While her son was not on the stage, his song ‘I Saw The Light’ opened the show.
A rookie Tennessee highway patrol officer, Swann Kitts, told reporters he had stopped the Cadillac and fined Carr $25 for speeding, The United Press reported on Jan. 2, 1952.
“I told Carr that Williams looked dead but I did not press the point when Carr explained that Williams had been given two sedatives,” Kitts was quoted as saying.
“It is unimportant whether you liked his songs, whether in your opinion he created ugliness or beauty. The important thing is that he made millions of people happy,” an editorial in The Advertiser stated on Jan. 3, 1953.
“He was racked by physical and emotional afflictions, and these coupled with his gift of song, made him kin to millions.”
The Journal that day reported WSFA received hundreds of calls and telegrams requesting the station play his songs.
About 3,000 friends of the family shuffled through his mother’s living room on Montgomery’s North McDonough Street where Williams’ body was lain in state that Saturday night.
His funeral was held the next day, Sunday Jan. 4, 1953, at Montgomery’s City Auditorium.
“You wrote only what you felt boil up inside you. You wrote only what happened to you and the people around you,” Advertiser columnist Allen Rankin wrote on the day of the funeral.
Stars of the Grand Ole Opry were expected along with thousands of fans to bid farewell to Williams. They began to fill the auditorium hours before the afternoon funeral.
Before it was over, some 20,000 people had filled the auditorium and the street outside for what was described as the largest funeral in Montgomery’s history.
