BY TERI R. WILLIAMS | PHOTOS PROVIDED BY DAPHNE WALKER & THE TANNER WILLIAMS FOUNDATION Living Beyond this World Continuing the legacy their son started through his own kind actions, Doug and Lisa Williams created a Foundation that provides the youth in our community a place to experience all nature has to offer. On the day of his son’s funeral, Doug and Lisa Williams encountered both grief for the loss of their son and a new realization of the gift his life had been to so many. One young person after another came to them with stories. It wasn’t enough that their son loved the outdoors, he had to share it. “Tanner’s passion was hunting and fishing,” said Doug. “He really loved everything to do in the outdoors. But when we went somewhere, we had to take a whole army with us.” On May 26, 2013, one week after graduating from Toombs County High School, Tanner was killed in an automobile accident. He was 18 years old. The day of the funeral, the family heard the same thing again and again. “Tanner taught me how to hunt, and helped me get my first big deer…Tanner took me fishing… Tanner stopped and pulled me out of the ditch.” “I knew a few of the kids, but not most of them,” said Doug. “They talked about how Tanner would take them hunting or fishing after school and just have a good time. He taught a lot of kids how to hunt. He had a gift for hunting. Many of them would never have gotten the opportunity to experience that if he had not taken them.” A couple of months later, Doug and Lisa along with other family members and friends began the Tanner Williams Foundation as a way to carry Tanner’s legacy. “We wanted to carry on with the way Tanner reached out to these kids,” said Doug. The Foundation began by leasing a three-hundred-acre tract of land in the Ohoopee area. “I’ve been hunting on that land for almost 40 years, and Tanner hunted there all his life. We added another tract a year ago bringing it to about 550 acres altogether.” As word of the Foundation spread, calls began to come from all around. “Some of the kids are from single homes or don’t have a father figure in the home. But there are also 84 Toombs County Magazine
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