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Williams's dark, final year is key in dispute
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff, 7/20/2002
Ted Williams was recovering in San Diego from major heart surgery in May 2001. Robert Breitbard, his friend for 68 years, watched over him. John Henry Williams, the Red Sox legend's only son, pulled Breitbard aside to discuss a new idea. ''John Henry came to talk to me about cryonics,'' Breitbard said. ''He was real enthusiastic about it. But I told him that's not what your father wanted. I said it was crazy, but John Henry seemed to think it would work.'' It was after several trips to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., during the spring of 2001, that John Henry first started talking up the cryonics business, according to several Williams family friends. He became a passionate believer in the controversial process, according to his associates. But did his father? That is the question at the heart of the controversy surrounding Williams's remains, one that a Florida court will seek to answer if the matter cannot be privately resolved. The inquiry must focus on the dark final year of Williams's life, a period when the former Red Sox great was increasingly isolated. His heart, lungs, and kidneys were failing. His once-sharp mind dramatically slowed. His raucous social circle of athletes, politicians, fishermen, and friends dwindled. Eventually, he lost touch with most family members, including his eldest daughter, Bobby-Jo Williams Ferrell. His younger children, John Henry and Claudia Williams, became the focal point of his life. The siblings maintain, in recently filed court documents, that during that time period Williams abandoned his long-held desire for cremation in favor of cryonics. But the handful of friends who spoke to him regularly until his death insisted that he never mentioned cryonics. Ferrell argues that John Henry coerced her father into accepting the plan, the basis for her legal challenge to the arrangement. John Henry could not be reached for comment for this article and has maintained his silence since the controversy began following his father's death on July 5. He has not offered any documents signed by his father endorsing the cryonics plan. He has insisted in court papers that his father wanted it. Illness may play role in decision-making Any inquiry into Ted Williams's consideration of cryonics will be complicated by his myriad health problems at the time, which medical specialists said could profoundly influence decision-making. There may never be a satisfactory answer to the question: What did Ted Williams want? ''I think people become more vulnerable as they age and face physical decline,'' said Dr. Francesca Antognini, director of geriatric psychotherapy at McLean Hospital in Belmont. ''An elderly person with a physical illness could have a shift in what they think is important. ''Sometimes surgery in older people can cause mood changes that could approach a serious depressive episode. That might have made him worried about dying. It could have affected the decision,'' said Antognini, who counsels elderly patients who suffer from depression. ''But not everyone is affected in the same way.'' In fact, major shifts in outlook are often simply rational adjustments to life changes, she said, and not the sign of impaired decision-making. What is clear is that in January 2001, Ted Williams faced one of the greatest challenges of his storied life. His heart was leaking and he was still addled by disoriented by the effects of two major strokes. Doctors offered a risky surgical procedure that, if successful, would still give him only 18 more months of life at best. He accepted and a 14-member team at New York's Weill Cornell Medical Center spent more than nine hours replacing his left mitral valve with pig tissue and tightening the ring securing the tricuspid valve on the right side of his heart. It worked, but there were complications: Williams's kidney failed, requiring daily dialysis, and he often needed a respirator. In February 2001 he was sent for rehabilitation to a hospital in San Diego, near his boyhood home. John Henry was at his side. In a March 2001 interview with the Globe, he recounted his father's slow recovery of his mental abilities, mentioning Williams's delighted reaction when told that former Air Force buddy John Glenn had called. ''It meant that right at that moment he knew what I was saying, he knew who John Glenn was, and he knew how to put together the words to ask a question about it,'' said John Henry. During this time period, John Henry made several visits to Alcor's tiny offices, said family friends, where he toured their warehouse lined with eight tall silver tanks filled with upside-down corpses and human heads frozen in liquid nitrogen. Alcor's hope is to revive them when medical science devises a method to reanimate the dead, something they contend is decades in the future. Ted Williams's longtime friend and business partner Arthur ''Buzz'' Hamon visited his ailing pal in San Diego in May. He heard about cryonics from John Henry, he said. ''I thought John Henry was going through one of his phases, like when he wanted to be a race car driver or climb Mount Everest,'' he said. Nevertheless, when Hamon returned home to Greenville, S,C., he checked Alcor's Internet site and grew concerned at its talk of contracts and memberships. ''I was worried. I was afraid John Henry had made a deal. Maybe he had,'' said Hamon, who decided not to mention it to Ted Williams for fear of upsetting him. Williams loses touch with outside world Williams slowly recovered and was eventually transferred to a Florida facility near his home. In a June 2001 interview with the Globe, John Henry said his father ''astonishes us with his cognitive function.'' ''We test him all the time on who his old buddies were,'' the son said. ''Did Bobby Doerr play shortstop? Where did Johnny Pesky play? He gets them right all the time. He even remembers who his high school typing teacher was.'' But Williams was miserable, said Hamon, who said he spoke with him regularly on the phone. ''He hated his quality of life. He would say, `It's not going to be very long' and `I don't think I can go on like this,''' said Hamon. ''He was isolated, I think, because of his physical condition.'' By the summer of 2001, the once-powerful slugger had become entirely dependent on his son and staff. His interaction with the outside world severely decreased, said family members and friends. He stopped contact with Ferrell, she has said. But his closest friends kept in touch. Hamon said he visited him about a month before his death. Williams never mentioned cryonics, Hamon said. Breitbard was even closer to Williams. The two had gone to high school in San Diego together. They double-dated to the senior prom. They kept in touch through Williams's historic baseball career. They spoke three to four times a week until Williams died. Williams never once mentioned cryonics, Breitbard said. But Williams did talk about another postlife arrangement. ''On many occasions he told me about being cremated,'' he said. ''There's no question in my mind that he wanted to be cremated.'' But according to the court papers submitted by John Henry and Claudia Williams earlier this week, at some point during this period Williams agreed to cryonics. According to Alcor's guidelines, Williams would have signed legal documents agreeing to be frozen. He would also have had to sign a check for $120,000, Alcor's fee for full-body freezing. And he would have had to set aside money to have his corpse packed in ice and flown to Arizona, as it was hours after his death. At the moment, the only evidence of this shift are the contentions of John Henry and Claudia Williams and Albert Cassidy, the Florida real estate developer Williams entrusted to run his estate. This week Cassidy asked a Florida judge to sort out the legal fight over Williams's remains. But John Henry and Claudia Williams, who still work closely with Cassidy, asked the court to dismiss his request. The siblings argued that Williams's body was their property and that no one else could question what they do with it. In the end, the siblings argued, only they fully knew what Ted Williams wanted. To view a special online section about the life and career of Ted Williams, visit www.boston.com/williams.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 7/20/2002.
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AMPA - For one longtime friend, it was the strangest idea.