To say that Ted Williams would not be happy is an understatement. To say that anyone who finds out what happened to his remains will not be upset and bothered will surely be wrong. I'm so sorry Slugger, our Splendid Splinter, our Red Sox Hall-of-Fame legend.
You certainly did not deserve this treatment. Hopefully, karma will get the creeps who used your frozen head for batting practice.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
But your body, albeit magnificent, is just the earthly shell you use when alive. It's meaning now is symbolic. Even so, most of us in America try to treat human remains respectfully.
Although this summer, we had hundreds of grave desecrations. In Chicago, at the African American Burr Oak Cemetery, bodies were dug up and thrown in a huge mass grave, so burial plots could be resold. There were hundreds more desecrations in Los Angeles at the Jewish cemetery Eden Memorial Park.(At Ethic Soup, we anticipate many more desecrations will be discovered in the future at cemeteries across the country and Canada.)
CRYONICS SCAM
Mr. Williams, you got caught in a scam with your son's wish to have your body frozen and saved cryogenically so that he could sell your DNA -- even though your wish was to be cremated with your ashes sprinkled over the Florida Keys. After you died, your three children fought over your body and eventually bought into the Alcor scam -- a real beaut. Apparently you and your three kids made a pact together that you would all be frozen, says one of your daughters.
DISGUSTING PEOPLE
How much did Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz. get you to pay them to safely save your body -- in the name of science and the future -- and then beat and abuse it? Disgusting people.
Cryonics isn't cheap. It can cost up to $150,000 to have your whole body preserved. Then there is the monthly fee of around $400 -- for a long, long time. Several generations is one estimate, for science to catch up.
Since Ted Williams died in 2002 at age 83, his body has been stored in a 10-foot-tall, stainless steel container at Alcor, promoted as the world's largest cryonics facility. His head was reportedly being stored in a separate container. Alcor sells the hope of future revival.
REPEATED ABUSE
In the book "Frozen", to be released next week by Vanguard Press, author Larry Johnson -- a former exec at Alcor -- graphically describes how Williams was beheaded, his head frozen and repeatedly abused, reports New York Daily News.
Alcor has advertised with photographs showing surgeons, in an Alcor operating room, carefully removing a deceased person's head to then be suspended in liquid nitrogen. However, Ted Williams corpse was beheaded by technicians with no medical certification. They gleefully took lots of photographs as they used crude equipment for the decapitation of the major's last .400 hitter, writes Johnson.
WHISTLE-BLOWER DETAILS
Johnson, a former exec at the Alcor facility where William's was cryogenically frozen, writes that the head was balanced on an empty can of Bumble Bee tuna to keep it from sticking to the bottom of its case. He then describes observing another Alcor employee remove Williams' head from the freezer with a stick and trying to dislodge the tuna can by swinging at it with a monkey wrench. The technician missed with several baseball-like swings of the wrench and hit William's head directly, spraying "tiny pieces of frozen head" around the room.
Johnson was the chief operating officer at Alcor for eight months before becoming a whistleblower in 2003. He said he wired himself with an audio recorder and gathered internal records and photographs published in the book.
OTHER ATROCITIES
Besides the mutilation of Ted William's head, other atrocities at the Alcor Arizona facility which the book details includes the dismemberment of live dogs, when injected with chemicals in experiments. Details of suspicious circumstances surrounding the bodies of others frozen in Alcor steel cylinders are also included in the book.
Ted Williams was such a hero to so many. I wonder if the grandparents and great uncles of the technicians, who so gruesomely mutilated Williams, admired and respected the Hall-of-Famer. How do you suppose they would feel if they knew their progeny committed such horrors?
READ "ALCOR CRYOGENICS WINS: IOWA COURT SAYS DIG-UP BODY TO FREEZE HEAD"
READ "BRITNEY SPEARS LATEST OBSESSION: TO FREEZE HER BODY AFTER DEATH"
TO READ "ALCOR SUES TO BLOCK BOOK EXPOSE OF TED WILLIAMS' CRYONICS," CLICK HERE.
by Sharon McEachern
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