By: Nekoro Gomes
Maurice Williams, a former publisher and assistant vice president at the Kinston, N.C.-based newspaper, The Free Press, died Thursday morning due to complications stemming from a pneumonia infection. He had been in failing health since falling and breaking a hip on Dec. 30.
Williams was a native of Kingsport, Tenn., and a graduate of Tennessee Wesleyan College in Athens, Tenn. Williams began his 50-year career in the newspaper industry at hometown paper, the Kingsport Times-News, starting at an entry-level job in the advertising department and eventually becoming the paper's advertising director.
Williams re-located to North Carolina to become an ad director at another Freedom community newspaper, the Gastonia, N.C.-based, Gaston Gazette, where he worked for six years.
Williams came to The Free Press in 1974, where he would start a twenty-year career as publisher that ran from 1974 to 1994, when he retired. During his tenure there, Williams oversaw the transition of the paper from a locally owned property of the Braxton family to a community newspaper subsidiary of the Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications.
Free Press staffers remember Williams as a fair publisher with a hands-off managerial style, inspiring the best work from colleagues and mentoring others on the business end of the paper.
Williams is survived by his wife, Kitty, of Kinston, N.C., and his son, Landy Williams, of Knoxville, Tenn.
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