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Once again, his son is not shining
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist, 7/7/2002
Now consider this: If that evil little girl had a twin brother, it would have been John Henry Williams. Make no mistake: The Kid's kid is Very Bad News, and he has saved his best/worst move for last, managing to besmirch a weekend that should have been 100 percent devoted to a celebration of his father's truly remarkable life. But how can we focus completely on Ted's accomplishments, when his ever-manipulative son has had the gall to violate the wishes of his two siblings, and, more importantly, his father himself, with this just-about-incomprehensible move to involve his late father's body with the controversial world of cryonics? Both Claudia Williams, John Henry's sister from Dolores Wettach, Ted's third wife, and Bobby-Jo Williams Ferrell, his older half-sister from Ted's first marriage to Doris Soule, insist that their father's oft-stated desire was to be cremated. When Bobby-Jo got wind of her brother's plan, she raised strenuous objections. Cryonics involves freezing the body in the hopes of reviving it in the future, or, at the very least using its DNA for one reason or another. His half-sister has her own idea about just what John Henry is up to, and, as usual, it involves his bank account. ''I knew right away what it was,'' Bobby-Jo said. ''He's just trying to make money off Daddy.'' Cryonics is held in very low repute by the medical community, which basically considers it a crackpot idea. It is believed Williams's body will be heading to Scottsdale, Ariz., (ironically, a scene of many Ted Williams spring training exploits) to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. People who knew Ted well had every reason to think that John Henry's shameful exploitation of his father's good name would cease with Ted's death. But everyone underestimated the depth of John Henry's cunning. Why not make even more money off Dear Old Dad, even when he's gone? Who knows what kind of memorabilia scumbag would pay who knows what for some of Ted's DNA? The going rate to freeze and store an entire body is $120,000, but that's not bad enough. For $50,000, they'll store the head. Just the idea of Ted Williams's head lying in a freezer somewhere in Arizona should be enough for Red Sox Nation to rustle up a posse to go after his kid. This is the same reprehensible John Henry Williams who embarrassed his father at that memorable 1999 All-Star Game by slapping a dot-com Web site hat on his dad's head instead of a Red Sox cap. For most fans, that was the first public indication that Ted's only son was a shameless individual. In keeping with John Henry's well-documented track record in the business world, the company long ago went belly-up. Even people on the periphery of Ted's world these past 10 years or so were becoming increasingly aware of the extent to which John Henry had taken control of his father's life. Insiders already knew. With his father's health failing dramatically in the last several years, John Henry had been frantically reducing Ted's contacts with friends and the other members of his family, making sure that Ted's entire connection with the world at large was John Henry himself. He even told Bobby-Jo that she no longer could see her father because she was not a ''team player.'' The younger Williams, 33 years old, has failed at numerous businesses, and is no stranger to litigation. He recognized a meal ticket in Ted Williams, and he has demonstrated time and time again that when it comes to squeezing every nickel he can out of his father's name, the word ''scruples'' never has entered into the conversation. Among the sordid episodes in John Henry's past was his involvement in an FBI sting that ended in the acquittal of three men whom the younger Williams claimed had stolen some Ted Williams rings that belonged to him. It was a complicated story, but the jury had no problem identifying the truth-teller in the scenario, and it wasn't John Henry Williams. ''John Henry Williams used the FBI like he uses everybody in the sports memorabilia industry,'' said Everett sports memorabilia dealer Phil Castinetti, one of the men exonerated by the jury. ''He's a user.'' John Henry Williams is not the only child of a celebrity whose own career involves managing the celebrity's interests. These relationships can be very straightforward and aboveboard. But John Henry's actions were something else entirely. There is, for example, the testimony of someone who was very close to John Henry at the time that on one occasion when Ted was seriously ill during the '90s his son had him signing bat after bat after bat because he feared his father's death was imminent. As his father's health deteriorated, John Henry seemed more, not less, determined to exploit the family legend by getting him involved in card show situations that were clearly physically taxing. By this time, Ted Williams no longer needed the money. Sonny did. The irony is that John Henry assumed control of his father's business dealings after a former associate, Vincent Dominic Antonucci, took him for $3 million. Antonucci is serving a sentence of 4-10 years in a Florida jail. Poor Ted never could have imagined he'd possibly be even worse served by his son, whom he blindly trusted. All Antonucci took was Ted's money. His son fooled around with his father's dignity. Ted is gone now, but his son isn't done with the legal system. Let's just say that his lawyer is kept busy, since people seldom enter into business dealings with John Henry Williams without coming away both unhappy and in need of a nice hot shower. But as long as his father was alive he always could find someone new who would enter into a business agreement because the golden name of Ted Williams was attached to it. Now the kid will have to make it on his own, at a time when the John Henry Williams Admiration Society can hold its annual meeting in the back seat of a 1961 Volkswagen. After this latest cryonics stunt, even that might be too large a venue. Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 7/7/2002.
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nyone recall the old Patty McCormack movie ''The Bad Seed''? Oooh, there was a wicked child.