Hope A. Williams

Hope Atlas Williams, November 1925-October 2025   Hope died just 1 month shy of her 100th birthday. Her near century started with her Staten Island birth and growing up in Manhattan. Her father John (a naturalized US citizen from Polish Russia) taught school in Harlem while her mother Freyda (born in Philadelphia) maintained their Jewish household.  Sisters Meryl and Yvette soon shared the household.   While in her teens, Hope worked as an usher at the Paramount Theatre when Vic Damone and Eddie Fisher were ushers there too (they would sing behind the movie screen before they became famous). After World War II started, while still in her teens, Hope sought to help the war effort, so got a summer job building radios in New Jersey.  She failed to get her father's permission and may have fudged her age to get the job. Once her father found out, he contacted the factory & she lost the job, but not her desire to serve her country.    Hope enlisted in the Cadet Nursing Corps with the Army paying for her 3 years at Bellevue Hospital's Nursing School.(1944-47).  After working at Bellevue and being head nurse at St. John’s Hospital in the Bronx, in early 1950s, she enlisted to be a U.S. Army nurse.   During the few months between her enlistment and needing to be at Basic Training in Texas, Hope visited a cousin in Florida.  During her visit, she befriended a trio of strippers when one had a sore throat and Hope helped treat her at the club.  Invited to stay to watch the act, Hope gave her some pointers and the next night the act was better than ever.  At their request, Hope managed them for the next 3 months until she had to report to boot camp.   Assigned first to Walter Reed Hospital, the Army transferred her to Germany.  Doctors there specifically asked for Hope to serve with the Stuttgart-based 329th Hospital Train Detachment which took emergency medical care and surgeries to soldiers injured training in the field.    During a hospital rotation, a close friend contrived with the friend's boyfriend to introduce the busy Hope to an equally busy Army Sergeant, their friend, Holland Williams, while he was in the hospital for minor surgery. Holl was interested and invited Hope to be interviewed on his Armed Force radio program. The broadcast produced bags of fan mail addressed to Hope from around Europe and beyond, an invitation to give Hope her own radio show, and a romance lasting almost 40 years until Holl's death in 1991.   Hope and Holl married in New York City in 1954, and had to leave immediately for Spartanburg, South Carolina so "Hillbilly Holl" could be on the air the next day.  Discharged from the Army as a First Lieutenant, Hope quickly bored of being a housewife and went to the radio station one day, asking for a job.  Being a woman, they asked what she could do.  She sat down and ran all their equipment - they hired her.  While she didn’t have a radio name like Holl's, both were DJs at WBDB radio station.   Holl wanted to go to graduate school and applied to the U of A - Tucson impressed Holl when he hitchhiked around the US years before.   Once accepted, the two moved so Holl could get his Masters in Speech. Hope planned to continue nursing, but learned Arizona required she return to nursing school before getting licensed.  Instead Hope dabbled, taking speech classes until their children arrived.    With Heather born in 1956, Rae in 1958, Jason in 1960, and always love having a pet dog around, Hope's days were full as Holl left college to first work in local radio then at KVOA-TV, using some evenings to do amateur theater.    Hope had bowled when she was in the Army but stopped when she returned to the U.S.  In the late 1960s, two car accidents brought Hope neck, back & shoulder problems. Her doctor recommended bowling or tennis - she opted for bowling, because she'd bowled while in the Army, and found in it the excuse, challenge & community she didn't know she missed.  And she took it up with passion.  She was bowling 5 leagues a week while her children were in school and was at Cactus Bowl so often the manager joked he should hire her.  She agreed and began working at the old Cactus Bowl on Alvernon, and later for Cactus Corporation as their bookkeeper for 18 years.  She wrote articles on bowling for the local newspapers and, in 1983, was inducted into the Arizona and National Bowling Hall of Fame for non-professional writing. The Arizona Women's Bowling Association awarded Hope its Dorothy M. Rowe Award in 1995 for promoting the sport of bowling.    Hope was a coach for the Tucson junior programs during the school year and loved to help coach bowling for the Special Olympics.  She served on the Tucson Women’s Bowling Association Board of Directors for many years and was a delegate to many of the State and WIBC National conventions from the state of Arizona.  She was one of the group of ladies instrumental in getting the WIBC to hold their yearly National Tournament in Tucson both times, in 1979 and 1995.   Hope even convinced her daughter, Rae, to take up bowling when she was 11, so that they had something in common. They conspired for 35 years to meet and bowl together at the National Bowling Tournaments - a great way to reconnect, see the country, and meet folks from around the world. They would meet up in the different cities for a few days to a week, bowling and sightseeing places they might never have visited.  Hope bowled in 50 consecutive National Tournaments starting in 1967 (and had hundreds of traded pins to prove it); while Rae did 35 non-consecutive.  They received their plaques for those years in Baton Rouge, LA in 2017.  It was the last Nationals Hope bowled.  She had to quit bowling at the age of 92, when her back and knees couldn’t do it anymore.  She was never a great bowler, but she loved the sport and was one of the greatest promoters of women’s, juniors and men’s bowling in Tucson.   Daughter Rae's return to Tucson with husband Mike allowed Hope to continue living in her home of 68 years. Once Hope stopped bowling, Rae is now bowling in two leagues Hope once bowled in, brought Hope to the bowling alley to see and visit her friends most weeks and to attend their banquets.   Thanks to Rae, Mike, and her grandson Terry Oda, Hope continued to live in her house until her October death in her own bedroom.   Predeceased by parents John and Freyda Atlas, husband Holland Williams, and sister Yvette Atlas, Hope is survived by sister Meryl (Charles) Rubin; daughters Heather and Rae (Mike Manolakes); son Jason (Pam); grandchildren Terry Oda (Jennifer Turner), Jasmine (Fabio Ballerini), Lyndsi, Laura Carroll, and John (Tamra) Carroll; and great-grandchild Charles.  Hope's family thanks her many bowling friends, neighbors Martin and Heather, and Grace Hospice.   If you wish, you can honor Hope's memory by making a donation to the Special Olympics, the Disabled American Veterans, or the USO.