THURSDAY'S THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - CONNECTING 'CHEERS' TO 'HAWKINS'

Billy Jim Hawkins was one of the most famous lawyers known across the whole country by the 1970s.  Although he was based in his hometown of Beauville, West Virginia, Billy Jim represented clients in courts from Hollywood to Arizona and Florida.  (In one episode it is suggested that he once had a case in Rochester, New York.)

Billy Jim came from a large family - three brothers and ten sisters.  It's likely he was the oldest because he claims to have raised his sisters after their parents died,  (But it could be that he was the youngest of the boys and his three older brothers didn't want to take on that responsibility.  

Billy Jim with his cousin RJ

Billy Jim also had 58 nieces and nephews and 174 first cousins.  One of his sisters married a man named Coleman and had two children, Theresa Ruth and Earl.  Another sister married a man named Stocker and their son’s name was Jeremiah.  I'm sure both the Stockers and the Colemans had other children as well (Those are the only ones we met), in order to swell those numbers for the 58 nieces and nephews.  (Because the sister I'll be talking about was good for only one child.)

It's a good bet that if any other TV show has a Southern character named Hawkins, Stocker, or Coleman - or even any Southern character who might resemble a relative of Jimmy Stewart, (considering eight other sisters probably married and changed their names as well) – then a theory of relateeveety could be suggested to connect them to Billy Jim.

And I have one such suggestion now, but of course from this point on, everything is conjecture….

The youngest of Billy Jim’s ten sisters was born in 1930 and was named Esther.  (She has a twin sister nicknamed Willie Rae - short for Wilhelmina - who moved to Atlanta when she married Clay Johnson.  Clay and Willie Rae have a daughter named Brenda Leigh, who became a Deputy Police Chief for the LAPD.)

From an early age Esther had a desire to go to sea.  Once she was old enough (17 with the permission of her guardian – older brother Billy Jim), she enlisted in the US Navy, into their auxiliary unit known as WAVES (Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service.) 

Esther was first stationed at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia.  Within a year she was transferred to the Charlestown Navy Yards in Boston.  From there she was assigned to a tour of duty on board the pink-painted submarine, the USS Sea Tiger.

When her service aboard the Sea Tiger was over, she returned to the Charlestown Navy Yards to complete her tour of duty.  It was there in Boston where Esther Hawkins met a local man named Clavin and they fell in love.  They married and had a son they named Clifford. 

The marriage didn’t last long and the Clavins were divorced before Cliff got into high school.  Esther sought solace in smothering Cliff with attention to the point he could never bring himself to move out of her house when he got older.  That may have been a contributing factor to Cliff abandoning his dream of becoming a Marine and instead sticking close to home by becoming a Boston mailman.  (At least he still got to wear a uniform.)

When it was announced that the USS Sea Tiger was finally going to be decommissioned, former WAVE Esther Hawkins Clavin was allowed to go on one of its final ceremonial voyages along the New England coastline.  On her trip, the submarine surfaced in the harbor of Cabot Cove, Maine, to the delight of the town's residents.  (And it also served as the inspiration for a mystery novel by Cabot Cove's own J.B. Fletcher.)  The story made the news back home in Boston on WYN-TV and some of her far-flung Hawkins relatives were able to see the news report on WPIXL.

Every few years Esther Clavin would travel down to Beauville, Virginia, to visit her extended Hawkins family.  In 1997, she made the trip one last time to attend the funeral for the brother who raised her, Billy Jim Hawkins.  (In 2012 she traveled to Atlanta for the memorial service of her twin sister.  Willie Rae had died in Los Angeles earlier that year.)

At least that’s how it all played out in Toobworld….

SHOWS CITED

• 'Cheers'
• 'Hawkins'
• 'Operation Petticoat'
• 'Murder, She Wrote'
• 'Goodnight, Beantown'
• 'Green Acres'
• 'Petticoat Junction'
• 'The Closer'

BCnU!