On December 30, 1952 Hank Williams loaded up his '52 Cadillac with his guitar, stage suits and other things he would need for this short tour that would take him up through West Virginia and Ohio. At around 11:30am Charles Carr, a 19 year old college freshman Hank had hired to drive him, left his mothers boarding house on N. McDonough St. in Montgomery, Alabama. Hank was wearing dark blue pants, a white button up shirt, a tie and a navy blue overcoat. It was unseasonably cold over the south that day as a snow storm covered the entire southeastern united states.
The flight departed at 3:30pm but was turned around due to the bad weather. The plane landed back on the runway shortly before 6:00pm. Charles Carr checked himself and Hank Williams into the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville at 7:08pm. Hank was reportedly helped to his room by two porters. Carr ordered two steaks and recalls that Hank ate a little of his as he layed on the bed. Later falling onto the floor. Hank called
for a doctor after he started having hiccups that were sending his body
into mild convulsions. Dr. P.H. Cardwell arrived shortly thereafter
and administered Hank two shots of Morphine mixed with vitamin B12.
Charles Carr called promoter A.V. Bamford to let him know they would
not be making it to Charleston. Bamford told Carr to make sure they
made it to Canton for the matinee show at 2:00pm January 1. With that
information, Charles Carr had the porters carry a lifeless Hank Williams
down to the car. As they carried Hank, he started making what the porters
described as wheezing sounds. They disregarded rattling in he breath
and bundled him in the back seat of his cadillac, laying his arms across
his chest in a V position and covering him with his overcoat. Charles
Carr left Knoxville for Canton at 10:45pm. In all likelyhood Hank had
died shortly before then in a bed at the Andrew Johnson Hotel.
Having drove now for almost 24 hours non-stop Carr was growing tired. He stopped in Bristol, TN and picked up a relief driver named Donald Surface. Surface drove for a while and Charles Carr claims he dropped him off and paid him somewhere in West Virginia. Perhaps Bluefield or Princeton where he had stopped for coffee. At some point early that new years morning, Charles reached back to pull Hanks coat back over his body, when he did he noticed Hanks hands were cold to the touch and when he tried to move them they snapped back across his chest to the position the porters had put him in at the hotel. Around 5:30am Charles Carr pulled into Burdette's Pure Oil Station telling the men working at the time there was a problem. They tried to wake Hank but to no avail, they told Carr the hospital was only six miles from the station. Charles Carr drove the cadillac to the emergency room entrance where two orderlies picked Hank up by the armpits and feet and carried him into Oak Hill Hospital Emergency Room. Hank was pronounced deat at 7:00am January 1, 1953 by Dr. Diego Nunnari. The doctor concluded Hank had probably died some six hours earlier, but he could not determine the time of death with any certainty. Hanks body was then taken across the street to the Tyree Funeral Home where an autopsy was performed. Dr. Iven Malinin who performed the autopsy was a Russian intern who spoke almost no english. His report noted needle marks in Williams' arms, bruises on various parts of the body, a welt on his forehead and hemorrhages in the heart and neck. The official cause of death was attributed to acute right ventricular dialation, an unusual conclusion, meaning that his heart just stopped beating. Traces of alcohol but no drugs were found in his blood, probably because they hadnt looked for them.
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