Tennessee Williams

I've read every biography of Tennessee Williams. Williams was honored by the U.S. Postal Service on a stamp in 1994 as part of their literary arts series. I bought pages and pages of these stamps at the time. I was earning good money and could afford 85 dollars a week in TN Williams stamps. At the time we lived in the dangerous druggie neighborhood. I used these stamps when I wrote anonymously to the police.

On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York at age of 71. The medical examiner's report indicated that he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops he frequently used. Forensic detective and expert Michael Baden reviewed the medical files in regard to Williams's death, and stated that the results showed that Williams died of a drug and alcohol overdose, not from choking.[21] Williams's friend, playwright Larry Myers, said that the autopsy report was later modified to state that Williams actually died of acute seconal intolerance, and his friend Scott Kenan said that someone in the coroner's office invented the bottle cap scenario in the first place.[22][23] There were some facts indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room. Some people have questioned the official account of Williams's death.

Later in life, Williams became a Roman Catholic. 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. Contrary to his expressed wishes, but at his brother Dakin Williams' insistence, Williams was interred in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.[24]

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[25] from her part of the Williams estate to The University of the South as well.

- Wikipedia