Wayne Williams drove all day from his North Carolina home to a cemetery in Indiana where his father is buried to make good on a promise he’d made decades earlier. His father, Wayne Sr., died in 1980 at the age of 53. Before he passed away told his son that if the Cubs ever made it to the World Series that they would watch it together. And that’s just what they did in the Greenwood Forest Lawn Cemetery.
“I talked it out with my boys forever. I let them know that I told my dad – we had a pact. When the Cubs – not if, when – the Cubs got into the World Series, we would make sure we listen to the games together,” Williams told WTHR.
His father’s love for the Cubs started in the Navy. “I think it was because when he was at boot camp at Great Lakes. He probably went to some games, because Wrigley’s brought the guys out there for these things and it was the closest thing to big-time baseball he’d ever seen,” Williams told the reporter adding, “”[In] World War II, he was a signalman. He was at Normandy, D-Day +8. He had not turned 18 yet.”
“69 broke his heart,” Wayne said of the Cub’s loss at the time, adding, “If he hadn’t been dead in (1984), that would’ve done it for him.”
But his dad had a great sense of humor, Williams told the reporter. “I’ll never forget one day he said, start of the season, I forget what year it was, ‘This is going to be our year. This is going to be our year. We’re going to be 500.'”
So 108 years after the last Cubs series win and 36 years since “Big Wayne” saw his last game, Jr. set up a folding chair by his grave, put on the radio, and listened to the Cubs win the whole damn thing. Amazing.
After the win, Jr. placed the “W” flag next to his father’s grave stone.
Interview with WiIliams, below: