Death
On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York at age 71. The medical examiner's report indicated that he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops he frequently used, further indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. When he applied the eye drops, he customarily would hold the cap between his teeth. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room.
Contrary to his expressed wishes but at his brother Dakin Williams' insistence, Williams was interred in the Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. Williams had long told his friends he wanted to be buried at sea at approximately the same place as Hart Crane, a poet he considered to be one of his most significant influences.
Williams left his literary rights to The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in honor of his grandfather, Walter Dakin, an alumnus of the university. The funds support a creative writing program. When his sister Rose died in 1996 after many years in a mental institution, she bequeathed $7 million from her part of the Williams estate to The University of the South as well.
Read more about this topic: Tennessee Williams
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“My glass shall not persuade me I am old
So long as youth and thou are of one date,
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.”
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“I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
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“My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right....”
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