Wendy Williams' dad, educator Thomas Williams, dies at 94

Wendy Williams' father, Thomas Williams Sr., has died. He was 94.

His granddaughter and Wendy Williams' niece, journalist Alex Finnie, announced his death in a heartfelt Instagram tribute Sunday, Feb. 8.

"I'll be loving you always," Finnie wrote in a video compilation, set to Steve Wonder's "As."

She continued: "It is with an extremely heavy heart that I share — after 94 years of extraordinary love, strength, brilliance, and wisdom, my grandfather Thomas D. Williams has passed. I know he is in heaven with Nana, watching over our family and continuing to guide us as he always has."

USA TODAY has reached out to Wendy Williams' reps for comment.

Thomas Williams' wife, Shirley Williams, died in 2020. Wendy announced on her eponymous talk show at the time that her mother "passed away beautifully and peacefully and surrounded by love" weeks prior. "She didn't suffer not one bit, thank goodness," the media legend added.

Finnie called her grandfather – the first Black principal at the former River Street School in Red Bank, New Jersey – a "man of great intellect" and added, "Papa poured into both family and community. I miss him tremendously."

Thomas Williams death comes amid Wendy Williams' conservatorship, resulting in a battle that the former radio personality has at times argued kept her from seeing her loved ones.

During an interview with "The Breakfast Club" in January 2025, the former talk show host suggested her guaridan, Sabrina Morrissey, was keeping her from seeing her family. Williams added that she wanted visit her dad for his birthday the following February but was afraid her guardian will not allow her to go. "At 94, the day after that is not promised," she said, crying at the time. As it turned out, Williams did get to see her father, at his final birthday party in Miami that month.

Williams' conservatorship battle is ongoing, with positive movement in the so-called #FreeWendy fight in recent months.

In a Dec. 9 segment on ABC News' "Nightline," the talk-show icon's high-profile attorney Joe Tacopina confirmed that a New York City neurologist who specializes in Alzheimer's Disease, Dr. Samuel E. Gandy, has evaluated the 61-year-old and disagreed with the 2023 primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia brain disorder diagnosis at the center of her guardianship battle.

"Williams does not have frontotemporal dementia," Tacopina said. Instead, the attorney claimed, Williams' faculties were impacted by alcohol addiction.

Given that she now "does not drink alcohol," he said at the time that she could be out of her court-appointed conservatorship "by year's end."

Contributing: KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY