1942-2022
Born in Pittsburgh in August 1942 to Charles and Alberta McWilliams, the sixth of seven children, all but one of them rambunctious boys, Gary spent much of his childhood in a drafty, rambling, plumbing-free house in rural North Carolina. Here he was doted on by his sister Shirley, and with his younger brother Brian, collected arrowheads in nearby fields; attended a 2-room school where misbehaving boys had to cut switches from the woods so that the teacher could flail their calves; and picked and sold blackberries for change. Gary loved picking berries until the end of his life.
When he was 12, the family returned to Pittsburgh, where Gary learned not to say
“Y’all,” and met new friends whose grandparents had come to America from eastern and southern Europe to work in the steel mills. He delivered newspapers through his school years, reading them as he walked Pittsburgh’s hilly streets. Newspapers and new people opened his mind to a greater, complex world, and he became a student of geography, history, and politics.
Attending a small Lutheran college on a wrestling scholarship, he quickly grew to love learning. When his mom’s secretarial job at the University of Pittsburgh enabled free tuition for her children, he transferred, working nights at the steel mill. He earned a BA in history, and in graduate school at Penn State he earned an MA in political science, also working as a graduate teaching assistant. Most of the way through a PhD program, he dropped out of university, deciding it was time to see the world up close and personal rather than between the pages of books.
Hitchhiking west from Penn State, he began his life of wanderlust. Washing up broke in Colorado, he was hired at a gold mine. This job fed his interest in geology and crystals, which led to Mexico where he met miners from famous gold mining towns. He came to love Mexico and its working people, and returned many times. A visit to New Orleans led to jobs on tramp freighters working in the Caribbean. From there, further into the Spanish-speaking world, he visited the Andes and the Amazon, always returning seasonally to the mine in Colorado, to fund the next adventure. He began keeping journals during his travels, which led to his book Wanderlusting. Continuing his explorations from Colorado in another direction, his personal compass pointed to Alaska.
Sight unseen, he bought a 52-foot Navy launch, built the same year Gary was born. Over two to three years he made it seaworthy enough to run the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska. Economics pushed him to make his ship the Hyak pay for herself. She became a floating camp for tree planters and dive fisherman. Then she was chartered by geologists needing to do research in that island-studded ocean. Thus he fed old and new interests in seamanship, Alaskan geology and geography, marine life and nature. After 20 years he sold the Hyak and started the business that was to sustain him for many years: Stone Arts of Alaska, based in Craig. He sought beautiful marble as well as crystals; he produced sculpture, tables, memorial stones, and jewelry. He picked berries and went fishing!
In 2019 he and his partner Karen moved to New Mexico, where he resumed collecting rocks and minerals, produced many colorful stone bowls, hiked many trails, and finished three books: The Mayor of Mucklerat, about his boyhood, Wanderlusting, about his many travels, and The Anchor and the Pick, about his maritime Alaskan adventures.
Gary is survived by his beloved sister Shirley Fogarty and his brothers Don and Brian McWilliams, all of Knoxville, TN; his brother Wayne McWilliams of Maryland, his son Brent McWilliams of Hawaii, and his loving partner Karen Healy of Silver City, NM and Maple Falls, WA.
