Janice Lee Sommerville
Williams
1926 - 2013
Janice Williams, singer,
player, and songwriter, was active in church music from her teenage years until
just before her death. She also enjoyed painting, wrote poetry, and traveled
widely.
Janice was born in West
Union, West Virginia, the only child of Luther Hobert
and Bernice Marie Kent Sommerville. She graduated from high school in 1944 and
married her childhood sweetheart, Wilton E. Williams, Jr., in 1945. They would
have three children Diana (Weiss), Phillip Kent, and Timothy Andrew. The family resided in Pennsylvania and West
Virginia at different times before settling in Toll Gate, West Virginia, in
1972.
She composed a significant
amount of music while she and her husband, an engineer, and their children
resided in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Shortly after joining the Bucks County Seventh-day Adventist Church,
Williams presented a song, We Must Be One, at the Pennsylvania camp
meeting.
When they returned to their
native West Virginia, she served as a pianist in the Clarksburg, West Union
Company, and Toll Gate SDA Churches. She was a pianist for the Mountain View
Conference (West Virginia and western Maryland) camp meetings for over 25
years.
She enjoyed singing and was a
member of many choral groups and a founding member of the Bucks County Choraliers. She
acted in a number of musical theater productions and was an accompanist and
singer in Easter and Christmas cantatas throughout her life. In 1983 she
published a book of her poems, People,
Places, and Things, which focused on life in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
She enjoyed traveling, and
when her husband was transferred to different countries as a consultant for
U.S. Steel, she traveled with him to Taiwan, Republic of China ROC; Turkey; and
some European countries. While in Taiwan
she sang with and was sometimes pianist for The Singing Ambassadors, a choral
group of mostly Americans that toured in Taiwan.
She was living in West Union,
West Virginia, when she died at age 86, one month after the death of her
husband.
Sources: Obituary, U.S. Cemetery and Funeral Home Collections, June 2013;
biography in 99 New Songs, editor,
Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke, 2003.
A Partial listing of Sacred Songs by Janice
L. S. Williams
A
Plain Man Solo 4 Min.
Black
Words on White Paper (And Jesus’ Red Blood) 3.5 Min.
Forever
(He Lives Forever) 2.5 Min.
God’s
Gift (Gift Of Jesus To The World) 4 Min.
Going Home to Meet My Jesus Gospel
4
Min.
Have
You Met Jesus? (You
Won't Want the World Or Its Treasure) 3 Min.
I
Am Not Home Yet (As
Long As I'm in This World) 2.5 Min.
Ignoring the Lord
Solo 3 Min.
I
Saw Three Crosses Solo 5 Min.
Joy With the Angels
Gospel 4 Min.
Morning Prayer (From E.G. White’s
Words) 2.5 Min.
Oriental
Christmas (No
Snow Or Mistletoe But Christ is There) 2.5 Min.
Overflowing
Love (We Are Constantly
Loved) 3 Min.
Sabbath
School Welcome 3.5 Min.
S.D.A.
Camp Meeting Time 3 Min.
See
the Other Man Solo 3 Min.
This
Imperfect Me Solo 4 Min.
We
Must Be One (Unity Of The Church)
3 min.