Getting to know Joyce Williams, Cashmere’s newest City Councilmember

CASHMERE — When Cashmere Mayor Jim Fletcher stopped at Joyce Williams’ Rotary table this fall and mentioned that Position 3 on the City Council looked like it might go uncontested, she didn’t go hunting for a candidate.

“It was like the light bulb went on — ‘Oh, I could do that,’” she said.

By the election count as of 4:04 p.m. on November 6, she had done it, winning the seat and setting herself up to be sworn in after the New Year. For Williams, 76, it’s less a career pivot than the next logical extension of what she’s already been doing in town for decades: Showing up, knowing people and quietly taking care of them.

“I bring connection. I bring influence,” she said. “I’ve lived here 37 years. I know … I mean, my kids went through the school system.”

A life woven through Cashmere

Williams first lived in the valley in 1974–75, back when she was working for what was then the Deaconess–St. Anthony’s hospital system during the years it was consolidating into what later became the Central Washington Health Consortium. She and her husband, the late Rev. Paul Williams of Christ Center, bounced to Portland, San Jose and Harrisburg, Pa., before coming back for good in 1988. They raised their kids in the hill neighborhood above town, looking out over orchards. Paul died nine years ago, and Joyce stayed — these days in one of the Quail Lane condos.

Christ Center eventually hired her onto staff. She’s ordained and still does what she calls “congregational care” — counseling, benevolence, home and hospital visits, meals and, yes, flowers.

If you’ve seen her around town, it may have been with flowers. Williams is active with Lillies of the Valley, the nonprofit that’s helped dress up community events — a memory-making event for the Decker girls at Town Toyota Center, the make-your-own-arrangements Saturday at the Cashmere Riverside Center — and she trades her labor there for flowers she can deliver to people recovering from surgery or celebrating a new baby.

“Every day is different,” she said. “That’s what I like.”

Her civic orbit is wide. She’s on the board of Cashmere Rotary — “they even call us the Singing Rotary,” she laughed — and this year she hosted one of the seven women business owners who visited from Kyrgyzstan. She’s volunteered at the Cashmere Museum and Pioneer Village, and she still turns out for school events, in part because her grandkids are in the district and in part because she admires Superintendent Glenn Johnson’s numbers on “minimal expenditure for maximum outcome.”

Ties to local arts

If you go to Leavenworth Summer Theater, you may even already know her family without realizing it. Williams helped start the theater years ago — “I ran the box office the first two years,” she said — and her daughter, soprano Rachel Powers, has been a regular in productions like “The Sound of Music” and “The Marvelous Wonderettes.” Her other daughter, Devorah Nelson, now leads Stage Kids after Michelle McCormick stepped down. The upshot is that Williams shows up to a lot of theater.

An author, too

Here’s the part that didn’t fit on the ballot: Williams is also a published author of Christian-leaning historical romances, writing as Joyce (Brandt) Williams. Her Amazon author page lists titles in her “Rose & the Ring” historical line, including “The Lady Rose” and “Lady Mareska,” with the bio noting that she lives in the Wenatchee Valley and continued writing after Paul’s passing.

In the interview she said simply, “I’m published. I have eight historical novels published.” That background matters, because it means your newest councilmember-elect is already used to researching, listening and telling a community-sized story.

Why she ran

Unlike some challengers this year, Williams didn’t get into the race to make a point or to unseat anyone. “I didn’t know I was running against anyone,” she said. When she filed, the incumbent hadn’t yet re-upped. They’ve sat in the same room at council meetings since, but Williams said she hasn’t actually met her — council nights end and she’s off to her next commitment.

That rhythm will change once she’s sworn in. “I’m going to rearrange my schedule,” she said. Being on council, in her mind, means staying afterward and hearing people out.

What she thinks Cashmere needs

Williams’ view of town is exactly what you’d expect from someone who has pastored here, hosted here (she collects china settings and throws tea parties for ninth-grade girls) and raised kids here.

“I think people want a safe town where our kids can still ride their bikes,” she said. “Us older people can still walk alone and not be worried. We want wild animals taken care of.”

Then she pointed to something Cashmere does unusually well: Volunteerism. “Our fire department has one paid person and 60 volunteers. That tells you we care about our community.”

Asked what would feel like a win one year into office, she didn’t talk about a single ordinance or capital project.

“I think if I could make people aware that if we all pitch in and work together, we can accomplish a lot of things that we don’t have to raise taxes to do,” she said. That might look like encouraging neighbors to keep up their properties, helping a resident get to the right organization for food or clothes, or joining community efforts like the SHINE projects her church does each year.

Not a politician

She doesn’t see herself as a politician, and the mayor’s advice suited her fine: “The mayor told me, when people present an issue, don’t say, ‘I’ll look into that,’ … say, ‘That’s something for the committee to consider.’”

“I’ve had to do that at the church for years,” she said. “You don’t say, ‘I’ll run with this.’ No, you say, ‘I’ll take that to the staff.’”

That means Williams isn’t into making promises that she doesn’t know for sure that she can keep, and that’s a habit that many politicians have yet to learn.

How to reach her

One thing voters learned during the campaign is that Williams actually answers her phone. She had put her number on her paperwork, and when it rang, she picked up. “I’m a small-town girl,” she said. She grew up on a farm in North Dakota, lived a year in Australia as a teenager, finished high school and college in Seattle, then chose to make Cashmere home.

That’s the frame she’s bringing to the dais after the New Year: Someone who already knows “most of the people who care about our town,” who believes the council shouldn’t have to do everything by itself, and who also — in between meetings — writes novels set in the same kind of close-knit, value-heavy communities she’s trying to keep Cashmere being.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media