Death
In 1984 Ward was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He continued to record and write songs while living at home, cared for by his wife Pat.
In 1994, Ward was interviewed by local newspaper, the Wolverhampton Express & Star. He told reporter Aidan Goldstraw: "I have not and will not come to terms with this illness. There are times — usually quite late at night — when I'm almost normal again. But unless they find a cure for this dreadful MS, then I don't see a future".
Also then, he recorded his eleventh and what would be his last new album, Julia and Other New Stories, crawling on all fours into his home-based recording studio to finish it. At around the same time, a stage musical, Shattered World, was produced as a tribute to him, based on his life and his battle against MS. Half of the songs were Ward's own, and half were numbers written by others about him.
In the early winter of 2001, he fell ill from pneumonia and entered a Kidderminster hospital. He died there a few weeks later, on 18 December.
Read more about this topic: Clifford T. Ward
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