Catching up with the Rev. Cecil Williams, a San Francisco legend

There is only one place where Rev. Cecil Williams would spend Christmas Day: Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.

Williams could be called one of the founding fathers of modern-day San Francisco, known for more than half a century as a fighter for racial equality, LGBTQ rights and dignity for the homeless and those addicted to drugs.

At 94, he’s largely out of the spotlight, so I decided to talk to him about his memories of the past 60 years at Glide and his thoughts on the city we both live in.

In 1963, the Methodist church sent Williams, who grew up in a small West Texas town, to lead a small, struggling church at Taylor and Ellis streets in San Francisco. He joked that he found six old white people in the pews, all wrapped in the same scarf.

He removed the obvious signs of religion: the cross, the altar and the hymnals. And he turned Glide into a world-famous church with a loud choir, a house band, a progressive political bent and a membership base in the thousands. Poet Maya Angelou worshiped there, and billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett attends the church service via Zoom.

These days, Glide is mostly humming along without Williams, who retired for the third time in February, apparently for good. His last title was Minister of Liberation and CEO of the Glide Foundation, an offshoot that focuses on promoting social justice and helping people escape poverty and drug addiction. Glide recently separated from the Methodist Church and now operates independently.

I’ve visited Williams twice in recent weeks to check on him. The 94-year-old has led a quieter life since the 2021 death of his wife, Janice Mirikitani, the city’s one-time poet laureate, who worked with Williams to make Glide the force it is today.

Williams was hospitalized in September for Covid-19, prompting him to leave his longtime home in the city’s leafy, residential Glen Park neighborhood and move to Coterie, an assisted living center six blocks west of Glide . He lives on the seventh floor and spends his days watching the news on television, attending panels on current events, doing physical therapy and taking tai chi classes.

“I came here to live,” Williams said, sitting in his wheelchair. “I didn’t come here to die.”

When asked almost any question, Williams can turn his answer into a sermon, his voice now more subdued than before, but his words just as resonant.

Speaking about his beloved San Francisco and the reputational damage since the pandemic, he said: “We have serious problems, but I think we can face them because we have faced them before. We still have an obligation to humanity. We don’t give in. We go on. We’re just getting started.”

On accepting people of all races, sexual orientations and religious backgrounds into his church, he said, “I want people to be who they really are. Be it now, do it now. Why wait?”

His children, Albert (58) and Kimberly (60), take care of him and go to church with him at Christmas. But perhaps his biggest supporter is 66-year-old Thomas Walsh, whom he hired as his executive assistant 15 years ago and who has since become a close friend and caregiver.

“I call him my number one messenger,” Williams said. ‘Sometimes I have to tell him to sit down. It cannot be lassoed.”

Walsh, who continues to be paid by Glide to support Williams, accompanies the reverend to his medical and physical therapy appointments, eats with him at Coterie and takes him to Glide when he feels well enough to go.

“I love what I do – I always have,” says Walsh, who worked in advertising before joining Glide and who doesn’t consider himself religious. “He means a lot to me.”

The two recently sat in the Coterie lounge chatting. I asked Williams to name his favorite memory from his 60 years at Glide.

“Oh my God,” he said, as if lost in thought.

“That’s looking back 60 years,” Walsh explains.

Then he had it. “Janice,” Williams said firmly.

He thought back to the day he met his future wife at church and rudely asked her if she knew who he was. She didn’t, a fact they laughed about for decades.

Walsh said that even though the church now had new leadership, it was important for Williams to visit as often as possible.

“They still respect him – they still want to see his face,” Walsh said. “It’s important to keep Glide’s legacy alive.”

Tell us

What are you looking forward to in 2024? Graduations, big birthdays, traveling to new places?

Tell us your expectations for the new year at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Please include your full name and the city where you live.

And before you go: good news

Young people across the country are turning their Christmas gift lists into elaborate virtual presentations this year, bringing a holiday tradition into the technological age.

Many of them use PowerPoint and Google Slides to create presentations for their families that detail their holiday wish lists, some with as many as 18 slides and tech-savvy features like animated photos and QR codes.

While the presentations are not a new tool, they have become something of a trend this year, Alyson Krueger reported in a recent article for The Times, and the slide presentations have become increasingly involved as well.

While the presentations have convinced some families to pull out their credit cards, for others the pitches have fallen flat. But the list makers are not deterred. “Some family members, especially my dad and cousins, said, ‘Wow, this is a lot,’” Peyton Chediak, an Orange County student, told Krueger in a recent interview. “I’m like, ‘I know, but I’m extra.'”

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow.

PS Here it is today’s mini crossword.

Soumya Karlamangla, Maia Coleman, Briana Scalia and Halina Bennet contributed to California Today. You can reach the team via CAtoday@nytimes.com.

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