‘She was the standard’: Former Kansas City councilwoman dies at age 75
Former councilwoman Mary Williams-Neal, who served two terms in Kansas City’s 3rd District, has died at the age of 75, the mayor said Sunday.
Williams-Neal represented Kansas City’s 3rd District from 1995 until 2003. She was appointed a Board of Parks and Recreation commissioner in 2019 and was still serving the city in that capacity at the time of her death.
“Ms. Williams-Neal led an amazing life as a public servant, a business woman, a mother, a spouse, a parishioner, and friend,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas wrote Sunday evening on Twitter. “She had a heart for the young and optimism for our future.”
Lucas said that her life after politics “was not about money or influence.”
“It was about doing her all to make life better for the people,” he continued. “We were blessed to have her love and works here in Kansas City for generations.”
In 1995, after working as property manager for the Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance, Williams-Neal ran for public office and defeated former councilwoman Carol Coe for the 3rd District seat. She beat her again in 1999.
Current 3rd District Kansas City Councilwoman Melissa Robinson recalled first meeting Williams-Neal when Robinson was a teenager. Williams-Neal, a council member at the time, was holding a special meeting on gun violence, youth development and violence prevention.
Robinson called the former councilwoman, whom she considered a mentor, a “positive but authoritative force” with a vision for making the quality of life better for those living in the community.
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Once elected to council herself in 2019, Robinson sought Williams-Neal’s leadership. They spoke as recently as a few weeks ago about how to uplift the voices of residents so they have agency in the future of their community.
“She was just the community grandmother and the person that we relied upon for strength and guidance and encouragement,” Robinson said. “She was the standard as it relates to committing your life to service and also committing your life to family.”
Williams-Neal continued to live in the 3rd District and work in the community, most recently volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, Robinson said.
Kelvin Simmons, a former city council member for the 5th District and a Missouri Commissioner of Administration called Williams-Neal’s death a tragedy for Kansas City.
“She was a strong, yet silent woman of a few words, but her presence was always known as it related to the 3rd District,” said Simmons, who served alongside Williams-Neal on the council from 1997 to 2000. “But I remember her most as a person that loved her family, and she had a total commitment to her family. And that was always first with her.”
Williams-Neal grew up poor, one of 14 children in Mississippi. After graduating from high school at age 21 — her education prolonged by working the cotton fields — she moved to St. Louis on her own to take college clerical classes.
In 1969, when Williams-Neal moved to Kansas City to be with her dying mother, she found her first job working at the old Gates and Sons Bar-B-Q on 47th Street.
There, she greeted customers with a familiar, ”Hi, may I help you?”
It was a question she kept asking for the next half a century.
Family has not yet made public Williams-Neal’s cause of death. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
The Star’s Glenn E. Rice contributed.
