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     Gay Hollingsworth Williams has lived in the town of Minetto for the vast part of her adult years. It is in Minetto that she and her husband, long-time Minetto town judge and retired Minetto fourth-grade teacher Alan, raised their three boys in their renovated farm house with the chicken coop outback. It is from that farmhouse that many early morning hockey trips emanated, and many family gatherings and much celebrating occurred.

     That will soon end, as the Williams prepare to place their Minetto farmhouse, and its many memories, on the selling block. They will be relocating permanently to their newly renovated summer home on the shores of Sodus Bay in Fair Haven. And they hope to spend at least part of the winter in the sunnier and warmer climate of Florida. They deserve to enjoy their golden years.

     The memories they will leave in Minetto are bittersweet. The hardest thing they have had to face is the loss of their handsome, dashing and newly-married young Navy pilot son, their middle child, Nate, in a tragic jet fighter crash in California while on a Navy training mission. Nathan was entering the prime of life, at 28, and then, suddenly, he was taken in April 2012.

     It still makes no sense, and leaves a gaping hole in both Al and Gay's hearts, which will never be filled. But two years later, they are learning to cope and are rebounding from their devastating loss, and they are learning to navigate around it and continue to take joy in the relationships they have with their other two incredibly accomplished boys, Jeff, and Seth.

     Jeff, who married a local Oswego girl, the daughter of a doctor who is now becoming a doctor herself, has finished practicing law at one of the more prestigious law firms in New York City, and has relocated to Denver, Col., and new legal career adventures. Their son, Seth, who smiles a lot and is the musician of the family, lives in New York City, pursuing his own career objectives in the world of finance.

     The remaining brothers greatly enjoy each other's company, as evidenced by a recent sojourn together to New Orleans for some brotherly bonding and frivolity. All this while, their mother was off gallivanting around Europe to places like Rome and Monte Carlo.

     Gay will someday soon be ending her career as Oswego city attorney and joining the ranks of the permanent bridge-playing class. Her mother, the late Dorothy Hirschey, was a renowned bridge enthusiast who lived in Watertown. Her husband, Charles Hirschey, owned the Climax Manufacturing Company in Carthage, a paper-and box-manufacturing establishment that is still thriving today and is run by Gay's half siblings.

     Gay has had a long and varied legal career both in private practice and in public positions, as city attorney and as a confidential law assistant to former Supreme Court Judge Eugene F. (Pat) Sullivan Jr. She was my law partner for many years, and my city attorney for four years, a job which she says she found most challenging since I often tried to be my own city attorney, as well as mayor at times. I always valued her wise counsel, even if I didn't take her advice from time to time. Usually, I was the worst for ignoring it.

     Not content to simply practice law, she has served on the board of the Oswego city library and the Harborfest Board of Directors as well, where she contributed mightily to both organizations.

     She also had a long and successful career as a part-time business professor at SUNY Oswego, following in the footsteps of her one-time law partner, Dennis Hawthorne.

     My association with Gay dates back to our law school days, when we shared the commute from Oswego to Syracuse law school, often with another fellow student, Sue Zagame, whose husband ran against me for state Assembly and won. That made for some interesting commuting conversations. She was always an ardent Democrat, even when she worked for Pat Sullivan. She still is.

     Gay was raised by a single divorced mother, who later married a wealthy industrialist. She has a sister, Lee, who lives in Watertown and is a legal secretary.

     Al's pedigree includes being the son of a prominent Episcopalian cleric from Watertown, and the two married after Gay left Skidmore College in Saratoga and Al left the Navy after graduating from Hobart College in Geneva. The couple moved to Oswego, where they both finished their college educations, with Al getting his masters degree and going on to teach at Minetto, and Gay graduating and then going to law school and becoming an attorney.

     When the boys were born, it was Alan who took a paternity leave to raise them, while Gay stayed working as a law clerk. It was a question of economics — Gay's job paid more — and was somewhat rare in those days, but Alan proved to be not only a superb, devoted, capable and caring father, but his teaching and mentoring skills became even more finely honed when he returned to the classroom as the boys entered school.

     Those years when they lived in an apartment in the big old house at the corner of West Fifth and Seneca streets are still fresh in my memory, as are the many years we shared social and professional experiences. I have many stories to tell, and some are even printable. Time and space here does not permit, but one favorite story involves Gay and Alan and Charlotte and I going to a fancy Finger Lakes bed and breakfast, and somehow Charlotte made sure that the Williams got the servant's quarters adjacent to ours. We laughed a lot about that.

     In fact, we have laughed a lot about many things over the years, including Gay's propensity to "boogey down" hard at dances, and our shared enthusiasm for an occasional (or more) glass of wine.

     Gay Hollingsworh Williams is many things. She is a devoted mother to her sons, a talented and capable attorney and devoted wife. I can't attest to her bridge playing skills as I don't share that avocation, but if Gay is as committed in her bridge playing as she is in everything else she does, watch out central New York and Florida bridge playing world, a powerful force is about to become more powerful as the retirement years approach. For Gay Hollingsworth Williams, there is no such thing as a bridge too far to cross.