Cartoonist and worship leader Lorraine Williams has passed away.
After moving to Homer, she attended and graduated from Alaska Bible Institute in 1985. That same year, she married her husband, Darren Williams. Moving back to California in 1987, she became an adored worship leader with a wonderful community of friends.
She was sent back to Homer in 1999 with Darren to start Calvary Chapel of Homer (now Refuge). She loved Homer and soon started her cartoon series, “You Know You’re In A Small Town When.” Anybody who knew Williams was soon immortalized with a personal cartoon.
LORRAINE JOYCE WILLIAMS
October 25, 1959 – September 8, 2018
Also, she taught piano for 25 years with many adoring students, whose lives were permanently impacted. Williams was a loved artist, teacher and worship leader. Having many adventures and being loved by so many, she was on a never-ending spiritual journey that impacted all she came in contact with.
Lorraine began creating the You Know You’re in a Small Town When… comic strip in 1999 for the weekly Homer News. She continued that strip until at least 2001.
KTVA, a local TV station, on the noting of her death said,
Williams loved to make people laugh, but in 2003 she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Sometime after recovering from that first bout with cancer Lorraine resumed her comic strip career with You’re in Homer When…
This new version of her strip ran in the weekly Homer Tribune from, at least, 2014 to 2016. And, as seen above, the new strip is much more specific with living in the far north, but both strips have plenty of familiar situations to those of us who have lived or grown up in close-knit rural areas.
You Know You’re in a Small Town When… has been collected in two volumes,
while You’re in Homer When… is archived at Lorraine’s Brain Facebook page.
above: Lorraine and Darren Williams