently was that Kravitz nominated her father for the honor. “Oh my God; she’s in trouble now,” Williams joked during a brief phone interview.

He moved from a Boston suburb to Gilmanton four years ago, shortly after his high school sweetheart and wife of 30 years, Nancy DiMuro, died from cancer.
Newly married but living on opposite sides of the globe, Williams was earning war-hero status in Vietnam in the late 1960s while Nancy drummed for the Pandoras, an all-girl, Boston-based band that mixed hard rock with garage-band grunge, creating a rebellious, punk style of music that most of the male rock groups of the day hadn’t even touched.

Meanwhile, Williams was in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968, a massive surprise attack by the North on targets inside the South that helped fuel America’s opposition to the war.

Williams was a platoon sergeant and said he never grew too close to his men. At least he tried not to.

“(As a platoon sergeant), you didn’t make friends in Vietnam,” Williams said.

“You did not know if they’d be alive or not during the next day. We had buddies and we had each others’ backs, but you really tried not to get too close, and that was hard. We lost four or five people that day.”

He said he endured hand-to-hand combat, near an area crowded with more than 150 dead North Vietnamese soldiers. Williams got shot in the lower back and spent more than a month on the USS Sanctuary Hospital Ship.

His arms and legs were blasted with shrapnel during another fight, leading to a week’s stay at a field hospital. Those injuries earned Williams a pair of Purple Hearts.

He returned home in 1969 with Post Traumatic Stress and, to this day, still feels a sharp pain in his back and limbs.

He was a carpenter following his Vietnam days. He and Nancy had planned to move to their new home in Gilmanton, but she contracted cancer before they could leave the Boston area. Williams now lives alone in Gilmanton.

“We had plans,” Williams said, “but my wife never got the chance to live there.”

These days, Williams says, “You’ll never see me without a smile. I try to make others’ lives happier and easier for them.”

That’s why Jennifer Kravitz, one of Williams’s daughters, contacted the Monitor.
She knew her father was a perfect candidate for the Hometown Hero series.

She recalled her father toy shopping with his three grandchildren when, she wrote, “Just today, a little boy was in the Lego aisle and this little boy with his mom was trying to decide which Lego set he wanted.”

The boy made his choice and got the Lego set he wanted. Williams helped.
“The little boy could not make up his mind,” Williams said. “He wanted the more expensive one and his mother told him she couldn’t afford it and I asked her if I could pay for that.”

Kravitz cited her father’s generosity in restaurants as well. To this day, he continues to show respect and appreciation toward fellow veterans.

“Every time he sees another veteran or active military member out for lunch, he always without failure pays their bill,” Kravitz wrote.

Recently, Williams saw a pair of local police chiefs eating breakfast in Loudon. “They did not know I bought their breakfast,” Williams said. “I try to slip out and don’t want to be embarrassed or embarrass them, but it was one way of saying thank you for your service.”

Another time, he and Kravitz were eating lunch when 13 members of the National Guard walked in. Williams paid the bill for all 13.

At 75, Williams’s wounds and the effects of Agent Orange have slowed him down. He uses a handmade walking stick, made for him by a classmate in their Post Traumatic Stress rehab class.

But injuries and pain aside, Williams remains quick to lend a helping hand, to children or fellow veterans. Kravitz is proud. Her letter to the Monitor made that perfectly clear.

“He is just genuinely a good, GOOD man with a huge heart,” she wrote.