DAYTIME talk show host icon Wendy Williams’s mother passed away at the age of 83 in December 2020.
Although she honored her mother’s memory on her talk show, Wendy’s younger brother Thomas claimed she didn’t attend their mother’s funeral.
Shirley Skinner Williams was born on May 20, 1935, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
She graduated from Newark State Teacher’s College, now Kean University, with a teaching degree in 1957.
Shirley later received her master’s degree in special education, according to her obituary.
In 1957, she married her husband of 63 years, Thomas D. Williams, Jr., and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Shirley had three children and was religious, often heard emphatically saying “I’ve come this far by faith.”
The TV personality revealed to her viewers in December 2020 that her mom had passed away “beautifully and peacefully.”
January 4 marked the first episode of the Wendy Williams Show in 2021 as well as Wendy’s return after a three-week hiatus to mourn her loss.
The grieving TV star shared with her audience, “My mom passed away many, many weeks ago.”
“You know how during coronavirus, people are starving, out of jobs. Everybody’s life is something.”
“And you know how you lose track of the day and the time? All I know is that it was a long time ago and me and the five of us – me, mom, dad, my siblings, and me, the five of us.”
“She’ll always be here. She’s squawking at me right now ’cause I requested confetti cannon ’cause that’s what she wanted.”
Wendy first insisted that her late mother had still been giving her advice when she first shared the news of her passing.
“My mom just gave me a shout-out,” she said while looking up with her hands raised in the debut episode of The Wendy Williams Show.
“She said, ‘Wendy, just show ‘em.’”
During a December 2020 episode of the talk show, the host said her mom “talked [her] into picking out” her outfit, which was an all-black ensemble.
Wendy’s younger brother Tommy blasted Wendy on social media for allegedly not attending their mother’s funeral.
Tommy went live on Instagram, which was captured by The Neighborhood Talk account.
He told fans that his sister skipped their mom’s funeral, despite apparently still being in town.
“I really miss my mother,” he says, adding that he doesn’t “understand so many things that have occurred during this time.”
“But what would make somebody not go to their own mother’s funeral?”
