Singer Walter Williams, 77, a founding member of the R&B group the O’Jays, first experienced symptoms of MS while on tour with the band in 1983. As he told Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer in 2010, he initially attributed the numbness in his toe to new shoes, but then it spread to his foot and leg, and he knew there was a problem.
“I probably stopped in every hospital in every city,” Williams told The Plain Dealer, “trying to find out what was going on.”
Within two months, he was diagnosed with MS, but he kept it private for nearly three decades, even as he struggled to perform the spins and turns that characterize the O’Jays’ onstage choreography.
Early on, Williams turned to exercise and eating right to strengthen his body and fight back against MS. In addition, as he told Reuters in 2010, “What aggravated it was heat, so I took cold showers and had a bucket of ice onstage that I could put on my head.” Williams credits the drug Avonex (interferon beta-1a), which he started in 1999, with keeping him relapse-free; at one time, he was a paid spokesman for the company that makes it.
The O’Jays recorded such hits as “Back Stabbers” (1972), “Love Train” (1973), and “Use ta Be My Girl” (1978). While the band’s lineup changed over the years, Williams stayed consistent as one of the group’s lead singers, along with Eddie Levert, the childhood friend with whom Williams started the band in 1958. The O’Jays are still touring and performing in 2021.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, received BET’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, and entered the R&B Music Hall of Fame in 2013.