In letters home, she described being adrift, telling her dad she felt "like a lost athlete looking for a sport." It hurts too much. CLAUDIA WILLIAMS FOUND comfort wearing her dad's favorite red flannel shirt. "It was a bright, sunny day, and I was there.". If they bit him, he'd tap their beaks to scold them, as if they loved him with the same intellectual fervor he loved them. She feels closest to him fishing but has been only once or twice since he died. "She didn't like hot dogs, but she loved to see her father smile, so she ate them every time. New. Her friends at Springfield College didn't realize her father was Ted Williams until she asked some guys who played baseball to teach her to throw; the Red Sox had requested she toss out a first pitch as a surprise to her father, and she didn't want, as she told them, "to throw like a girl." Hooked, she decided to play at the local junior college. John-Henry bought a dialysis machine so Ted could get the treatment at night. His father drifted on the edge of it. CLAUDIA WILLIAMS, NOW 43, rarely tells anyone about her relation to Ted Williams. See Photos. TED WILLIAMS HATED his childhood home, leaving before graduation the same as Claudia, never going back. For a season, at 37 years old, she competed against teenagers. Major Support for American Masters provided by. She is laughing in the kitchen, a lazy Sunday morning. "Daddy would be so proud," she said. Big day in a young fisherman's life. The outside world slipped away, and the universe shrank to the three of them: a dad looking for absolution, a son who needed a dad to show him how to be a man, a daughter who'd always craved a family, which they at long last became. In the night, he heard a kitten crying, and after searching for and finding her, he tucked the cat, fleas and all, into his bag.At home, he brought her back to health and felt hurt when she wanted to roam outside. Finally he got his first fish. "I hate time," she says.She lives in a sprawling Florida community popular among retirees whose first resident and primary pitchman was her father. trib.al/cdisTxM. He tore them into pieces and threw the pieces away. It's a mess, all of it. Other times he'd listen.These private discussions would eventually become public, fitting into an existing narrative. He pushed and explained his idea, working cryonics into those dinner-table evenings. Driving back from visiting Ted's compound in Canada, Dolores and John-Henry stopped in Maine to spend the night in sleeping bags at a rest stop. "Just a part of the collection of artifacts fills a storage room to its 10-foot ceiling. As the founding CEO, Claudia built Manifest MedEx (MX) into the largest nonprofit health data network in California. The argument remains frustrating for everyone: Claudia can't prove they followed her father's wishes, and Bradlee can't prove they didn't. "JESUS CHRIST!" "Daddy would sit right here," she says, laughing. As published for the West End Magazine online. "He needed him so badly. "Daddy would sit right here," she says, laughing. For years, she'd thought her father had stopped maturing when he became famous at 20, and now they'd both reached his emotional age, equals and running buddies for the first time. I love you. He'd been retired for eight years. It hurts too much. Former players including Baseball Hall of Famers Willie McCovey and Wade Boggs, three-time All-Star Jim Kaat, and current Cincinnati Reds first baseman and former National League MVP Joey Votto share how Williams philosophy, commitment to greatness and approach to hitting influenced them in the film. she replied.Ted talked with Bobby-Jo moments later. Soon Ted gave them praise that would never reach their ears. David Ortiz is executive producer for Big Papi Productions. He asked her what she wanted as a gift, and she said she wanted time. View the profiles of professionals named " claudia Williams" on LinkedIn. He died in 2002 and is frozen at 7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, Arizona. Love had control over him. "Doc, if you can give me any extra time with these guys, let's do it," he said. He knew he might not live through his procedure, and at the end of his life, he'd finally put aside his own wishes for theirs. Claudia Williams investigates a kind if complicated digital community, Dont know where to go next? Every day, she drives on Ted Williams Memorial Parkway. CBK GROUP/AP IMAGES. Her spirit lightens when she does his voice, everything lit from the inside. With Ted's remains in stasis -- they didn't hold a memorial service, not even a small, private one -- she hasn't moved past grief into acceptance and peace. CLAUDIA WILLIAMS FOUND comfort wearing her dad's favorite red flannel shirt. I love you. Claudia Williams is a Journalist at The South Burnett Times based in Kingaroy, Queensland. He never mentioned a pregnant Dolores, and he never mentioned the boy. At the end, jealous and estranged, Bobby-Jo raged, leaving bizarre voice mails on Abel's answering machine: "This is Barbara Joyce Ferrell. As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work. Perhaps one day we might see him again. It's thick, jammed with newsletters, receipts, contracts and John-Henry's handwritten notes taken during a visit to the cryonics facility. He had a cousin who was murdered by her husband, and a criminal brother who died young and angry. But I love him.' About once a year, Abel would get called to the house to mediate a bizarre dispute, usually about Ted showering to ward off infection, or taking his medicine regularly. It is really, really difficult to be the queen on the chessboard. I live right behind you. It makes me angry, of course. His presence seemed real. Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived is an Albert M. Tapper Production in association with Nick Davis Productions, Major League Baseball, Big Papi Productions, and THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS LLCs American Masters for WNET. With just days to go before kick-off, Qatar banned beer from its World Cup stadiums. Investigators came to the house and interviewed both men, asking whether Ted was being made to sign autographs against his will, before determining there was no abuse. Ad. It was a do-over. They tried to understand his rages, and why they'd even been born. An experimental Alzheimers drug called lecanemab has been hailed as an historic breakthrough. On June 14, he wrote about his son: "His casting is better than I expected so he must have been practicing some. A man at a card table was reading palms. For a season, at 37 years old, she competed against teenagers. And we actually showed him that not only was he good at it, we wanted him and we said, 'You can do this, Dad.' She says Ted sighed, agreed to go along with their wishes and signed a piece of paper agreeing to be frozen. There was not that big a crowd that day, only about 10,000 but they were all standing and you knew what they wanted and can you deliver in that situation? He never lost his temper or spun off in a rage. But something happened in the months after our first visit. Claudia began to cry, and Ted's voice cracked when he tried to comfort her, as she'd taught him to do. Where does that leave first-time buyers? Something happened to Ted Williams' face when he laughed; most pictures show him stern, in concentration, but when he giggled, his jowls would hang and his eyes would squint and he looked, for just a moment, nothing like one of the most famous men in America. Britney Spears has rarely been out of the headlines this year. "Right from the start, we knew we weren't gonna have much time, you know? The dining table used to be there, by the window. F---. In a closet next to her garage, her father's Orvis 8.3-foot, 7-weight graphite fly rod leans on a wall. Maybe she'd just find ways to exhaust herself, and find obsessions to occupy her mind, day after day, year after year, never breaking free of her father and never feeling as if she had honored his memory either. Her brother lobbed one wild, but Claudia kicked her leg and delivered a strike. "You have to have a child," he told her. Liz Truss will go down in history as Britains shortest serving prime minister. "Congratulations," it began.CLAUDIA GRINNED WHEN I walked back into her house the day after she was accepted to Duke. "You have to have a child," he told her.The idea is strange, yet mechanically quite simple: She'd need a surrogate mother and a name. The series is a production of The WNET Group. There are 400+ professionals named "Claudia Williams", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. What happens to all the beer? She did a wonderful job connecting with team members and using examples that impact our day to day. It looks like youre using an ad blocker that may prevent our website from working properly. "Did you see the frog?" "See if you can help John-Henry get a job," Williams asked. Seeking more fulfillment, I . Ted drove her back to her mom's house in Miami once, and when they arrived, it transpired that Bobby-Jo had forgotten her keys, and Ted, raging, kicked her out of the car and left her standing alone there in the dark, exactly as his mother had done to him. Ted, exhausted and struggling to keep his eyes open, sort of laughed, then his son helped him to the recliner where he slept. At home, he brought her back to health and felt hurt when she wanted to roam outside. Even in her moment of triumph, something worried her, a neurotic fear. This depiction of her brother by an author she cooperated with haunts Claudia, who believes her dad knew better, and she feels like the only one left to defend John-Henry.After Ted died, friends told reporters that Williams disagreed with his son's obsession. They visited Alcatraz, and Ted used a Walkman for the first time, befuddled by the technology, and they all laughed. Contact Number She left home at 16, moving to Europe to finish high school, working as a nanny, training for triathlons, living in France, then Switzerland, then Germany, any place where nobody'd ever heard of Ted Williams. I said well if there'''s a goddam Christ, this is the time ol''' Teddy Ballgame needs ya. Investigators came to the house and interviewed both men, asking whether Ted was being made to sign autographs against his will, before determining there was no abuse. She keeps many things locked away. She didn't like hot dogs, but she loved to see her father smile, so she ate them every time. The only thing left is a frayed set of Ted's beloved Encyclopedia Britannica, which he bought after retiring, spending hours scouring them for the knowledge he felt ashamed not to have. Bobby-Jo came into the world first, in the middle of his career. ", Love had control over him. PBS station members can view many series, documentaries and specials via PBS Passport. Now she just needed to get into a graduate program, do years of studying and open her own nurse practitioner's office. "Bobby-Jo lashed out, and Claudia hid, and John-Henry got as close as he could. When the premier of the British Virgin Islands was arrested in a drugs sting in Miami, what did British government officials know about the operation? by Wright Thompson, Amid the absurdity and violence orbiting around him, Manny Pacquiao is the consummate showman whose desire is to entertain, often at any cost. "Then John-Henry read a book about cryonics. Ha. With no children of her own, she's destined to remain a daughter. Every year, she plants a tree in their memory, and leaving her dad's house one day, she sees that one of John-Henry's trees is dying. "He called Claudia a "c---" too, and a "fat bitch," and told John-Henry he was the "abortion I wanted." There are 300+ professionals named "Claudia Williams", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. He should be cremated, his ashes "sprinkled at sea off the coast of Florida where the water is very deep. When she sees him, she stretches out her arms. "What does Dad think?" Claudia remembers growing up with a mother increasingly bitter over her failed love affair, on a Vermont farm without a television, isolated by their environment and the fame of their absent father. Sign Up. Weve looked into its history. She asked for money and begged for help. Rarely has a gesture been as misunderstood as taking the knee. Now, the stakes have been raised even higher with the release of Brisbane's very own Monopoly on Wednesday October 19. TONY TOMSIC/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGE, THIS STORY BEGAN two years ago, when I reached out to Claudia about meeting at her home in Hernando. It is named Crusoe, and as the movie ended, Eric's girls looked over and saw Claudia weeping, shoulders rocking up and down, distraught over the boy taking the dragon out to sea. In this episode James is joined by Tortoise reporter Claudia Williams, head of programming Mark St Andrew and investigations editor Alexi Mostrous. "Still do. His will, which he wrote near the end of the fishing act of his life, made his wishes very clear. She got it as a gift. Every now and again, she sighs. Email. "Even now, Abel laughs about the scene he'd find upon entering the house. People named Claudia Williams. ""I'm the one who reached down to keep pulling you up," Abel says, driving. He needed more time. Eric rushed home and found her sitting at the computer, quiet and solemn, validated for perhaps the first time in her life. Once, when Abel was flying to San Diego to meet with the Upper Deck baseball card company, Ted pulled him aside. Terrified of Ted raging at them, John-Henry quietly fed her ice chips and got her ginger ale when she vomited from sun poisoning. "You are our voice," it said.Seeing the joy she brought to the elderly, long her favorite group of people, reminded her of an old man she treated as a student nurse. In the long row of filing cabinets, a drawer holds a blue folder marked "Alcor." When he walked in the room even if you didn't know one thing about baseball you'd say, 'That's somebody. With no children of her own, she's destined to remain a daughter. In big letters, he wrote "Make Claudia co-petitioner" and circled it. He filled six yellow legal-sized pages, jotting down the price for freezing just the head ($50,000) and the price for the entire body ($120,000), making charts and decision trees plotting the potential repercussions of cryonics. He saved a wild duck he found, and countless other birds. The WNET Groups award-winning productions include signature PBS series Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, PBS NewsHour Weekend and Amanpour and Company and trusted local news programs MetroFocus and NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi. Major League Baseball is the best-attended sport in North America, and since 2004, MLB has enjoyed its best-attended seasons in the history of the game, with each regular season eclipsing the 73 million mark. Ellen DeGeneres has been one of the biggest stars on US television. COLIN BRALEY/REUTERS/LANDOV, The clean cryonics narrative of Bradlee's book doesn't match the messiness of that long family dispute. After Ted died, friends told reporters that Williams disagreed with his son's obsession. I said, you are John Wayne. Watching her watch a dragon movie makes it all make sense. Read More. To her, the many accounts of Ted Williams are all fatally flawed because most people didn't understand that the two famous acts of his life -- ballplayer and fisherman -- occurred only because he was hiding from the third and final act of his life: fatherhood. What will it take to fix a broken system? The house is empty inside, dangling wires and pencil marks on the walls indicating where a range will go. Claudia asked.Once he realized 'I can be good at this, and these kids want to learn from me,' we had run out of time.- Eric Abel"He thinks it's kooky," John-Henry says. -- and she got melancholy later and said, "We need to laugh more. "I was there at Fenway Park when Ted Williams hit his last home run," he said. "I know Claudia will be fine. She's the only thing I have left.". In this stubbornness, she found the emotional stability sought but never discovered by her brother, who died 11 years ago from leukemia. . "Just please listen to me. In letters home, she described being adrift, telling her dad she felt "like a lost athlete looking for a sport." Claudia, a nurse, listens to the plodding thumps of a tired heart. She was trapped in his house by television trucks and reporters shouting questions. I first joined Tortoise as part of the Sensemaker team, and before that worked at the New York Times and The Week magazine. She turns from West Fenway Drive onto Ted Williams Court in her blackAcura, the Euro club music rattling the rearview mirror. Prepare thyself, sir. A grilse. You could just watch it rage. She keeps many things locked away. Everybody's against me. "You could see an internal struggle," Abel says. Claudia smiles. Eric rushed home and found her sitting at the computer, quiet and solemn, validated for perhaps the first time in her life. At the funeral for Williams' longtime girlfriend, Louise Kaufman, Claudia recognized her half-sister, Bobby-Jo, whom she'd never met, simply by seeing a familiar wave of fear register on Bobby-Jo's face at the sound of Ted's voice: He boomed in the next room, sucking up all the oxygen, and two women, born 23 years apart, flinched. One night, Ted looked at Claudia and asked, "Are you in on this too? Why? The Other 80, +9 more . The foreign secretary suggested LGBTQ football fans should flex and compromise when visiting the Qatar World Cup. Claudia and her brother, John-Henry, supported cryonics; older half-sister Bobby-Jo wanted her father cremated and sued her siblings in the courts and fought them in the media. He felt a vulnerability he never had in his life., Less than a year later, Ted sat before a stack of posters, doing one of the bulk signings familiar to all famous athletes. Find Claudia Williams's email address, contact information, LinkedIn, Twitter, other social media and more. Her country club membership number is 9. The guilt Ted carried slipped away when he did something to help his kids. he yelled. In the rain, in the glow of their house, she shakes her foot along the pavement, clearing a path, making sure no frogs get caught beneath the tires of the approaching car.textWilliams constantly looked to the wilderness for peace. She says she visited the hospital so many times that all those trips ran together, but she remains steadfast: Ted signed a piece of paper. Claudia Williams Journalist Claudia Williams is a journalist for The Advocate covering general news and events. Narendra Modis dominance of Indian politics is built on a knowing appeal to traditional Indian values: Hindu values. American professional baseball player and manager, Clip | Never-Before-Seen Home Run Footage, Clip | Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams Friendship. A toxic train derailment in Ohio has become a political football. Everyone who knew Ted Williams knows that his daughter's going to Duke would mean more to him than his home runs and war medals combined. He was difficult, so she tried talking to him about baseball. Soon Ted gave them praise that would never reach their ears. Trouble is, nobody knew how to start to repair something so completely broken. How a small investment firm is taking on one of the worlds richest men, Three journalists pitch their top story of the week to Tortoises editor-in-chief James Harding. "In his logs, John-Henry and Claudia began to make appearances.First, just simple mentions, when they were little: "Claudia, John Henry took canoe ride to Gray Rapids." "I can't do a f---ing thing! ""I was told it was a cold and overcast day," she said, then did something she never does. A strange family, to be sure, but a family nonetheless, with a patriarch who'd found escape from his guilt and his shame in the company of his children. In his logs, John-Henry and Claudia began to make appearances. "We might?" That was three decades ago. He smiled, and seemed lighter. She was about 9. The last two weeks before finding out, she swam miles in the pool and pounded out sets in the gym. That's a good hot dog, isn't it? In public, Williams seemed to revel in the solitary pursuit of baseball greatness, then fishing greatness, but really, his lonely existence was self-imposed. He smiled, and seemed lighter. Abel goes into the study and comes back with the book. Every patient who walked through the door would get treated like Ted Williams. When she died, 11 months after he hit a home run in his final at-bat, he went through her things and gathered up family photographs. Ted wrote about the water temperature (70-72 degrees), his friends who came up to fish, and details of the trout and arctic char he caught while casting for salmon. He longed to rewrite the facts of his life. When people criticized him, he lashed out at them I think he was lonely. Those memories, and the reaction of the elderly readers, finally pointed her toward her long-sought purpose. 3 grilse, caught his first salmon. Ted's white Sub-Zero fridge with the wood-paneled front is unplugged in the corner. Claudia, then 30 and an elite athlete, paced the halls like a wild animal. She threw plates and knives. Whats the point of nurseries? And he goes, yeah, I know it. Chinas transformation into an economic powerhouse has come at a cost to its children, under enormous pressure to succeed. She's a young woman living among retirees with only a few friends. Doctors diagnosed manic depression, and she moved from booze to pills, cheating on her husband with the neighbor and giving herself another abortion with drugs and alcohol. She also has considered using her egg and Abel's sperm to create a child, going back and forth between the ideas. Even in her moment of triumph, something worried her, a neurotic fear. If you also want to join us as we dig deeper, here are some resources to get you started, What the new immigration system means for care homes, For those who havent had enough of this terrifying tale, Thousands of trans people are turning to crowdfunding websites to help pay for treatment. "I don't know who has to say, 'You did well,'" says Abel, who was the Williams family attorney when he met Claudia. "Now she just needed to get into a graduate program, do years of studying and open her own nurse practitioner's office. It was everything against his grain to succumb to this outside influence of children. claudiawilliams. She feels lonely. Inspiring curiosity and nurturing dreams, The WNET Groups award-winning Kids Media and Education team produces the PBS KIDS series Cyberchase, interactive Mission US history games, and resources for families, teachers and caregivers. With time, she's come to regret not having a funeral. "He never thought he was gonna be a good father," Claudia says. He'd been through the safes and the storage unit they keep filled to its 10-foot ceiling, hunting for the flannel shirt. A heavy rain is falling, blurring the streetlights reflecting off the asphalt, and she looks out into the glare of the headlamps and sees something move. she cries.He presses hard on the brakes, and she gets out. Looking back, Claudia wishes she'd let him get her into Middlebury, because it was the only thing he knew how to do. She found the note three years ago, 10 years after he died, going through memorabilia.