Well, if Williams's life wasn't enough to inspire a folk song, perhaps his after-death story will be, especially as it involves his children, one of whom is named John Henry...


From the Associated Press:

FREEZING FEUD Ted Williams' Kids Battle Over Whether to Freeze Baseball Great's Body
By Jimmy Golen, The Associated Press

B O S T O N, July 8 — The daughter of baseball great Ted Williams says she is fighting with her half brother to keep her father's body from being frozen in a cryonics lab. Bobby-Jo Ferrell, Williams' daughter with his first wife, said she plans to "rescue" her father's body from an Arizona cryonics company.

Ferrell said over the weekend that someone at Hooper's Funeral Home in Inverness, Fla., told her that Williams' body had been moved on Friday to Scottsdale, Ariz. She would not identify the person. Ferrell said her half brother, John Henry Williams, had her father's body moved from the funeral home to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, where bodies are frozen after death. Ferrell accused her half brother of planning to freeze and preserve their father's DNA, perhaps to sell in the future.

"I will rescue my father's body," she told The Associated Press late Saturday night. "Me and my attorney are working on that." Ferrell told the Sunday Boston Globe that she planned to seek a restraining order today to prevent her father's body from being preserved at Alcor....

No funeral will be held according to [Ted Williams's] wishes. Two memorial services are planned on July 22 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams' attorney, Eric Abel, did not return a phone call Sunday, but had previously refused to confirm or deny that cryogenics was a possibility....

Ferrell said her brother brought up the idea of freezing their father's body, or a part of it, after his health took a turn for the worse last year. She said she told him it was immoral and against her father's wishes.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.