Oct. 22, 2009
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Jimmy Williams made a living intercepting passes, and now he is focusing his attention on intercepting youth before they head down the wrong path with the Jimmy Williams Intercepting Our Youth Foundation.
After graduating from Vanderbilt in 2001, Williams went on to play in the NFL as a cornerback and return specialist before retiring this past June. His stops included three years with the San Francisco 49ers and two with the Seattle Seahawks, whom Williams made a Super Bowl appearance with in 2005.
Williams’ NFL career was longer than most, but during his time under the bright lights, he never lost sight of what he believed was much more important than football.
“I didn’t come from the best background,” said Williams, who was raised in Baton Rougeâ€â€Âthe same city he now calls home. “I did have two parents, but the thing that helped me get through was that there were other people who had a hand in my success. I decided that whenever I got to where I wanted to, the main thing I was going to do was at least try to help out. That came from an early age.”
Williams and his wife, Chandra, started the foundation in 2004 with the primary focus of awarding five scholarships to high school seniors in the Baton Rouge area.
“We don’t look for the top-tier kids, we look for the kids that aren’t at the top of their class, but they are trying and doing the right thing,” Williams said.
The scholarship was originally named the Jimmy Williams Scholarship, but in 2007, it was renamed the Cora Lee Jones Scholarship Fund in honor of Williams’ late aunt, who died in a car accident the same year.
“She was a real close aunt who used to support me and was real giving,” Williams said. “She died in a car accident while she was on her way to deliver food to somebody less fortunate, which was her whole life. I renamed the scholarship after my aunt, and I think it gave all the recipients a little more meaning to what we are all about.”
Awarding scholarships is what the foundation is most known for, but it is just a small part of the work the foundation does in the community.
Among the other outreach activities the foundation is a part of is an annual back-to-school sendoff where school supplies are donated to kids. During the holidays, the foundation adopts a family and fills out their Christmas wish list. When Williams was playing, he would fly two or three families out to watch one of his games.
Over the holidays, the foundation also takes foster children to a Build-A-Bear store where they make stuffed bears for kids at the local children’s hospital. In the summer, the foundation, along with the scholarship recipients, hosts a youth camp that focuses on health and wellness, team building, conflict resolution and football.
While football is a part of the camp, it is a very small piece. Williams had a successful NFL career, but even so, he is still in his early 30s, a fact that helps him emphasize that football isn’t everything.
“I try to tell them as a player that football is a game and it isn’t going to be here forever,” Williams said. “I ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up and if they tell me a football player, I correct them and tell them football is not a career because it isn’t something that can last you for a lifetime. With that, I just try to get them to focus on different things they can aspire to be other than a football player. Football is an extra bonus, but when it is over, you have to go back to getting a career.”
Williams began his foundation in 2004, but his first foray into community service came while at Vanderbilt. It was in Nashville that Williams first became involved with the Backfield in Motion program with fellow former Commodore Jamie Winborn. Even after leaving Vanderbilt, Williams continued his work with Backfield in Motion.
“We were wondering how we could help some kids and we wanted to partner up with somebody, so the first two years Jamie and I partnered together and brought some of the Backfield in Motion kids out to California and we took them on a college tour,” Williams said. “The kids also got to come to practice and go to a game. The thing that I took from the Backfield in Motion program was that whenever I was going to start my own program, I wanted to run it like they had theirs.”
From what he learned with Backfield in Motion, Williams went to work on developing the Jimmy Williams Foundation.
“My wife and I sat down at dinner one night and on a napkin, began drawing up how we wanted to start our own and that is pretty much how it came about.”
Having an idea is one thing, but actually putting the plan together is an entirely different challenge. To get the foundation off the ground, Williams relied heavily on what he learned from his time at Vanderbilt.
“What I learned at Vanderbilt was really key in the development stages,” Williams said. “Over at Peabody, we had this segment in a course where we had to go and reach out to a nonprofit in Nashville, and my task was to go work with the Charles Davis Foundation. I pretty much had to rewrite their operating handbook. Through that and watching how they ran their business, I got an idea of how I wanted to structure mine. It just gave me so much more insight on a nonprofit organization from a business standpoint.”
The close attention he paid to what he was taught at Vanderbilt has paid off for Williams, who continues to look at ways to grow the foundation.
“The night we sat down and put ideas on a napkin, we kind of envisioned starting a charter school,” Williams said. “With the state of the schools in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, we would like to go that route, but we are still in the beginning stages.”
No matter how successful the organization becomes, Williams is not interested in the recognition that comes his way, he’s more interested in continuing to do his little bit to make the world a better place.
“We don’t really do a lot to get noticed,” Williams said. “We just do what we can because it is the right thing.”
Williams also understands he has a greater chance to make a difference in the community because of who he is. As a former football player, he has a voice in the community that others may not have and he doesn’t plan on letting that voice go to waste.
“That is definitely the case, and it is something that I thought of,” Williams said. “With the platform that I have, I feel there is a responsibility that comes with it. If you are going to call yourself a contributor to society, then in my mind, you have to accept the responsibility with the platform you have. You can help change the world, you can inspire kids to dream and you can help plant seeds in them that they are so much more than they have an idea of what they can be.”
