Upon occasion, she curses exactly like he did, stringing together blistering oaths, a kind of profane poetry: 'that whore of a bitch f-ing c- of a bimbo,' say, of a nurse who spoke to reporters about the family. Instead, she sat in her car in the parking lot, stewing, wondering whether he just wanted to show off 'Ted's daughter,' and finally she drove away, enraged, leaving the fins behind. She recently stopped to pick up swim fins from a workout partner, and he said he was having an office party and invited her in. If people do know, she tests them constantly, to make sure they don't like her for her dad's name. It was two years before her best friend knew. Her co-workers at the Crystal River, Florida, medical center where she's a nurse are only now finding out on their own. HENRY LEUTWYLERД¬LAUDIA WILLIAMS, NOW 43, rarely tells anyone about her relation to Ted Williams. Reminders of her father are everywhere in Claudia's life. Death exposes everyone, and it exposed Ted Williams, stripping away the armor he'd created as a boy on Utah Street, revealing what he'd tried so hard to hide: He came from damaged people, and he left damaged people behind. Ted Williams gave his three children the name he'd made famous, and when he died, their battle turned a solemn passing into a late-night punch line. 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 died in 2002 and is frozen at 7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, Arizona. He lived most of the next 41 years as a kind of island. That was 1961, and he never wanted family to hurt him again. He tore them into pieces and threw the pieces away. 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. May Williams never saw her son play a major league game, even though she lived through his entire career. The anger that dominated both their lives started there, on those lonely evenings outside 4121 Utah St., waiting for their mom to come home. San Diego neighbors would watch Ted and his younger brother Danny, 8 and 6, sitting alone on the front porch late into the night. 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.

He longed to rewrite the facts of his life. Ted Williams' mother gave him nothing but a name, and as soon as he grew old enough, he gave it back, changing Teddy on his birth certificate to the more respectable Theodore. Whenever she lets herself go back, she ends up at the same place: the beginning. SHE IS HIDING from loss, and from regret, hiding from her family's past, which is always operating the strings of her daily life. Suddenly quiet and hiding now, she says, 'I don't wanna think about it,' as one more piece of her father slips away. 'First of all, Claudia,' he says slowly, 'let me apologize I don't know what we've done with that shirt.' She is laughing in the kitchen, a lazy Sunday morning. He'd been through the safes and the storage unit they keep filled to its 10-foot ceiling, hunting for the flannel shirt. Her husband, Eric Abel, comes home from running errands. Ted Williams' daughter Claudia Williams shares some of her father's favorite treasures - from baseball memorabilia to fishing gear.

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