Mildred Jane "Midge" Whittaker Smith Williamson
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Mildred Jane "Midge" Whittaker Smith Williamson died on Saturday, 16 April 2011, at the Village on the Isle retirement center in Venice, Fla. There was no formal service. Her body will be cremated and the ashes will be spread in the Gulf of Mexico to join those of her husband, Bill Williamson, who preceded her in death on 11 January 2011. The couple had no children. Her closest relatives are the grandchildren of her brother John Dale Whitaker: Catherine Lynn Taylor Braughton, Debbie Taylor Wadkins, Richard Taylor and Michael Taylor.
Mildred Jane "Midge" Whitaker was born on 30 August 1915 in the Holts Prairie District of Perry County, Ill. She was the youngest of three children of Otella Jane "Tell" Harriss and William Wagoner Whitaker. William Dwight Whitaker was born on 30 August 1910 but lived only seven days. John Dale Whitaker was born 9 May 1912 in Holts Prairie and died on 11 April 1984.
Before the children were born, Tell Harriss taught school at the Lower Holts School where many of her siblings attended. After World War I, the couple moved to Carbondale, Ill., where William obtained employment as a railway postal clerk on the St. Louis-Carbondale-Memphis run.
In Carbondale, Tell and William became very good friends with Harve and Adena Harriss DeLap. Adena was Tell's younger sister by six years and one of her students at the Lower Holts School. Harve was a railway postal clerk on a different run from William. The two couples had much in common and meshed well, although the DeLaps had no children at the time.
In the early 1920s the two couples purchased adjacent lots in Carbondale and started making plans to build houses for their families. However, suddenly in 1924 William Whitaker died from blood poisoning which developed from an infected pimple on his face. Midge was nine years old and John Dale was 12.
Otella and her children returned home to Holts Prairie and lived with her widowed father (Her mother, Carolina Schulze Harriss, had died in 1918 of pneumonia). She returned to teaching. In 1929 Otella Whitaker married widower Henry "Doc" Stanton. Midge found Doc Stanton to be an ideal father. Unfortunately, he died in 1934 at the age of 59. After Henry Stanton's death, Otella contracted "frontotemporal lobar degeneration," a disease of dementia similar to Alzheimer's disease, but one which starts much earlier in life. With no treatment available she was sent to the Mental Hospital in Anna, Illinois, where she died in 1972.
The Whitaker children attended the Pinckneyville public schools, and Midge graduated from Pinckneyville High School in 1932. She attended Southern Illinois Normal University and lived with the Harve DeLap family. The DeLap children call her "Midgie." She received her teaching certificate from SINU in 1934, but found that she did not care for teaching, and went to St. Louis where she attended a business college. She later passed the civil service exam and became a very successful secretary at every level.
She returned to Southern Illinois and married Roland "Sid" Smith on 15 November 1935. The couple lived in Cutler, Ill., until World War II. Sid went off to war. Midge followed at first, but then settled in Washington, DC, where she became an executive secretary. After the war, Sid was a different person, and the couple obtained a divorce in 1946.
On 8 June 1947 Mildred Whitaker Smith married Chief Warrant Officer Clarence Alexander "Bill" Williamson. Bill grew up in Pinckneyville, graduated at Pinckneyville High School in 1930, and joined the navy in 1932. He made the navy his career, and Midge joined him with enthusiasm. Bill was stationed on the Cruiser "San Francisco" and was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He reported later that he was in no real danger since the Japanese were targeting battleships and air craft carriers in that attack. Later Bill and the "San Francisco" saw considerable action in the Pacific including the Battle at Bougainville on 20 February 1942 and the Battle of Salamaua near New Guinea on 10 March 1942. After the war Bill served mainly in naval training centers and spent most of that time in Norfolk, Va.
Midge reported that they both liked dancing and sports cars. They had no children but stayed in close touch with John Dale and his family. Over the years they returned to Southern Illinois regularly to visit their families and friends.
After Bill's retirement the couple continued to live in Virginia Beach and later moved to Nokomis, Fla. In 2000 they moved to the Village on the Isle retirement center in Venice, Florida.
Bill died on 11 January 2001. His body was cremated and Midge spread most of his ashes over the Gulf of Mexico. She retained a few in an urn in her living room. There will be no funeral or memorial service. Midge's body will be cremated and her ashes will join those of Bill in the Gulf of Mexico. They were a navy family.