She feels closest to him fishing but has been only once or twice since he died. It's a contract she wrote -- the Williams family loves handwritten contracts -- with her mother at a . She and her brother saw the house on Utah Street. Her co-workers at the Crystal River, Florida, medical center where she's a nurse are only now finding out on their own. To receive the best Tortoise experience possible, please make sure any blockers are switched off and refresh the page. She says Ted sighed, agreed to go along with their wishes and signed a piece of paper agreeing to be frozen. she coos. Claudia, then 30 and an elite athlete, paced the halls like a wild animal. Once, when Abel was flying to San Diego to meet with the Upper Deck baseball card company, Ted pulled him aside. She learned how to sky-dive, and after having to deploy the backup chute on her first solo jump, she went back up again: I'll show you, sky! "Those late nights when it was clear he didn't have much time left ," she says, trailing off, the light gone. Eric rushes toward her. John-Henry bought a dialysis machine so Ted could get the treatment at night. He's everywhere. Finally she said yes. But is it enough? He'd been raised by an erratic and absent mother. Finally he got his first fish. She feels lonely. "My heart hurt," she says.That night, after Eric cooks steaks and Emma bakes sugar cookies, everyone piles onto the sofa for movie night. Were doing something a little different and a bit risky. It's thick, jammed with newsletters, receipts, contracts and John-Henry's handwritten notes taken during a visit to the cryonics facility. "I surpassed John-Henry quicker because I got away," she says.She never asked for anything. He worried about his son. I said well if there'''s a goddam Christ, this is the time ol''' Teddy Ballgame needs ya. On a shelf above a Desert Eagle .44, his fishing logs tell a different story from the one he gave his fans and his children. When a video of a woman chained to a wall went viral in China, it ignited a battle for the truth between the people and the state, A former KGB officer, Britains foreign secretary and a potential national security breach. 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. Claudia Williams. The idea is strange, yet mechanically quite simple: She'd need a surrogate mother and a name. He'd be waiting for me right here. 3 grilse, caught his first salmon. "The first seven years, any time I would have a break, any fun, one moment -- inevitably, guilt. It was the first and only time she has prayed. The live-in caretaker is crying. OL' TED WILLIAMS!" Follow ESPN Reader on Twitter: @ESPN_Reader, Join the conversation about "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived On. If people do know, she tests them constantly, to make sure they don't like her for her dad's name. It began with Claudia. 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. The wires and the hoses and the sawdust on the floor amplify how much those memories have faded. She also has considered using her egg and Abel's sperm to create a child, going back and forth between the ideas. "See if you can help John-Henry get a job," Williams asked. Rather than tell her father, she slit her arm from the wrist to the elbow. "I don't think [Ted] at the end of his life felt like he accomplished anything.- Eric AbelThe house is empty inside, dangling wires and pencil marks on the walls indicating where a range will go. Listen online, no signup necessary. 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. Ted Williams was a fascinating, complicated man and this film really covers all the issues he was dealing with on top of baseball, said David Ortiz, the recently retired Boston Red Sox 10-time All-Star and executive producer for Big Papi Productions. She let me poke through the family's filing cabinets, its safes, her dad's hospital records, anything I wanted -- she could prove, she said, that her father agreed to be frozen. She keeps many things locked away. His health declined steadily for nearly the next nine years. She trained for a triathlon and then devoted her life to making the 2000 Olympic team, falling just short. Could Vaxx That Thang Up a pro-vaccination remake of Juveniles 1999 hip hop classic be the sound of summer 2021? When you laugh -- ". Even in her moment of triumph, something worried her, a neurotic fear. Children who buried their parents were described as murderers. "You could see an internal struggle," Abel says. He never lost his temper or spun off in a rage. She and Eric will move in soon. "He would see me coming up the road. ""I'm not taking this s---," Ted would growl, seething. He saved a wild duck he found, and countless other birds. They tried to understand his rages, and why they'd even been born. There are 300+ professionals named "Claudia Williams", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. Williams hits one of his career 521 home runs, shown here in the late '50s. No one is laughing now, and Claudia reaches for Eric's hand from time to time. It is May 26, National Sorry Day. She didn't want to waste another moment. The first time they visited Ted in Florida together, he made sure she knew not to annoy him, advising her to use the bathroom before leaving the airport. She entered a psych ward, which he paid for, and got an abortion, which he paid for, and when her scars taunted him -- physical proof that he'd become his mother -- he paid for plastic surgery too. Other times he'd listen.These private discussions would eventually become public, fitting into an existing narrative. SHE IS HIDING from loss, and from regret, hiding from her family's past, which is always operating the strings of her daily life. After an aching rest and a few blisters on his casting hand, he is getting a little uninterested. Oct 12. "He thought I needed salt," she says, then switches to her flawless Ted Williams impersonation, a chin-jutting bass drum: "Yup, isn't that GOOD? Now, they are on the frontline of Putins war in Ukraine. "He thought I needed salt," she says, then switches to her flawless Ted Williams impersonation, a chin-jutting bass drum: "Yup, isn't that GOOD? John-Henry bought a dialysis machine so Ted could get the treatment at night. He'd been raised by an erratic and absent mother. Claudia has spent considerable time looking for documents that would prove she was in the hospital for the signing of the informal contract. It is really, really difficult to be the queen on the chessboard. 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. "Abel would write up a contract on a napkin or a piece of scratch paper, which is what Ted liked, and negotiate a settlement: Ted agreed to take the pills every day, and John-Henry agreed to let him shower only four times a week. she says suddenly. Now the country is wondering if the price has been too high. They sought out anything that might buy him more time -- no matter how experimental, unorthodox or just plain weird. Father and son had epic fights, bad enough that the caretakers called protective services. "SHE AND ERIC fell in love during the horrible siege after they froze her father, who died of cardiac arrest almost two years after signing the note. American Masters is available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. First, just simple mentions, when they were little: "Claudia, John Henry took canoe ride to Gray Rapids." You could see it just gnaw. She's young because her dad was much older than her mom -- Ted, the eternal player, tossed Dolores Wettach a note across the first-class cabin of an international flight, introducing himself simply as a fisherman -- starting Claudia's lifelong struggle to hold tight to something slipping between her fingers. Finally an email from Duke arrived asking her to log on to its website for the school's decision.She opened the link and started to read the letter. Soon she'll be studying online for a master's degree from one of the greatest universities in the world. The child could start a new future for the Williams family, built on love, or become a casualty of the cycle that shaped Claudia's life, and her father's life before that. For comedians and baseball fans and biographers, cryonics was a joke or a disgrace, but inside the Williams family, it was a profound act of love, a conscious attempt to undo the cycle of pain both felt and caused. For PR Pros . But I love him.' "I don't know if you ran over him," she says. The most important thing he read was the origin text of cryonics, a book by science fiction writer and professor Robert Ettinger titled The Prospect of Immortality. This is what Claudia Williams told the CBC's investigative reporter Connie Walker in an eight- part podcast called "The Tip" about the night her sister Alberta Williams disappeared nearly 3 decades ago. "First of all, Claudia," he says slowly, "let me apologize; I don't know what we've done with that shirt. By Jennifer Deutschmann / July 31, 2021 12:04 pm EST. Ukraine's New Year's Eve missile attack on a Russian target in the Donetsk region has led to wildly differingaccountsfrom both sides. The rain pounds the roof of her car. This is a great project that really looked at his whole life and Im proud to be a part of it.. Ted's white Sub-Zero fridge with the wood-paneled front is unplugged in the corner. He should be cremated, his ashes "sprinkled at sea off the coast of Florida where the water is very deep. "Ted had that constant insecurity. CLIFF WELCH/ICON SPORTSWIRE/AP IMAGES. We talked for hour upon hour. She says Ted sighed, agreed to go along with their wishes and signed a piece of paper agreeing to be frozen. Toggle navigation. It was the most surprising and eye-opening experience a 10-year-old . "I'm down to one pack a day," she said. She makes them earn their story. They tried to understand his rages, and why they'd even been born. Everything that would happen began in these moments, but none of them could see the future, not even the fortune-teller.He looked up at the old man. He was still learning, he was still -- he was still -- what is it? The rain pounds the roof of her car. I live right behind you. As she parks her car and goes into the house, she's deciding whether to share an idea that has been gaining momentum and fervor. "I think I'm just looking for him to still be proud of me," she says. What's the matter with him? Soon Ted gave them praise that would never reach their ears. Perhaps one day we might see him again. They drove to a nearby park, where she could run until she felt tired enough to stop thinking.That was 13 years ago, and while people still remember something about Ted's head being frozen, the daily onslaught is over. Four years passed between John-Henry's purchasing the books and requesting membership documents from Alcor. That's a good hot dog, isn't it? Doctors gave her electroshock therapy. She felt time rushing away. Ted's white Sub-Zero fridge with the wood-paneled front is unplugged in the corner. We talked for hour upon hour. Contact ABC News and investigations. 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. "Right from the start, we knew we weren't gonna have much time, you know? trib.al/cdisTxM. "I hate time," she says. Nobody is clean. John-Henry rubbed Vaseline on her shoulders and told her not to cry. This is the vision greeting Eric when he walks in from work: his wife, her face red and puffy, sobbing so hard she's struggling to breathe. An experimental Alzheimers drug called lecanemab has been hailed as an historic breakthrough. But something happened in the months after our first visit.It started with her book, Ted Williams: My Father. 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. Suddenly quiet and hiding now, she says, "I don't wanna think about it," as one more piece of her father slips away. WATCH Jacqui Lambie takes 'bloody kit off' in first TV ad. 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. This is her FATHER! On the living room cabinet, there's a ceramic statue of Toothless, the star of the animated movie How to Train Your Dragon. He was still learning, he was still -- he was still -- what is it? Evolving? Every now and again, she sighs. The kitchen brings back so many memories. "The literature John-Henry took home from Alcor, one of the country's two major cryonics companies, worked in his imagination; he purchased every book they offered, according to credit card receipts. John-Henry Williams, a 6-foot-5 ringer for his handsome father, had long lived in the zeitgeist as a bumbling son who took and took without ever standing on his own. Days passed without her manic exercise routine, which she used to exhaust herself into a kind of peace. Contact. His will, which he wrote near the end of the fishing act of his life, made his wishes very clear. Just horrible guilt. John-Henry had asked her to keep the family alive. Road toll rises to 31 following fatality at Greens Beach 7 months ago | By Claudia Williams | The Advocate (Tasmania) All they had was each other, and both longed to decode their dad, and maybe find themselves in the process. He was 12. He felt a vulnerability he never had in his life.- Claudia WilliamsLess than a year later, Ted sat before a stack of posters, doing one of the bulk signings familiar to all famous athletes. When you're that focused you're not really a great father. "Congratulations," it began.CLAUDIA GRINNED WHEN I walked back into her house the day after she was accepted to Duke. He's everywhere. "Four years passed between John-Henry's purchasing the books and requesting membership documents from Alcor. Kamila Valievas Olympic doping scandal has made headlines around the world. They paid $30 a pill for vitamins and pumped oxygen-rich air into his room. About The WNET Group "Dad, you have to take this medicine," John-Henry would be saying. The WNET Group creates inspiring media content and meaningful experiences for diverse audiences nationwide. She turns from West Fenway Drive onto Ted Williams Court in her blackAcura, the Euro club music rattling the rearview mirror. Becoming a man in his father's eyes? ""I was told it was a cold and overcast day," she said, then did something she never does. 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 was about 9. Claudia brings over 20 years' experience catalyzing and scaling improvements in healthcare to her role as the chief executive officer of Manifest MedEx. She and Eric will move in soon. A young John-Henry poses with his father during Red Sox spring training. Days passed without her manic exercise routine, which she used to exhaust herself into a kind of peace. Once one of college basketball's brightest coaches, Jason Rabedeaux died mysteriously in Saigon, leaving his loved ones and colleagues to grapple with how far he'd fallen. She screamed at them in the blood lab. She entered a psych ward, which he paid for, and got an abortion, which he paid for, and when her scars taunted him -- physical proof that he'd become his mother -- he paid for plastic surgery too. It was two years before her best friend knew. He pushed and explained his idea, working cryonics into those dinner-table evenings. Watching her watch a dragon movie makes it all make sense.Sitting on her couch, she cries when the dragon saves the little boy. At the end, jealous and estranged, Bobby-Jo raged, leaving bizarre voice mails on Abel's answering machine: "This is Barbara Joyce Ferrell. I'm hurting. Ted, exhausted and struggling to keep his eyes open, sort of laughed, then his son helped him to the recliner where he slept. A grilse. 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. 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. The lessons that he had to teach us, we didn't have the time to learn. She's hoping for a boy.Follow ESPN Reader on Twitter: @ESPN_ReaderJoin the conversation about "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived On.". The renovations on Ted's house are complete. A tire swing already hangs from a thick branch of an oak tree, plenty of room to run and play in the shade. 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. Sections Ags Network. He opens it on the kitchen counter, the pages full of his notes, some passages marked with a check if he feels they're accurate, other quotes highlighted and some with sharp, angry pen strokes when he's aggrieved, the margins littered with "not true" and "bulls---" and "lie." John-Henry looks over a special edition of Boston Red Sox Monopoly with his father in 2000, two years before Ted's death. Nick Trotta is executive producer for Major League Baseball. Bradlee's book strongly suggests, without ever saying so directly, that she was lying about being there. The kitchen brings back so many memories. This is her FATHER! Henry Leutwyler for ESPN MagazineHer husband, Eric Abel, comes home from running errands. I said, you are John Wayne. Every culture has deeply symbolic rituals for burying and mourning the dead. Escape the frantic technology driven pace of Brisbane CBD for a taste of the country in just 40 minutes, on July 12 and 13, when the Samford Showgrounds play host to the annual Samford Show. Everyone she has ever loved except for Eric is gone or almost gone, and she's sure she'll outlive Eric. Claudia and Eric pull into the drive, the gate with the red No. "Daddy would be so proud," she said. He was a fantastic parent," Claudia Williams said. "Did I hit one?" And he lives in a VW camper. Bradlee spent a decade reporting, and while Claudia and Eric say he got many things about Ted's military and baseball careers right, they say he allowed unreliable people to give opinions couched as facts when discussing the inner workings of the Williams clan, which has forever been a complicated tribe in which truths are perceptions and history keeps repeating itself: Bobby-Jo died five years ago, of advanced liver disease, killed by the same bad habits as her mother.Just months before his death, Williams makes an unannounced appearance at the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame. That night, like always, he wrote in his fishing log. CBK GROUP/AP IMAGES. When she didn't get in, Ted called the governor of New Hampshire, who pulled some strings. In letters home, she described being adrift, telling her dad she felt "like a lost athlete looking for a sport." On the day his only son, John-Henry, was born, Ted was salmon fishing in Canada. @claudiawilliams. Find Claudia Williams's email address, contact information, LinkedIn, Twitter, other social media and more. Sometimes Ted would curse and walk away. "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. "Are you still smoking?" "Her spirit lightens when she does his voice, everything lit from the inside. It's the same look her father got when she'd care for him in the last years of his life. "I surpassed John-Henry quicker because I got away," she says. She keeps many things locked away. ", Their mom, Dolores, and Ted didn't last long. ""Just tell me you love me," she said. View the profiles of professionals named "Claudia Williams" on LinkedIn. Russia says 63 soldiers were killed in a missile attack Ukraine says 400. Who's telling the truth? She asked God to take her instead. Claudia Voight die: It is with deep sadness that the news of Claudia Voight's passing on February 21, 2023, was announced on various social media platforms. In a closet next to her garage, her father's Orvis 8.3-foot, 7-weight graphite fly rod leans on a wall. Ted's old study would make a perfect nursery. Toggle navigation. 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. "I think I'm just looking for him to still be proud of me," she says. His mother, May, was obsessed with her work at the Salvation Army, abandoning her own kids, and the descriptions of his lonely life exist in many accounts, most notably biographies by Ben Bradlee Jr. and Leigh Montville. Claudia and Eric are moving back into Ted's old house, not wanting to sell it and not wealthy enough to maintain two homes. Claudia is beautiful and familiar, her face a combination of her mother's Vogue model cheekbones and her father's all-American jaw. Eric takes a breath and enters the room. "She's tired. He couldn't buy her peace. Even in her moment of triumph, something worried her, a neurotic fear. By the time Eric Abel came into the Williams inner circle as the family attorney, Ted had already excommunicated Bobby-Jo. I think he hated that vulnerability of feeling guilt.". About Albert M. Tapper Productions He's the Jays' No. 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 voice turned childlike whenever she spoke to him, a thin "Daddy." That summer, Alberta and Claudia made the . Email. "Then John-Henry read a book about cryonics. Soon she will face herself alone, as her father faced the world stripped of the soothing focus of baseball and fishing. Were going to kick off the new year by predicting what we think might happen in 2023.