Aleta Payne, Correspondent
In Bret Williams' world, folks got the care they needed. Whether they lived in rural North Carolina, on a sparsely populated island off the coast of Hilton Head or in an isolated African village.
Whether they had health insurance, paid what they could in cash or offered up homemade fried chicken to cover their debt.

Whether they needed a doctor, an advocate or a friend.

"He could take people from the most humble origins and situations and talk to them like colleagues," said Todd Shapley-Quinn, a doctor who worked with Williams in a Caswell County rural community health center for several years. "He didn't talk down to them. He took whatever time he needed to make sure nothing went unanswered. He took the time."

Williams, a Kansas native who trained at Duke University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died May 15 of complications from mesothelioma, a rare cancer associated with exposure to asbestos. He was 55 and lived in Efland.

Successful business ventures provided Williams with the financial security to focus his life's work on caring for the poor. One company that he set up provided physicians to fill in when rural family practitioners took vacations.

While he saw the value of the service and the relief it provided doctors who might not otherwise get a break, Julie Williams said, her husband missed the contact with patients and their families.

"He was humorous and irreverent and yet so dedicated to the working poor," she said. "He just couldn't stomach how someone who worked for 50 to 60 hours a week still couldn't go to the doctor."

Bret Williams worked at a clinic in Durham, traveled to East Africa as a volunteer, conducted research and pursued his master's in public health at UNC.

Along with Julie and their children, he lived in Bolivia, where he worked at a medical clinic in the Andes mountains helping to care for Aymara Indians.

The Williamses spent a decade on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina, where he initially ran a clinic using mostly donated equipment and supplies.

Volunteers in Medicine

While there, he caught the attention of Jack McConnell, a retired physician who founded the Volunteers in Medicine Institute. McConnell provided health care to underserved populations using volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists, beginning with one clinic on Hilton Head Island.

When McConnell called to ask Williams to head the Hilton Head clinic, Julie Williams initially put him off. Finally she explained why her husband wasn't available to come to the phone. A family had turned to Bret for help with an emergency -- a sick dog.

Years later, McConnell laughed at the memory and recalled telling Julie, "Your husband is the man I want. Anyone who has the ability and the capacity and the generosity to do that, I want him on my team."

Caring and loyal

Williams passed on his respect and love for other cultures to their four children.

Brian Williams, a political science and international studies major at Queens University of Charlotte, recalls talking to his father about the different people of the world. His father, Brian said, pointed out the similarities that united folks.

"He said it's also amazing how similar humans are," Brian Williams said. "How if we were all dogs, we'd all be the same breed."

Monica Crews, a friend and colleague from Caswell County, learned how loyal Bret Williams was when her 9-year-old daughter suffered a relapse of leukemia and died. More than a decade later, Crews remembers the support the Williams family provided. The Williamses were living in Chapel Hill at the time and opened their home to the Crews family. Bret Williams stayed at the hospital with her and her husband, asking the questions they didn't know to ask.

"We didn't have to worry about anything. They were that giving," she said. "That willing to abide with us in that time." Crews and others rallied around the Williamses in 2003 when Bret, who was exposed to asbestos as a teenager, learned that he had cancer.

Friends and family remained by his side as he underwent surgery to remove his right lung and endured extensive radiation and other treatments.

During his hospitalizations -- 16 in all -- they took turns spending the night so Julie Williams could get some sleep.

"That was the least I could do," Crews said. "He gave so much of himself to humanity. We were pretty protective of him. It was an honor to be able to help."

An advocate till the end

The surgeries and treatments were exhausting and left Williams struggling with side effects, but he lived nearly four times longer than expected.

Williams used that time. He returned to his beloved clinic in Caswell "against medical advice and against his wife's advice," Julie Williams said. And he became active with the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation. He went to Congress to speak on behalf of others with the disease. Julie Williams said he would have to rest for weeks before his trips to Washington and for another week after. But he went.

On the day he died, Williams spent three hours working on statement sheets about asbestos to send to senators. Those haven't been sent yet, Julie Williams said, but they will be.

She has taken up the cause that dominated the last years of her husband's life and wants people to know the dangers of asbestos, which still poses a threat to those exposed to it. Julie Williams also has established the Dr. Bret Williams Family Trust for Children to benefit young people in rural areas, providing things such as music lessons on Williams' beloved piano to tutoring and mentoring.

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In addition to his wife, daughter and three sons, Williams is survived by his mother, stepfather, three brothers and mother-in-law. The family has requested that memorial contributions be made to the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, www.marf.org