‘Everybody’s grandmother.’ Franklin deputy coroner who gave comfort for 35 years has died

Mavis Williams provided comfort and support to grieving families for 35 years in Franklin County.

The former chief deputy coroner died in Kennewick on Saturday at the age of 93.

Williams started her career when she was in her 40s. She was working as a telephone operator, when Louise Rabideau, the wife of the then county prosecutor, said her husband needed an assistant.

At the time, Franklin County was small enough that Prosecutor Jim Rabideau also served as the coroner.

“As time went by, I learned and got better,” Williams, then 82, told the Tri-City Herald shortly before she retired in 2012. “You have to be willing to work long hours, sometimes in the dead of night or to get people out of bed.”

She said the hardest part of her job was notifying people of their loved one had died. She tried to let officers handle that, but was always on hand to help families understand what would happen next.

Williams would later hire Dan Blasdel in 1992 and he would became the county’s first elected full-time coroner. Blasdel later said Williams had the compassion necessary for the sometimes grisly and emotional work.

“It’s like she’s everybody’s grandmother,” Blasdel said when Williams retired. As a Pasco graduate who spent her whole life in the area, she often knew the person who had died and family members.

“She has a calming effect on them,” he said.

But she also helped the living.

Once, she helped a wounded shooting victim get a motorized wheelchair from the Knights of Columbus.

“I saw her picture in the paper sitting in court in that wheelchair, and I thought, ‘Oh, nobody should have to live that way, going through what she did.’ We all worked on it together,” Williams told the Herald at the time.

Williams is survived by a daughter.

Mueller’s Tri-Cities Funeral Home, Kennewick, is handling her service arrangements.