Everybody I know loved respected and when necessary feared Uncle Willie. The man has a very special way about himself. My earliest memories of Uncle Willie are of him as a tall cool and serious man. Most of the Youmans men were and are serious, but Uncle Willie was quite serious. I don't have many memories of him laughing, but when he did laugh, it always made you feel good. Uncle Willie did many things that I remember from the times when I was a boy. I remember how he was the first one to get me to eat onions and appreciate it. He used to make us hot dogs and chop up a raw onion, mix it with ketchup and mustard and say..."and you better eat that boy!" I would, I did and it was good, and I knew I didn't like onion's, but I knew I wasn't gonna play with Uncle Willie about eating his food ethier...so those onions were real good. Uncle Willie was always a Strong man. As a child I always thought that he was the only man that was as strong as my father (Herbert Lee Youmans), he proved it a few times too. Like that time when me and Sha stayed with him in Brooklyn, I don't know what got into us, we must have been crazy or something (I hope Sha is there reading this or at least hearing it)but we set a mattress on fire right between the building we was staying in and the one right next to it; it couldn't have been more than three feet between each building. I don't know if you know it, but cotton burns real good, I mean fast. So we down there with our little matches and walking on top of all this dirt, and garbage, old furniture and stuff...and we see the mattress. Now I don't remember who had the matches or who started the fire, what I do remember was just when we started to light another piece of that cotton, Uncle Willie stuck his head out the window and saw us, "hey you stupid little nigga's, what the hell y'all think you doing? Put that shit down and I'm gonna kill you!" Me and Sha broke out, I mean we was diggin' as hard as we could to get out of there, cause we knew he was gonna kill us. Uncle Willie was strong, just like I said, but he was smart too. When he got downstairs, he knew he couldn't catch us, so he paid this older girl (she was a teenager) five dollars to catch us; she caught Sha, but she couldn't catch me, I was too scared! But Uncle Willie, with his smart self let the girl run me through the park, and just when I thought I had got away, you know, cause I cleared that fence with one hop, Uncle Willie was standing right there soon as I came down on the other side of that fence and caught me in his arms. He nearly killed both of us that day, but he loved us, and I knew that! I love you too, Uncle Willie, and I wish that I could have been there to catch you before you fell into this. But we are all here today to tell you that we love you, and that even though we could not hold you up this time, we know that your love and our love holds us all together, and this is a wonderful family, this Youmans family, because we have great members like you. You will be missed, but you will always be one among our ranks that gave us good examples, love and lessons on being serious men and women. Now, be with God forever, as God has always been with you, and with us. From God we came, with God we live, as God in us, we choose to give, lessons in life and love we trust, until our day when return to God we must! All praise is due to God for the life he gave to us, William Edward Youmans, we stand together and honor you! The Youmans Family.