My daddy's name is Fred McCullah Williams Jr. (shown in photo some years ago). Family and friends also call him Kelly (its a long story - since he's a Junior, his parents decided to call him Kelly since they didn't like Cully, which is the short version of his middle name).   He was born on July 20, 1961, in Denver Colorado (be sure to send him a gift next July 20th!). He is the third of five children. His parents are Fred M. Williams Sr. and Clair Ann Williams (my grandparents!). Fred Sr. is a retired supervisor for the FAA and Clair is a retired special education teacher (she went back to college after raising the five kids and got her Master's degree, then worked for over 10 years). The oldest sibling is Tim, who is married with two kids (wife Robin, sons Kristopher and Tyler). Tim is the owner and operator of American Appliance in Springfield, Missouri. His wife Robin stays home and takes care of my cousins. The next oldest is Cindy, whose hubby is Tom Hudson (currently no kids but lots of various animals). Cindy professes at some college in Missouri and is a mystery-novel writer, while Tom tends to business at Roter-Rooter, that's the name (his dad owns several of those franchises). Dad's two younger brothers are John and Larry. John is married to Jean and has a son Blake. John works with older brother Tim at American Appliance, and Jean works with old fogies at some old fogies home, but looks to change that soon as she is currently enrolled in a hair design school. Larry is the youngest and has two daughters, Alison and Elizabeth. Larry currently works as an independent graphic artist. Be sure to check out Larry's web site.

Dad spent most of his youth growing up in the Colorado Springs area, moving from Keaton Lane in the middle of the Springs, to Falcon Estates on the outskirts, to Black Forest out in the boonies. Dad attended Air Academy High School. The school's football coach at that time was Gary Barnett, now the renown head coach at Colorado University (though dad did not play football, his older brother Tim had the privilege of playing for coach Barnett; Fred Sr. was also an assistant coach - this was after Fred Sr. criticized Barnett for not giving his son more playing time, which prompted Barnett to shout back "you wanna get out here and coach!" Fred Sr. said "sure" so Barnett hired him as an assistant!).

After dad's junior year, the family packed up and moved to Casper, Wyoming. After two months in drubsville USA, the wind blew them to Nixa, Missouri, just outside of Springfield. Dad received his high school diploma from Nixa High School.

Dad attended his first two years of college at the Southwest Missouri State University, then transferred to the University of Missouri-Rolla, a locally acclaimed engineering school, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Dad recounts that the culture shock changing from SMSU to Rolla was almost too much to bear - SMSU had a ratio of 7:1 girls to guys, and Rolla had 10:1 guys to girls! Oh well, somehow daddy persevered, I'm testimony to that!

Immediately after graduating in the summer of 1983, dad moved back to his roots in Denver, Colorado, leaving the heat and humidity of Missouri behind. After a two month job search, he finally landed employment as a software engineer at Cencorp in Boulder, where he developed software for Cencorp's automated PC board-cutting machine, called the Zepolmatic (Zepol is Lopez spelled backwards - Tom Lopez was the President of Cencorp).

After a year with Cencorp, dad moved on to Engineering Measurements Corp. in Longmont, Colorado. Here, dad designed software for traffic control systems. Engineering Measurements turned out to be one big joke of a company. In the year that dad worked there, EMCO had a 300% turnover, and dad went through 7 different bosses! When EMCO decided to can somebody, instead of doing it with class they paged that person over the intercom to "report to personnel"! Dad really liked the work he did for EMCO, but the upper management shenanigans were just too much to take, so after a year he decided to look for greener pastures.

It wasn't long before dad landed a job with McDATA Corporation in Broomfield, Colorado. Dad started for McDATA in September 1985 and has been there to this day, currently employed as an Advisory Software Engineer. Dad feels it is no exaggeration to say that it would be virtually impossible to find a better company to work for. Dad is very proud to work for a company with such outstanding integrity, a testimony to the character of the six original founders of the company which began in the late '70s.

Dad has spent most of the last 15 years playing in various rock bands. He is currently in the band Roundtree. Dad's other hobbies include basketball 3 days a week at the Broomfield recreation center, and songwriting (his tape Lighthouse Dawn is available at most Williams' outlets). Dad also has a silent partner ownership in Tony Rigatoni's restaurant in Morrison, Colorado.  Along with Mom and myself Dad is a member of Risen Savior Lutheran Church.  He is also active in the creation/evolution debate and Bible Apologetics (be sure to check out his satirical web site "Evolution, A Fairy Tale For Grownups" and a site dedicated to Bible Evidences).

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