Nine months after his offer to present the town with a youth club had been withdrawn, Mr. Arthur Williams, Rushden’s 76-year-old American friend and would-be benefactor, died suddenly in Massachusetts on Friday.

Mr. Williams visited Rushden in May and September last year, flying over on the second occasion especially to forward the scheme he had set in motion to have the old Moor Road School altered and enlarged at his own expense.

He was prepared to spend several thousand pounds, but withdrew the offer last October after hearing that Rushden youth leaders, though grateful and unwilling to close the door on his beneficence, could not agree with his fixed belief that the club should concentrate on young children.

Heart Attack

Following a heart attack just before Christmas, Mr. Williams went into hospital at Lebanon for a time. He then appeared to be getting on well, and Mr. G. H. Denton, his business colleague, and friend at Rushden, received a cheerful letter from him last week. “In his last letter to me,” Mr. Denton said, “he dwelt very much on his last visit to this country and how he would love to come again. He always relaxed here.

“I think he might have made an alternative offer to Rushden if he had lived. He was always anxious to leave some memorial in this town, and it was just a matter of what form it would take.

“I believe that only now, after his death, shall we know what he did for charity. He has formed a charitable foundation to carry on the work he started.

Safety Footwear

Mr. Williams had a long career as a boot manufacturer, heading important companies at Holliston – where he invented the safety footwear which Rushden craftsmen have made in large numbers – and Worcester, Mass. where he was chairman of Graton and Knight Company the world’s largest makers of industrial leather products including belts. He was also a director of International Safety Products.

Much of his wealth was spent on youth work. He founded youth clubs, play-grounds and schools for boys, and followed the work so closely that he developed strong and clear ideas on social problems.

Mr. Williams resided at North Grafton, Mass. He leaves a wife, Caroline, three sons and a daughter.