RJ Williams & Company is named in honor of Ray J. Williams, Ty Williams' father, because the company was never meant to be only a real estate brand. It was built to carry forward a way of living: believe in people, keep your attitude right, stay motivated, and help others see what they can become.
If you take care of people, people take care of you.
It was never about the money. It was always about the people.
One Friday, Ty watched his dad write a $12,000 weekly check to Don Hodges, one of Ray's sales people. To a young Ty, that seemed like an impossible amount of money. Ray stopped, looked him in the eye, and told him Don had earned it. Then came the lesson Ty never forgot: always take care of your people, and your people will take care of you. If you follow that principle, Ray said, you will be successful and the people around you will be successful too.
Ray with Dorothy and Johnnie. Poor, happy, and already carrying responsibility.Where responsibility started
The oldest child learned early that people depend on each other.
The Williams family story begins with hard, inventive people. Ty's great-granddaddy, J.R. Williams I, was remembered as a man built like a rock. He welded without a mask and became legally blind later in life. Once, while working near a running airplane propeller, he lost a finger and spent an hour looking for it. That was the kind of toughness the family came from.
He was also a gifted inventor. The family keeps his electric car patent, and family history credits him with early aircraft ideas that pointed toward the kind of tilt-rotor thinking people now associate with Osprey-style aircraft. In the Williams family, grit and imagination lived side by side.
Ray grew up during the Great Depression with very little food. He joked about the many forms corn could take, but Ty remembers the deeper truth: Ray worried that his son had enough to eat because Ray knew what it felt like to be hungry every day.
When Ray's father was away working, Ray helped his mother raise Dorothy and Johnnie. He did not build his life from comfort. He built it from responsibility, optimism, work, and love.
Young Ray J. Williams, before a lifetime of service, business, and rebuilding.
Belief, service, and survival
Someone believed in him, and Ray turned that belief into momentum.
Before the war, Ray went to work in radio sales for NBC. A meeting at a Plymouth car dealership changed his life because someone saw what was inside him and gave him a chance. The right leadership, matched with Ray's own motivation, helped him excel so quickly that he bought his first airplane by the age of 21.
Not long after, Ray was drafted into the Army. He served with Company F, 22nd Infantry, Army of the United States. His honorable discharge, dated June 19, 1945, places him at Brooke Convalescent Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. It is a quiet document, but it says a great deal: honest and faithful service to his country.
Ray and his friends were among the men who hit Utah Beach in Normandy. He told Ty about losing some of his very best friends there, men who were beside him one moment and gone the next. A few months later, Ray was hit by a mortar shell. When he woke in the hospital and saw a nurse looking down at him, he said she was so beautiful he thought he had gone to heaven.
The war did not make him hard in the wrong way. Ray came home with faith, optimism, and an ability to keep going when most people would have had every reason to stop.
Ray J. Williams' honorable discharge from the Army of the United States.Ray during his KCSJ broadcasting years.A young man with big ideas
Radio, television, hospitality, and the courage to try.
After the war, Ray returned to what he knew best: radio. He owned a radio station and a TV station, helped lead the launch of Pueblo's KA-PI radio, and designed and opened the Pueblo Motor Inn. He had the kind of energy that turned a microphone, a restaurant table, or a business idea into a place where relationships could form.
The radio marathon tells the story better than a resume ever could. Ray did not just own the station from a distance. He sat down, stayed on the air, exhausted himself, and broke the world record for continuous time on radio.
Around those same radio years, family history says Ray gave Willie Nelson his first on-air job as a late-night DJ. Ray saw something in people before the world did, and sometimes that belief was enough to help them get moving.
The Union Gas & Equipment record-breaking RCA Disc-A-Thon event.Ray during the broadcast marathon where he broke the world record for continuous time on air.Ray at his Pueblo, Colorado hotel restaurant with a singer and entertainer.Ray J. Williams with President John F. Kennedy.Politics, broadcasting, and people of influence
Ray believed the people around you helped shape what you could become.
Through politics, radio, and television, Ray came to know people from many different walks of life. The family history includes President John F. Kennedy as a close friend, John Wayne among the noteworthy people Ray met, and Willie Nelson as a late-night DJ who received his first on-air job at Ray's station.
Ray used to say you should surround yourself with good people: people who want to make a positive impact. He believed a positive attitude and strong motivation could carry a person much farther than circumstances alone.
Surround yourself with good people who want to make a positive impact.
The wildcatter's faith
From dirt poor, to success, to broke again, to starting over.
In Dallas, Ray later built an executive search firm and competed with Bill Record, a rival who also became a friend. Rozan worked for Bill, and Ray was so taken with her that he asked Bill to fire her so he could hire her himself. Ray and Rozan's entrepreneurial engine soon found a new spark in Ray's love of cooking, invention, and mesquite wood.
Then 1986 knocked the family down. Ray got back up. In 1989, nearing 70 years old, he started an oil and gas company and became a true wildcatter. He called oil black gold and liked to say nobody likes a dry hole. He knew what it meant to search for something valuable when other people only saw dirt, steel, weather, and uncertainty.
Ty got to go to work with him after school, and to Ty that was a treat. He learned how to sell from some of the best salespeople around, how to manage people, and most of all that relationships are always the most important thing.
Proof of the mantra
People remembered how Ray made them feel.
The Don Hodges family letter is one of the clearest pieces of the RJ Williams story. They wrote that people could bring Ray a personal problem and leave his office with a feeling that could not quite be explained. They remembered a man who felt your hurt with you, stayed pleasant when emotions ran high, and cared deeply for his fellow man.
Ty remembers Don Hodges coming back later and paying for Ray's funeral. That is not a slogan. That is the lesson returning home: take care of people, and people take care of you.
When people spoke about Ray, they did not lead with company names. They talked about Ray. They talked about the way he showed up, the calls he made, the help he gave, and the feeling that someone believed they could make it.
The November 15, 1998 letter from the family of Don Hodges.Ty with Ray J. and Rozan Williams during the Ranchman's Manufacturing mesquite wood years.Family, business, and public recognition
The mesquite tree became more than a photograph.
At the time, many ranchers and farmers hated mesquite. They called it a nuisance, hard to kill, and nearly impossible to work with. Ray saw something different. He saw beauty, value, and possibility in the very thing other people wanted gone.
Ray and his father designed and patented unusual tools for that opportunity, including an indoor smoker and a wood chunker strong enough to cut mesquite into bagged cooking wood. The blades had to be strong because ordinary blades failed against the hardness of the wood.
Out of that vision came Ranchman's Manufacturing, Peck-O-Wood, and Los Amigos del Mesquite, a community built around mesquite products, furniture, and pride. Rozan became president of that organization, and together the family helped turn a hated tree into a household name.
The photo of Ty in the tree with Ray and Rozan became one of the family's iconic business images. For Ty, another image carries the softer center of the story: Ray looking at him beside Rozan, the father who would say Ty was his dream come true. The public accomplishments matter, but the company name is personal before it is professional.
Ray J. Williams with Rozan and Ty. Ray often told Ty he was his dream come true.
Family photos and artifacts
The history Ty wants to preserve, gathered into one story.
ServiceRay J. Williams in uniform, part of the service story that shaped the RJ Williams name.PresenceA studio portrait preserved by the family and kept as part of the company history.ResponsibilityRay with his sister Dorothy and brother Johnnie, carrying responsibility for his siblings from a young age.A Young Man With DriveRay J. Williams as a young man, before the war, radio, oil, mesquite wood, and a lifetime of rebuilding.BroadcastingRay during his KCSJ broadcasting years, with the records, microphone, and showmanship of the era.Family and EnterpriseTy in a mesquite tree with Ray J. and Rozan Williams during the Ranchman's Manufacturing mesquite wood years.Honorable DischargeCompany F, 22nd Infantry, Army of the United States. Discharged June 19, 1945, at Brooke Convalescent Hospital, Fort Sam Houston.KA-PI RadioAn early Pueblo radio advertisement naming Ray Williams as owner-manager.Record-Breaking Disc-A-ThonThe public event location for the longest-time-on-air radio record.Public LifeRay J. Williams with President John F. Kennedy, part of the political, radio, and television world he moved through.The Don Hodges LetterA family letter that captures what people felt after Ray helped them through hard personal moments.National AttentionThe Wall Street Journal feature on Ray J. and Rozan Williams and the mesquite wood business.The Wildcatter YearsRay in the oil patch, still betting on faith, work, and a good attitude.
The RJ Williams standard
This is why the name matters.
RJ Williams & Company is about leaving a legacy for more than one family. It exists to be a backup, a right hand, a support system, a guide when one is needed, and a steady friend in a hard moment.
People First
The lesson Ty still carries: take care of people, and people take care of you.
Faith and Attitude
Hard times were real, but they never got the final word in Ray's life.
Service That Lasts
The company name is a daily reminder to serve with character, not convenience.
Someone worth knowing
Why start RJ Williams & Company? Because people change when someone believes in them.
Ty did not start RJ Williams & Company just to build a bigger real estate company. The dream is to build people. Real estate happens to be the work Ty loves, and it fits the deeper mission because homes, land, business moves, family decisions, and financial pressure all ask the same question: will someone show up with competence and heart?
The hope is that one day a client, an agent, or a family looks back and says Ty saw the best in them before they could fully see it in themselves. That is the real legacy: helping people believe what they can do, then standing beside them while they do it.
Ray J. Williams showed Ty that attitude matters, positivity matters, motivation matters, and people matter most. That is the spirit of the company. It is about you. It has always been about you.
Ty's speech notes closing with the line that Ray J. Williams was someone worth knowing.
