A celebrity connection

It’s been more than 6 months since I completed the list of 180+ World War II heroes for this site. I decided it was time to go back through and fix minor formatting mistakes, missing information, and most of all, check NewsBank for any additional information. Recently, 12 more years of my hometown newspaper were digitized and added to the NewsBank site, making it complete up through 1955. I didn’t have access to most of the last 3 years of World War II available on my first pass last year, so off I went.

I started alphabetically by last name as that’s how the documents are organized on my hard drive. As a refresher, the list of names I’m working from comes from a plaque that hangs at a monument in town. I arrive at the third name on the list “Andrew, Treat”, or more specifically Corporal Treat Payne Andrew Junior. I started with adding some separator lines between articles and fixed a couple of typos. Then I dug into his information on ancestry.com, fold3.com, and findagrave.com to see if anything new revealed itself.

I decided I would look into his siblings to see if there was anything interesting about them to include. I found information about his mother’s life and then his sister’s life in the Rowayton section of Norwalk. Corporal Andrew had a sister, Marian Andrew (1924-2006), 1 year his junior. Marian Andrew married Richard Williams in 1947 in Connecticut. She lived an amazing life. An excerpt from her obituary reads, “she was an accomplished swimmer, sailor and water skier, teaching a generation of Rowayton children how to swim from her riverfront home, which also served as the base for water skiing and sailing instruction to as many more, two of her sailors going on to America’s Cup competition. She was also adept on the tennis court and golf course.” What a life!

As I read further and the obituary spoke about her survivors, it said “in addition to her husband of 59 years, and her son, Treat…” Wait. What? Treat. As in Treat Williams, the actor?! Sure enough, I found Treat Williams’ bio on his IMDb page and there it was — born in Rowayton (Norwalk), Connecticut in 1951. Treat Williams was born Richard Treat Williams but is known as “Treat.”

I love the fact that Corporal Andrew’s sister paid homage to her hero brother by giving her son his middle name. I am even more impressed that the Mr. Williams chose to use his middle name in his career. I wonder if it was as a sign of respect to the uncle he never met who died in World War II, or because the name had a great stage and Hollywood ring to it — Treat Williams. Maybe both? I’ll never know. I attempted to make contact with Mr. Williams, however, the person who is listed as representing him on IMDb Pro, said he doesn’t represent him. He has little to no Facebook presence, and his Twitter account doesn’t accept direct messages. I Tweeted about my discovery and mentioned @Rtreatwilliams, his Twitter handle, but received no response. It would be great for Treat Williams to know that his hometown honors his uncle on the plaque below, and on this website HERE. Disappointing, but life rolls on. Only 170+ more names to go. Who knows what else I’ll find?

Marian Andrew Williams
Treat Williams on IMDb

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