T. J. Williams (SLHS '40) was killed in the Pacific in 1942. He is the boy on the right in the first picture. (The boy on the left is unknown.) He played on the '38 Gator football team and appears in the team picture on the far right (#29).
His family lived at the Humble Camp next to my mother. My aunt has said his nick name was 'Tikus.' My mother said he was very nice - she remembered him as being kind to the little kids next door.
I talked with B.I. Webb about him. We thought he may have died on the USS Houston, but I've determined that's not true. (I still don't know where he died.) There was some natural confusion because the Japanese didn't release information about captured sailors from the Houston for about 9 months. People may have confused casualties because they were announced at the same time but occurred under very different circumstances.
My mother told an interesting story that I'd never heard before. She said she was home by herself one day in 1942. The phone rang, so she answered it. The caller was a Western Union operator who had tried several times to reach the Williams family (next door) but couldn't. The operator said she had very important news for them - their son had been killed. I know this sounds cruel, but that's the way they did things back then. They would notify families immediately by telegram. I'm sure they would have sent a paper copy to follow, but they probably had restrictions on gas and tires, so they wouldn't drive out to the country to deliver just one telegram. They'd probably do that when they had several messages to deliver. Of course, the military would also send someone out to talk with them later.
Anyway, my mother was 10 or 11-years old, so she panicked. (The third picture shows her and my aunt around 1940. My mother is on the left.) She knew she couldn't deliver that message, so she asked the operator to hang on while she found an adult. She ran to the neighbors' house on the other side, and the mother of the neighbor family was there. She came over and handled the call and talked to the Williams family when they came home.
