Ralph Williams, 75, financial expert

Ralph Williams spent decades in the brokerage business, so finance was his forte.

He knew the economic run this country had enjoyed would cease. Witnessing its collapse saddened the Atlanta native so badly his son stopped sharing stock market reports with him.

“He was already sick,” said his son, John Martin Hicks Williams II of Atlanta.

Almonese Brown Clifton Williams said she and her husband of 18 years were born during the 1930s, so they viewed the good economic times and the bad from that perspective.

“We had grown up with that Depression-era mind set,” she said. “I knew that something wasn’t real, that [the economic heyday] wasn’t reality. Ralph felt the same way.”

Ralph Watson Williams Jr., 75, of Atlanta died Friday of kidney cancer at his home. A memorial service will be 2 p.m. Wednesday at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. Cremation Society of the South in Marietta is in charge of arrangements.

In 1955, Mr. Williams graduated with a business degree from the University of Georgia. He began his career in investment business that same year when he joined the municipal bond department of an Atlanta firm.

He would hold several financial posts before his 1988 retirement as executive vice president at what was then Shearson Lehman Brothers. He served on numerous financial boards, including the Chicago Board of Trade, the Georgia Securities Dealers Association and E.F. Hutton & Co.

Mr. Williams was a member of the “Buckhead Boys,” a group of locals who grew up in the city, who mostly had attended R.L. Hope Elementary School. They would gather to socialize during the Christmas holidays. Mr. Williams had an encyclopedic mind of all things ATL.

“He could tell you who was married to whom,” his wife said. “He knew all the big families, who founded what company and knew all the Coca-Cola Co.’s background. He was a walking encyclopedia of Atlanta.”

Mr. Williams valued education. He either served as a board member, volunteered or supported institutions monetarily, including LaGrange College and his alma mater — Sewanee Military Academy, now called St. Andrews-Sewanee School in Sewanee, Tenn.

Additional survivors include a son, retired Lt. Col. Ralph W. Williams III of San Antonio; a daughter, Nancy Jane Williams Morizio of Boston; two stepdaughters, Deborah Clifton Van der Lande of Lilburn and Nancy Clifton Kinzer of Decatur; a stepson, Brad Clifton of Dunwoody; a sister, Judy Williams Ellis of Atlanta and Hollywood, Fla.; and 10 grandchildren.