By Dixon Bledsoe 
If you truly want to understand a person, just look at his play list.
Rick Williams finds peace in the music of Mark Harris’ The Line Between the Two.
As he climbs more steps, some 25,000 stories to date in Portland’s “Big Pink” alone, the music and memories of his mother drive him higher.
His mother, Liz Jopp, died of cancer in 1989, but her legacy of resilience is carried on in her son. He and his wife, Karen, have lived in Silverton for 30 years. For 26 years, he has been a paramedic/firefighter for Portland Airport Fire and Rescue.
He climbs stairs to fight for those surviving or dying of cancer, raising money in the process to fight the disease.
But it all traces back to his mother.
“She was the most incredibly precious person next to my wife. Her perseverance was my rock, along with my Christian faith,” he said with a clarity that is unwavering. “My mother was a single mom who had me at 16, a recipe for failure in Biloxi, Mississippi or most anywhere else for that matter. But I never remember being hungry, and always recall a good home, a loving home.”
Rick recalls a mother of amazing character who would return to high school and graduate in 1968, which he would attend.
“She did not have a lick of prejudice. I remember her wonderful sense of purpose and sense of humor. Weeks before her death she pulled me close and started reciting what sounded like numbers, I could hardly understand her,” Williams said with a hearty laugh. “For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the numbers meant until it dawned on me that they were lottery numbers and she thought they could be the winning ones.”
What makes him want to climb more stairs, like the upcoming climb on Feb. 8 to the top of the Empire State Building, with 86 stories and 1,576 steps?
“When I turned 47 in 2005, I realized my mother had died at the same age. I decide to participate in the Seattle Firefighter Stairclimb, which I now call ‘the beast.’ I started it then and it keeps me going,” Williams said.
So far the pledges he has received for the previous 10 stair climbs have totaled more than $3,000. He climbs always for his mother, and for this climb in honor of long-time Canyonview Executive Director Dale Price, who died of cancer in 2011.
He climbs for those who don’t have a choice to stop, for those who require endurance to go on every day.
His causes and beneficiaries for the Empire State building climb are Canyonview Camp and Candlelighters for Children with Cancer. Donations of $50 or more will be placed into a drawing to win a free week at Eagle Crest Resort in Redmond, Ore.
While it is true that the toll firefighting takes on a body is tough, he knows the day will come when retirement looms.
Williams, who is driven by his Christian faith and the love of the people who have had an impact in his life, will not retire, but “re-fire.” As he quietly says, “The word retirement is not in the Scripture. The question is not about retiring, but how the Lord chooses to re-fire my heart.”
To follow Rick’s upcoming climb and to donate go his Facebook Event page at ‘Rick’s Empire State Building – Stairclimb Page.
