How a park and a director helped Ted Williams rise to fame
By Steve Lasco
Although the term “latchkey kid” entered everyday speech in the 1980s, both the term and the condition of unsupervised children alone for hours existed long before. Wikipedia notes the first use of the term in a 1942 Canadian study on the effects of World War II on children with fathers in the military and mothers working in the war effort. In fact, many young Americans experienced this condition in the 1800s and 1900s, whether in single-parent homes or households with both parents working outside the home.
One such home was located in San Diego in the 1920s and 1930s. Long before he achieved the status of a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer and USMC fighter pilot, Ted Williams and his brother Danny were born to Sam Williams, a self-employed photographer, and May (Venzor) Williams, a daily presence as a “street soldier” of the Salvation Army. May’s dedication to saving souls in San Diego and Tijuana was profound and admirable, but that devotion had a cost to her young sons. With both parents working well into the evening, Ted and Danny were left to fend for themselves after school.