Edward Williams, the Ellsworth native who became the first black graduate of the Kansas University School of Medicine in 1941, died Sunday in Muskegon, Mich. He was 94.

“He said he really wasn’t thinking about being the first; he just really wanted to be a doctor,” said Jacquie Rhodes, Williams’ niece.

Williams was born May 13, 1912, in the small town of Ellsworth, the second of four children.

In school, he excelled in athletics and academics, Rhodes said. He ran track and was a pole vaulter. He was the valedictorian of his graduating class.

His first love was classical piano, but thinking that he couldn’t make money as a musician, Williams pursued medicine.

He attended KU from 1931 to 1935 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1936, he entered KU’s medical school. At the time, black students were allowed to attend the school for only the first two years and forced to transfer primarily because of clinical training and concerns of black students examining white patients.

Efforts by then-Gov. Walter Huxman and the Kansas Board of Regents ended the segregation policy, and Williams went on to be the first graduate of the school.

“My uncle was very, very private, very, very nonassuming,” Rhodes said. “He never made a big deal about any of his accomplishments.”

After military service, Williams landed in Muskegon to serve a community in need of a black physician. He opened his first practice in a low-income housing development and at first lived in his office. He would travel to patients’ homes on foot or by bicycle.

“He was a very giving person,” Rhodes said. “It just came so naturally.”

Williams didn’t marry or have children.

Rhodes recalled that her uncle talked about his first real love and said he would have married her, but wanted to wait until he established himself. By the time he had done so, she had married someone else.

“He married his profession,” Rhodes said.

Forty years after Williams’ graduation, education officials and others honored him at an event in 1991. The medical school on Thursday noted his accomplishments again. Barbara Atkinson, executive vice chancellor of KU Medical Center, called Williams “one of the institution’s most influential graduates.”

“Our thoughts go out to the Williams family as we remember the courage and commitment of a true pioneer,” she said.