My Great Grandaddy, the pistol, and the Squirrel of ’77

Family folklore is a funny thing. Usually, stories get exaggerated over time. But in the case of my Great-Grandfather, Drew H. Williams, the written record is actually funnier—and wilder—than the memories we passed down.

My dad recently found the actual front page of the Alabama Journal from Thursday, November 3, 1977. There, right below the headlines about gas wells and food prices, is a picture of my great-grandfather, looking stoic and tough, showing off his bandages. The headline reads: "Squirrel Attacks and Injures Man."  To the people of Millbrook, Alabama, this was news. To me, this was just "Grandaddy Williams.”

The 'Legendary' Story

According to the news article, Drew H. Williams was delivering two newspapers to his next-door neighbor when he spied the squirrel sitting by the pine tree. "Good morning, how ya doing, little fella?" He chirped and walked on past the creature. "Then I noticed he didn't move away. So I went inside and got some bread and brought it back to him."

"I said, somebody's hurt you, you poor thing, because he still didn't move," Williams said. Then the squirrel attacked him. His neighbor, Mary Davis, was asleep when she said she heard the racket outside. "I thought somebody was fighting, so out the door I went lickety-split in my pajamas. I saw Mr. Williams with a garbage can lid fighting something dark on top of him."

Williams said the squirrel clawed and scratched him, "even on top of my head. I'd scream and holler and fight and the more I would fight - the more the squirrel would cling to me. I went down to the ground, then I picked up the garbage can lid and tried to hit it with it. I was all bloody and then began to make my way to the screen door. I made my way to the carport when I fell again, " Williams said.

Mrs. Davis was by then fighting the squirrel and both retreated inside the Williams' kitchen. Mrs. Williams was inside and said she heard all the commotion, "but I thought it was the television." The squirrel leaped up on the screen door still trying to get at his victim.

"I went and got the pistol. I'd never shot a gun, but once in my life and it's not true that you have to hold a gun steady. I was moving it when the squirrel was moving. Then I fired," Williams said.

The bullet stunned the squirrel and also took out part of the metal screen molding. "And the whole time he was fixing to shoot the squirrel he kept asking me "should I shoot it?" Mrs. Williams said.

The injured squirrel retreated under Williams' car. Williams kept vigil with the pistol and Mrs. Davis rushed home (out another exit) to change clothes and call the Millbrook Police Department.

Police Chief Mark Rollo arrived along with Elmore Deputy Phil McAdams. "They got a shovel and knocked the squirrel in the head and took it down to the health department." The squirrel was not rabid, according to health officials. Williams was treated for cuts and scratches by his doctor and given a tetanus shot.

"I've got arthritis in one knee, but when I fell down with that squirrel on top of me, I got up. I told the doctor that ought to help the arthritis," Williams said.

"I just wish the squirrel had been on the screen when I shot him and I wouldn't have knocked out the screen door casing," Williams said.

The Candyman and the Conductor

Born in 1900, Drew Williams was a character woven from the tough fabric of the early 20th century. He had survived a hard childhood and battled alcoholism, eventually coming out the other side sober, eccentric, and deeply loved.

He was a former train conductor, and the rails never really left him. He would make a perfect train whistle sound when leaving a store—a sound so realistic that strangers would stop and ask him to do it again.

To the kids at church, he was the "Candyman," famous for buying Brach’s candy and passing it out after the service. My core childhood memories involve sitting at his house, eating so many butterscotch discs that a pile of gold wrappers grew like a small mountain beside me.

He was a child of the Depression, frugal to a fault. I can still see his kitchen counter, covered in paper towels he had rinsed out and laid to dry because they "only had water on them." He even washed and dried Styrofoam plates. He would pop his false teeth in and out just to hear us squeal. He was vivid. He was real.

The Call That Changed Everything

In the summer of 1988, just before I was set to start my sophomore year of high school, the phone rang. We were living overseas in Taiwan. The news traveled thousands of miles to reach us: Granddaddy, the man who had survived the Depression, addiction, and the "attack squirrel," had been killed by a drunk driver while coming home from the grocery store.

I remember feeling an immense sadness, but I also remember a distinct, confusing sensation: Detachment.

The TCK Grief Paradox

When you are a Third Culture Kid (TCK) living globally, grief lands differently. When a tragedy happens "back home," you aren't there to witness the immediate aftermath. You don’t see the empty chair at the dinner table the next day. You don’t drive past their house and see the driveway empty.

Because I was in Taiwan, life around me kept moving. The chaotic traffic of Kaohsiung didn't stop; the humidity didn't break. My external world remained exactly the same, while my internal world had lost a pillar.

This is a specific type of disenfranchised grief often felt by TCKs and expats. When you cannot attend the funeral, when you don’t receive the physical hugs of your extended family, the loss can feel theoretical. It feels like a glitch in the matrix.

By the time we eventually moved back to the United States, he had been gone for two years. Everyone else had processed the loss, moved through the stages of grief, and found a new normal. But for me, the wound was fresh because I was just then stepping back into a world where he no longer existed. I never got that closure.

Wrapping Up the Losses

For TCKs, grief is rarely a singular event. It is often "stacked."

We grow up saying goodbye. We lose friends not to death, but to the airport—knowing that when a best friend moves to a different country, we may never see them again. We grieve the loss of landscapes, languages, and versions of ourselves. When a physical death occurs, it gets wrapped up in this complex bundle of cumulative loss. We learn to carry people in stories rather than in presence.

Today, as a therapist specializing in trauma and religious deconstruction, I help people navigate these tangled webs of grief. I tell them that it is okay if their grief feels delayed. I tell them that closure doesn't always look like a funeral service; sometimes, it looks like telling the story.

So, here is to Drew Williams. I hope that wherever he is, the paper towels are fresh, the butterscotch is unlimited, and the squirrels keep their distance.

References & Resources on TCK Grief

Books and Literature:

• Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2009). Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. (The seminal text on the TCK experience, discussing the concept of "unresolved grief"). 

• Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. (While often applied to missing persons, the framework of ambiguous loss is highly relevant to the TCK experience of separation). 

• Gilbert, K. R. (2008). Loss and Grief in the Context of the Family.

©Lisa King, LPC