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Baseball has kept Kevin’s memory alive

Kevin Williams

When Times/Review Newsgroup launched the former North Shore Sun newspaper on the week of the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the primary photo featured members of Kevin Williams’ family.

The banner headline at the top of the page read: ‘Every minute, every day.’

It was a quote about how often the family members of 9/11 victims think about their loved ones.

In the cover story, Mike Williams said he visited ground zero quite often in the first year after Kevin was killed while working as a bond salesman at the brokerage house of Sandler O’Neil.

“I’ve been there at least 45 times,” he told the Sun on the first anniversary of his son’s death, adding that he feels closer to Kevin when visiting the site where the 24-year-old died.
Now gone for 10 years, Kevin Williams’ name still rings out in the Shoreham-Wading River community.

The baseball field at Shoreham-Wading River High School, where the 1995 graduate once played shortstop, has been called Kevin Williams Memorial Field since August 2002.
Mr. Williams was engaged and planned to marry his high school sweetheart, Jillian Volk, on Dec. 1, 2001. Instead, a different anniversary is now marked each December when Ms. Volk and the Williams family gather with community members for the annual Kevin Williams Memorial Foundation toy drive.

Every year volunteers get together to spend an afternoon wrapping Christmas presents that are then distributed to underprivileged local youths. The main focus of the charity is to support young baseball players by sending them to baseball camps and providing them with equipment.

“We know how positively sports have affected our children and wish the same experience for others, regardless of financial situations,” Kevin Williams’ parents wrote on the charity’s website.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to Kevin was made by his younger brother Jamie, who was a freshman at Northeastern University on that tragic day. After graduation, he went to work for Sandler O’Neil, the same company his brother worked for when he was killed.

Asked to talk about his brother for a newspaper article published shortly after Kevin Williams’ memorial service was held in October 2001, Jamie summed up their relationship in five words.

“He was my role model,” he said.

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