Throughout his life, Willie A. Lacy Jr., relished his role as big brother to an abundance of family members, friends and acquaintances.
Mr. Lacy came into the role honest, when -- at a tender age -- he had to care for five younger siblings while his mother worked as a domestic.
"He was in charge. He did the cooking, got us up to go to school. He took good care of us," said his brother James Lacy, of Berkeley, Calif.
A young Willie Lacy also helped family and friends negotiate the sometimes difficult racial landscape of the Deep South, recalled James Lacy. Those experiences served Willie Lacy well in his career as an investigator at the Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, for more than 20 years.
Willie A. Lacy Jr., of Stone Mountain, died Dec. 8 at his home after a lengthy illness. He was 81. Mr. Lacy chose to be cremated and his ashes were scattered at Mount Shasta near McCloud, Calif. A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Hospice Atlanta, 1244 Park Vista Drive, N.E. Atlanta.
Mr. Lacy was born in the small town of Huttig, Ark., in 1930. He moved with his mother and younger siblings to Monroe, La., when he was around 8 years old.
He was drafted into the Army in 1950 and fought in major battles in Korea. He wrote letters about those battles -- particularly about fighting during the vicious winter of 1951 -- to his brother James and to a friend he grew close to during basic training at Fort Ord in California.
"Because of discrimination and poverty, we had to be men at an early age," said Henry Dishroom, who also came from Monroe. "We both felt that we came a long way. Everything he got, he earned," Mr. Dishroom said of Mr. Lacy, whom he called gregarious and outgoing.
After Korea, Mr. Lacy settled in McCloud, in northern California, and worked in a lumber mill. In the early 1960s, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and worked for the postal service while he earned a bachelor's degree in social sciences and an MBA from UC Berkeley, according to family members.
He started his professional career in human resources at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, starting as a computer technician and advancing to the post of employee development administrator.
Mr. Lacy moved to Atlanta in 1978 and he went to work as an investigator for the Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights.
"He had a job to do and he did it well," said Philip Lyde, who led Mr. Lacy's team, which investigated discrimination in public schools throughout the Southeast.
"Anything to do with helping, Lacy enjoyed. That was his calling," said Mr. Lyde's wife, Joyce. She said Mr. Lacy had introduced the couple.
Mr. Lacy was an African-American renaissance man, said his nephew Brian Murphy. He loved to travel, was an avid fisherman, boater, gardener and cook. And he loved jazz and the blues.
Mr. Lacy always had a job on the side, said Mr. Murphy, of St. Louis, who says he was inspired to start his construction business by his ‘Uncle Junior's' entrepreneurial streak. "He was always generous and always trying to help anyone improve their life."
"Amen to that" says longtime friend Joanne Ford, who met Mr. Lacy in the 1980s when she was a 23-year-old clerk typist at the General Accounting Office in Atlanta. When Mr. Lacy learned that she didn't have a coat, he went to Rich's and bought her one. He gave her money to get her hair done so that she'd fit better in the professional setting, she said. "He became my Paw Paw from that point on," she said. And not just to Ms. Ford. He relished his role of support to his extended family in Atlanta that included numerous single moms and their children, she said.
Additional survivors include sister Janie Murphy, of McCloud, Calif., and two granddaughters from his son Raymond, who preceded him in death; two great-granddaughters and two great-grandsons, all from the San Francisco Bay Area.
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