A well-connected Boynton Beach woman known as Ms. Lena spent her last 25 years living with a man her family never knew to be her husband.
Yet when Lena Rahming died in February 2011 at 66, Willie Edward Williams told the hospital he was. Then he told the funeral home the same thing, the family says. He continued living in Rahming's Delray Beach house and acquired her $400,000 estate.
Rahming's son sued him last year, and Williams produced a document proving their marriage, nearly 26 years ago in a church in Nassau, the Bahamas, by a pastor now deceased.
The family dispute has caused a headache for city officials, who wish to name the Boynton Beach Head Start Center after its longtime director. On June 12, the Boynton Beach Head Start Center will be named the Lena Rahming Center — not Rahming-Williams, the city decided. City commissioners last fall opted not to wade into the mess and picked the name people knew her by.
"I'm the oldest one living, and I don't want [Williams'] name put on nothing belonging to my sister," Catherine North, 84, of Miami, said. She's the eldest of the McKinney siblings, who came from the Bahamas and settled in South Florida.
Rahming became an advocate for children of diverse backgrounds and for low-income families.
She founded the Palm Beach County Head Start program and led it for more than 12 years. She kept close to the children she helped and took the affectionate moniker "Ms. Lena."
Then those children became voters.
"She was a tremendous asset to me as a politician for the reason that she understood how to get people to vote," said U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Delray Beach, who called on Lena Rahming to help his political career after they met at an event in Boynton Beach.
Primarily, Hastings said, she was an "icon" for devoting her life to helping people.
Her son, Glenn Rahming, 49, says her compassion drew Williams, whom she met after her divorce in the 1980s. Williams moved in with the family when Glenn Rahming was 12 and worked odd jobs.
"To me, he became a charity case," he said.
Williams could not be reached, despite phone calls, notes at his door and a message left with a woman inside who said he wasn't home. His Delray Beach attorney, Wilbur V. Chaney, could not be reached, either.
In court filings, Williams said the two were married at New Annex Baptist Cathedral in Nassau on Oct. 2, 1986. He presented a death certificate that identified Williams as her husband. He also says Glenn Rahming is not qualified to receive his mother's estate and disputes its value.
"The estate is not worth approximately $400,000, and the petitioner has no evidence of such value," his attorney wrote, listing a value nearly four times smaller.
He also provided a document from the Bahamian government recording the marriage.
"He gave a phony document," said Glenn Rahming, who now lives in Maryland and is seeking his mother's house, her land and valuables. The case is still open in Palm Beach County Court.
In court records, Glenn Rahming included a signed letter from the Rev. Mitchell E. Jones, pastor of the New Annex Baptist Cathedral, who said he conducted a "careful search" of the church records and found no marriage. He could not be reached by phone last week.
A note from the registrar general of the Bahamas also said a search found no marriage, according to filings by Glenn Rahming.
Speaking by phone on Friday, North said her sister wouldn't want "Williams" on the Head Start center she devoted so many years to.
"She'd turn over in her grave," she said.
