Hank Williams Research Paper

For the second honors component, I chose option two. The person I decided to research is Hank Williams Jr. The reason for my decision is that I was neighbors with Hank for about ten years, but I never knew much about him. I would like to know more about what he did, and how he personally contributed to Paris.

Hank Williams Jr. was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on May 26, 1949. He originally was named Randall Hank Williams, but took the stage name, Hank Williams Jr. around the age of eight, after he started performing. He wrote in his “Living Proof” autobiography, “Other kids could play cowboys and Indians and imagine that they’d grow up to be cowboys. I couldn’t do that. I knew that I would never grow up to be a cowboy or a fireman or the president of the United States. I knew I’d grow up to be a singer. That’s all there ever was, the only option, from the beginning.”

His dad, Hank Williams, was a country music sensation. He died in 1953, only four years after Hank Williams Jr. was born. His cause of death was drug abuse on one of many of his tours. As Jr. grew up, his father’s fans expected him to follow in his dad’s footsteps, which is exactly what he did. Some fans were said to have called him an “imposter”, but he not only continued his father’s legacy, but made it bigger and better than it was before. Jr. was so similar to his father, that he, too got involved in drugs and alcohol on his tours. In 1974, Jr. attempted suicide. A change in thought made him decide to turn his life around. In 1975, he went on a trip to the mountains in Montana, where he was in a terrible climbing accident. It took two years of reconstructive surgery and a whole new look for Hank to