Rufus M.G. Williams, retired businessman

Rufus M.G. Williams, a retired Baltimore businessman and pilot, died Sunday from heart failure at his Glyndon home. He was 87.

Rufus MacQ. Gibbs Williams was the son of Robert Wood Williams, a maritime attorney and first chairman of the Maryland Port Authority, and Helen MacQueen Gibbs Williams.

Mr. Williams was born in Baltimore and raised on Wendover Road in Guilford. He attended the Gilman School and graduated in 1949 from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1955 from the University of Virginia.

He began his business career at the old Robert Garrett and Sons, Baltimore investment bankers, and later joined Davison Chemical Co., a division of W.R. Grace & Co.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Williams purchased the J.S. Young Co. in Canton. The Boston Street firm began producing licorice in 1869, and also manufactured dyes and tanning extracts. He sold the business in the 1980s and retired.

Mr. Williams, who had earned a pilot’s license, was in a partnership that owned a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza and a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron.

He enjoyed playing golf, tennis, hunting, sailing and skiing.

He was a summer resident of Northeast Harbor, Maine, and a member of the Northeast Harbor Golf Club, the Northeast Harbor Fleet and the Northeast Harbor Tennis Club. He was also a member of the U.S. Senior Golf Association.

Mr. Williams was a longtime member of the Maryland, Elkridge and Green Spring Valley hunt clubs.

He was a communicant of St. John’s Episcopal Church Western Run Parish in Reisterstown, where a celebration of life service was held Thursday.

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, the former Sheila Janney; two sons, Rufus M.G. Williams Jr. of Camden, Maine, and Richard Janney Williams of Mount Pleasant, S.C.; two daughters, Barbara W. Horneffer of Butler and Sheila W. Fisher of Monkton; and six grandchildren.