Vernetta Mae Williams

Vernetta Mae was born on September 11, 1930 to Mamie Odessa and William B. Barrett in Washington, DC. She grew up in Northwest and graduated from Dunbar High School where she was a cadet captain. She received her bachelors degree from Howard University where she met and married Clarence Watson Williams Sr., a medical student drafted into the Navy. She set aside her athletic calling to become a homemaker and raised their four children, Stephan Barrett, the late Lloyd Allen, Leslee Pamela now Touchstone Leslee Wilkinson and Clarence Watson Jr. for three years in Japan and Northwest DC and Seat Pleasant MD and Lanham MD and then settled in Kettering by the Park where she departed this life sometime on Wednesday March 8, 2017 after setting down a pot of collards on the sink she intended to cook and sitting in her easy chair watching her television. Her husband was disabled from the Navy in 1962 and spent his remaining years in his family's home in Philadelphia. Vernetta went to work at Lorton Reformatory where she directed a women's choir and then obtained employment at Walter Reed and finally the Smithsonian Institution where she worked until her retirement from her position as Administrative Officer at the Smithsonian Conservation Analytical Laboratory in Suitland MD days before her 85th birthday. On March 6, her spirit knocked on her daughter's door in Baltimore and called her by her birth name "Leslee" while her mother's spirit spoke to her youngest son Clarence so that they both called her to see if she needed anything and she was her normal self trusting in The Lord to take care of her. To send flowers or a memorial gift to the family of Vernetta Mae Williams please visit our Sympathy Store.