Commentary: A mother's love launches Fonda Williams

It was early spring 1986, when the city of Canton’s youth summer jobs were being assessed and hiring of many of the city youth was beginning.

As deputy mayor and director of management, overseeing the hiring process fell under my responsibility, but it was the Youth Services Department, run ably by Paul Martin, that was actually the center of gravity in summer hiring for the city.

So, I was a little puzzled when my secretary, the ever charming Miss Eli, came into my 8th floor office and told me a lady wanted to talk to me about her son getting a summer job in Canton.

As I invited her in, I noticed her demeanor. I had seen it before in other African-American mothers. She had that look … many of you know of what I speak: stern and determined, poised and polite, and I could tell this lady was on a mission and I knew I had to listen.

Joe Emma Williams told me that her son was looking for a job that summer. She explained to me that her family income precluded him from working the typical summer jobs that were geared toward the low and moderate income population, and that her family fell outside those guidelines.

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She felt her son should not be punished because his family income was not what some folks felt was typical for minorities. At that time, Mayor Sam Purses walked in and we both listened intently as Mrs. Williams told us about her son, Fonda, who at the time was a student at Duke University. She went on to describe her son and how he was a good student and a good son and he deserved a summer job.

Mayor Purses, obviously taken in by Mrs. Williams, asked me to make it happen. It happened, and that was the beginning of Fonda having an impact on the city of Canton, Stark County and the state of Ohio, as well.

I was deeply impressed with Fonda that summer, as I noticed how he interacted with others in and out of city government. I was pleased and proud of him and I have enjoyed watching him climb the stairway of opportunity in his very successful career.

He has been a welcome addition to the landscape. And since that time, he has been the youngest city councilperson, a successful executive with private companies and a successful private business person.

When Mayor William Healy first hired him as the city's economic development director, we all expected a lot from Fonda. He outran our expectations as he helped to move the city forward, gaining more experience and successes along the way.

And when Tom Bernabei was running for the position of mayor, he openly promised to keep Fonda and Andrea Perry in his administration. I continued to watch Fonda perform, amazing folks as he went forward in his now-famous humble way.

It was good to see an African-American male who others saw as "one of the good ones." He said all the right things, became knowledgeable about government programs and loans and established relationships with bankers, leaders of organizations and others.

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He has been appointed positions on important boards within our community, such as the YMCA, Mercy Medical Center, Sisters of Charity Foundation, Stark State College, Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and many others.

Everyone has come to expect, especially with his successful relationship and tenure with Mayor Bernabei, that his next stop was as the first Black mayor of Canton. I even attended a dinner last year in which the mayor introduced him as the future first Black mayor of Canton.

I have seen other governments and businesses try to recruit him away from Canton. I’ve attended many out-of-town events about minority business development, and when introduced to others there, many of them knew about the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, but some had also heard of that Black deputy mayor who was helping to do great things in Canton.

So while it was not unexpected that Fonda was recruited, I was surprised that he accepted

an offer to be the senior vice president of government relations and economic development for the Columbus-based Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI), a position newly created just for him.

ECDI’s mission is to provide training, loans, advice and more to small businesses. It has dispersed more than $91.6 million in loans with the creation and/or retention of 13,097 jobs since 2004.

Fonda anticipates a huge amount of construction occurring in the state within the next several years, and one of his goals is to expand minority-owned businesses and individual opportunities to participate in that work.

He points to the anticipated construction by Intel, Google, Ohio State University, Facebook and others, all requiring lots of back-office services.

In his new position, he will have a great opportunity to have a huge impact. He will use his experiences to grow the amount of minority businesses within the state, as he concentrates on Northeast Ohio, but will also have some responsibility for the states of Kentucky and West Virginia.

"One of my ideas," he says, "is to utilize ... the Minority Contractors Resource Center" to help smaller companies scale up to bigger jobs.

With his new office conveniently located in downtown Canton in the old bank building at Central Plaza, he will still be in the thick of things when it comes to business development. And that is a very good thing.

I have watched him drag a project over the finish line when everybody else might have given up. And that goes all the way back to the Onesto project, which he was instrumental in getting the asbestos issue and many other hurdles solved so that developer Steve Coon would be able to complete the renovation of the Onesto into one of Canton’s premier places to live. And that project is not the only one.

Mayor Bernabei has given him many projects like that, where it would take his herculean efforts to finally bring it home to fruition, to the benefit of the developers and Stark County citizens.

Fonda is fully aware of the challenges that he is facing, but he is also keenly aware of the opportunity that this new position represents to him personally and again, to the citizens of Canton.

And what would his mom say about the successes that he has racked up so far? He says, calmly, that his mother and father would be proud of the investment they made in him. Not only does that show the positive impact that a strong family can bring to their children’s success, but to the success of their community they happen to live in, as well.

Right, Joe Emma?

Ron Ponder can be emailed at ronponder1@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ron Ponder praises Fonda Williams' tenure with the city of Canton