Greater Cincinnati's business community saluted John P. Williams Jr. Friday night at the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner meeting.

        A Marine Corps color guard surprised the outgoing chamber president, presenting him with a U.S. flag. Mr. Williams, a decorated Marine Corps veteran, is retiring after more than 16 years of chamber leadership.

After being honored himself, John P. Williams Jr. gives his own salute to a Marine Corps. color guard Friday. (Jeff Swinger photo) | ZOOM |

        Mr. Williams said before the dinner — amid hugs and handshakes from well-wishers — that the evening's tributes evoked memories of a similar evening in 1967, when the chamber inducted his grandfather as a Great Living Cincinnatian.

        “And I'll think back on the extraordinary community — the extraordinary business community — because that's what makes the whole thing work,” he said.

        But some of those attending the dinner said Mr. Williams was what has made business in Cincinnati work for much of the last two decades.

        “He gets things done,” said Vickie Buyniski Gluckman, a former chamber board member. “He is defi nitely a fixture in this community.”

        Also Friday, as happened at Mr. Williams' first chamber dinner in 1967, two more community leaders were honored as Great Living Cincinnatians:

Hinton

Keating

        • Milton W. Hinton is the retiring president of the Cincinnati chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A New Jersey native, Mr. Hinton came here in 1970 to teach at the University of Cincinnati. In the three decades since, he has earned the respect of the business establishment.

        • William J. Keating is a former congressman and publisher of The Cincinnati Enquirer. The Cincinnati native has been a City Council member, a Hamilton County judge and a trustee of both UC and Xavier University.
       
       

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