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William Alfred, professor, playwright and poet, was born on August 16, 1922 in New York City and died on May 20, 1999 in Cambridge, Mass., at the age of 76.
Early Life
Alfred's first nine years were spent in Manhattan. The family lived on East 76th Street in a two-room apartment over a barbershop. His parents were poor working-class people. Alfred's father, Thomas Richard, was a bricklayer; his mother, Mary, a telephone operator. His great-grandmother, Anna Maria, who lived in Brooklyn, took care of him while his parents worked. At four and a half, he was sent to boarding school because, by then, Alfred's great-grandmother was nearly blind. "I was a boarder at St. Anne's Academy on Seventy-sixth Street, a Marist Brothers school, from the age of four and a half until six. It was like a prison ... a children's Devil's Island." At age six Alfred developed scarlet fever, then diphtheria, and nearly died. By the time he was sixteen he had suffered the first of several heart attacks. By age fifty-eight, he had had six. ...More
About the William Alfred Collection
The William Alfred collection consists of 89.5 cubic feet of material covering William Alfred's life (1922-99) as poet, playwright, army veteran, Brooklyn College alumnus, and beloved Harvard University professor. This collection came to the Brooklyn College Library in February 2000 as a gift of the Friends of William Alfred (FOWA). The FOWA is a circle of Professor Alfred's former colleagues, students, and admirers dedicated to promoting awareness of Alfred's importance as an educator, playwright, and poet and to recognize the next generation of talented writers.
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