KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Remy Williams loved the NAIA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
His mom, Colette Fry Williams, jokes that the family — including Remy’s brother, Easton — could never have a normal spring break, because Remy volunteered at the annual small college basketball tourney at Municipal Auditorium so much.
“Remy started as a ball-chaser when he was 9 years old,” said his dad, Marty Williams. “Every year would be at the NAIA tournament. I think one year he worked 31 games, every game there was. As he got older, they made him a media runner, locker room attendant, he worked in the hospitality [room]; Remy and the NAIA became family.”
Colette gets a kick out of it these days.
“He would just kind of wander around down there, and he was in his element,” Colette said. “It's weird now to think about dropping your young kid off.”
Remy, a noted autograph hound, developed an unusually strong connection with the Georgetown (Kentucky) men’s team and its former head coach, Happy Osborne, who invited him into the team locker room after a half-hour conversation and had his team sign things for the 10-year-old fan.
“The following year, we're down at the NAIA again, walking through the corridor, and here comes Georgetown and Happy Osborne,” Marty said. “Remy, he goes, ‘Dad, there's Happy.’ I go, ‘Yeah, I know, Remy. He probably won't remember you.’ And about that time, Happy goes, ‘Hey, Remington.’ So it was sealed in fate, the Georgetown connection.”
The Tigers’ current coach, Chris Briggs, who led Georgetown back to the NAIA Sweet Sixteen, met Remy at the 2008 tourney as an assistant on Osborne’s staff.
“Over the years, he would come hang out with us at the hotel, go to Arthur Bryant's with us, go to team meals with us,” Briggs said.
He would help student managers launder practice jerseys and even became something of a national tourney lucky charm for the team, which went on a Final Four run after inviting Remy to sit on the Tigers’ bench.
“After that, he was always on the bench with Georgetown,” Marty said.
Remy’s love ran so deep, in fact, that he went to Georgetown for his undergraduate studies, earning degrees in business administration and Spanish.
Remy, who graduated from Georgetown College in 2019, even served as student body president and the commencement speaker at the private liberal arts college with an enrollment of roughly 1,500 just north of Lexington, Kentucky.
“[He] was Mr. Georgetown. Unbelievable young man,” Briggs said.
Remy later enrolled in an MBA program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and law school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he was a member of UMKC’s Law Review and Honor Court.
Former Gov. Mike Parson appointed Remy as the UM System’s student representative on the Board of Curators in July 2020.
Shortly after his UMKC graduation, Remy went to grab something to eat while studying for the bar exam in June 2022, when he was killed by a drunk driver who ran a red light at West 75th Street and Ward Parkway. He was 25 years old.
“Worst call of my life — still is,” Marty said, fighting back tears. “I mean, you don't expect something like that.”
The driver, who had two prior DUI convictions, was sentenced to 13 years in prison in January 2023.
“There's trauma, and I'll never get over it, but I get up every day, and I realized that my passion is to keep going because he can’t,” Colette said.
During a mission trip to Guatemala with the Pembroke Hill football team, Remy fell in love with the Central American nation, and it became another of his passions.
“That was the spark for Remy,” Colette said. “... From that trip, Guatemala got his heart. And after that trip, he made it a point to go back in the summers to work on his Spanish, but also he went to work in villages to teach English.”
After Remy’s death, the family established Remy’s Legacy Academy in Guatemala, which provides holistic education for more than three dozen children.
“It’s a tiny, two-room schoolhouse, but everybody has a sense of ‘wow’ when they walk up these stairs,” Colette said. “When you arrive, there's a big avocado tree and a lime tree that greet you, and you feel happy, you feel safe — a lot of things — and I feel that's Remy, you know.”
Remy’s parents also will feel that same spirit when Georgetown takes the court Thursday night at Municipal Auditorium.
“Georgetown's family, they’ve become our family,” Marty said.
It’s a place that knows what it means to “Live Like Remy.”
“I've never taken this off,” Briggs said, gesturing to a blue band on his left wrist given to him by Remy’s family at his funeral. “‘Live Like Remy,’ it lives through our program. He left Georgetown in 2019 and came back out here to UMKC Law School, but people on our campus still talk about Remington Williams all the time — about the impact he had, the people he made friends with, the lives he touched.”
The NAIA Men’s Basketball Tournament continues in downtown Kansas City through Tuesday, when a national champion will be crowned.
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