Amy Williams was a very special young woman. To know her was to love her, that is undeniable.
What most people remember about her is that no matter what, she always had a smile on her face. She was active in the Orange community, even after she married and moved out of town, she always came back for the important stuff.
What I remember about Amy is that we got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 1999. After being under the thumb of a Senior Editor in Shelton for 18 months, I was finally given the opportunity to take the helm of my own newspaper, the Amity Observer, covering the tri-town area of Bethany, Orange, and Woodbridge.
No one in this community knew me, but I threw myself into the new position with everything I had and hit the ground running, writing an equal amount of stories from each of the three towns, laying out the paper and staying at the office until nearly 11 p.m. on deadline days while my mother-in-law watched my kids and made sure they arrived at school on time each Wednesday morning.
Working so hard, I was ultra-sensitive to any criticism. One week after the paper was published, I received an angry phone call from a woman, chastizing me for getting my facts wrong on a story I wrote about the corn fields surrounding Wright’s Pond. I can’t remember exactly what the issue was, but I do know that I wanted to clear the air with this person face-to-face because our phone discussion did not seem to go very well.
I drove over to the pond parking lot and walked back to a field where a teen helper was working in a field. I asked where I could find the Williams Family. She pointed to the house across the street, and then she said, “I don’t think they’re home.”
I Introduced myself as Terri Miles from the Amity Observer, and I swear she rolled her eyes as she wiped the dirt from her hands.
The pretty, tall, teenager introduced herself as Amy Williams. “I think you’re looking for me,” she said.
Hating confrontation, I shuttered but immediately apologized for whatever it was that I had written and promised to print a correction in the next edition. — This was before online newspapers were a thing and we were several years from launching any type of Internet entity.
We spoke for a while, cleared the air and we were friendly for the next 25 years, greeting one another warmly every time we crossed paths.
Ten years later, a month after I was hospitalized with my first stroke, I attended the Orange Country Fair, and stood by the contestants lined up for the skillet toss. Amy encouraged me to try my hand at it… I didn’t do well. I thanked my lucky stars that I was not in her age category, because she was amazing.
One year after I started Orange Live, when Elf Mama Annie Davis was still in charge of Santa’s Helper, Amy and I volunteered to help wherever needed and ended up running packages to crews already on the road. It was so much fun.
I knew Amy suffered from Crohn’s disease, but you’d never know she was in pain because she wasn’t a whiner.
Amy was active with the Orange Conservation Commission and participated in their walks and made sure I received an advance press release so I could get the word out.
Amy was an excellent skeet shooter, and a dog lover, she loved to travel, she loved her mom, and she loved traveling with her mom.
During the pandemic when so many other couples canceled or postponed their weddings, Amy married the love of her life, Gary, masks and all, making the most of it, and it was beautiful.
On Saturday, Jan. 27, we will say goodbye to Amy. A Memorial Service will take place at 11 a.m. at the Orange Congregational Church, 205 Meetinghouse Lane, Orange.
We’ve had a couple of weeks to try and make sense of what happened to Amy, and how this vital, happy, energetic young woman could have been taken too soon. We already miss her smile, and will always miss seeing her.
Having two adult children myself, both close to Amy’s age, I cannot imagine how Judy and Art can cope with the pain of losing this beautiful, loving daughter. I pray the many happy memories can carry them through.