STERLING MCCULLOUGH WILLIAMS FUNERAL HOME Celebrating 50 years in business

Because he was black, the young mortician had trouble getting a bank loan.
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Fifty years in the funeral business, several elected political seats, appointments to numerous boards and committees, and decades of community service are under his belt, yet McCullough Williams Jr. is not quite ready to slow down.
The lifelong area resident and founder of Sterling McCullough Williams Funeral Home was recently honored by the Ohio Funeral Directors Association for his 50 years as a licensed director.
Williams' desire to enter the business, however, began long before 1951.
He was a 14-year-old pupil at Princeton Junior High School in Youngstown when a teacher told the class to write about whatever they would do as adults.
He decided then that becoming a mortician was his calling and set out to interview the three black funeral home owners in the city. He would eventually buy out the owners of all three of those funeral homes.
An obstacle: Ten years after junior high, Williams was a college graduate and licensed mortician in Ohio, ready to start his own business. Getting started, he said, proved more difficult than anticipated and one of the low points of his career.
"When I was in college, they said you should establish good credit, deposit money in the bank and establish a good reputation and when you ask for a loan, they will give you one. Well, that turned out not to be true because I was a Negro," said Williams.
One bank said it could not loan Williams the money to buy his first building on the North Side because it was a residential property and they were commercial lenders. He said another bank denied him the loan because it only made loans for residential property and his use of the property would be for business.
Williams said he eventually got the property with a high down payment, nearly depleting his savings. He worked for his father's auto laundry and parking lot in the downtown area to makes ends meet. That was in the early '50s, and his business still survives with locations in Youngstown and Warren.
During those 50 years, Williams has managed to focus on more than just business, becoming involved in the local political system and community.
He has served as Democratic 3rd Ward precinct committeeman, 3rd Ward councilman, the first black president of the Youngstown Board of Education, on the Ohio Martin Luther King Jr. holiday commission, and was first funeral director from Mahoning and Trumbull counties appointed to serve on the state board of embalmers and funeral directors.
He also was elected president of the Youngstown Mahoning County Convention and Visitors Bureau and has received dozens of awards and accolades from various organizations.
A bad time: The accomplishments, however, were not without a price. The Williams' home was bombed Dec. 3, 1970, for what McCullough Williams said were his efforts to get more black secondary teachers in the Youngstown school system. No one in the family was injured in the attack.
Williams also managed to find time to take part in community affairs. He sponsored and coached little league football and baseball teams and was owner and operator of the Buckeye Review newspaper in Youngstown.
Family business: With all his achievements and business success, Williams said that the high point of his professional life is when two of his three children joined the family business. Sterling Williams entered the business in 1980 and his twin sister, Crystal Costa, joined in 1982. Another son, McCullough Williams III, is an attorney in Columbus.
Williams said because his children are heirs, and the fact that he started the business at a relatively young age, are the reasons the business has been able to survive so long.
"My children were exposed to the dirty four-letter word 'work,' " he said. "They all worked around the funeral home and the older they became, the more responsibility they had and I paid them for the services they rendered."
Sterling Williams officially bought the business in 2000. McCullough Williams Jr. is "retired on paper," but still serves as an adviser to his son and daughter in the business. Most days he can still be found behind the desk in his office at the funeral home on Belmont Avenue.
jgoodwin@vindy.com