Chief Zee

Zema Williams (July 7, 1941 – July 19, 2016), better known as Chief Zee, was a well-known fan and unofficial mascot of the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. Dressed in a faux Native American war bonnet, rimmed glasses, and red jacket, Chief Zee began attending Redskins games in 1978.

Chief Zee
Chief Zee with a fan at FedEx Field on January 10, 2016
BornJuly 7, 1941
Colquitt, Georgia
DiedJuly 19, 2016(2016-07-19) (aged 75)
Oxon Hill, Maryland

History

Born in Colquitt, Georgia on July 7, 1941,[1] Williams worked as a sharecropper and picked cotton as a youth. He later drove a truck, when he got a draft notice in 1960. Two years later, he completed his military service at Fort Riley, and returned to driving trucks. By 1968, he was a car salesman in Washington, D.C.[2]

Williams first showed up in costume at RFK Stadium on September 10, 1978.[3] In 1983, Chief Zee attended a game against the Eagles at Veterans Stadium. After taunting the Eagles fans following their team's 10-point loss to the Redskins,[4] he was attacked, suffering a broken arm, leg and ribs as well as a torn original costume, leaving him hospitalized.[5] He returned the next year to Philadelphia but after a woman threw a beer in his face, it was his last time.[6]

On August 9, 2008, Williams set down his signature prop, a toy tomahawk, while he was signing autographs at the Redskins' preseason game against the Buffalo Bills. When he turned to retrieve it, it was gone. The 12-inch tomahawk has a slender wooden handle with a rubber blade, and appears in many photos of Williams since he started attending Redskins games over 30 years prior.[7] By August 28, 2008, Chief Zee's tomahawk has been returned to him with the help of Redskins tight end Chris Cooley who got a call from someone that said they had it. He swapped a signed jersey for the tomahawk.[8]

In his later years, Williams lived on Social Security and had difficulty walking. Dan Snyder, the owner of the Redskins, purchased the scooter that he used. Williams also faced eviction due to not being able to keep up with his rent, but several fans used a GoFundMe campaign to raise enough to pay both back rent and enough ahead that the situation would not arise again.[9]

Williams died in his sleep on July 19, 2016.[10]

Honors
  • November 7, 1985 was declared "Chief Zee Day" in Washington, D.C.
  • In 2000, Visa and the Pro Football Hall of Fame selected the biggest fan of each of the then-31 teams and placed them in an exhibit in Canton. He was the fan chosen for the Washington Redskins.

Controversy

Some consider Williams' portrayal of American Indians to have been offensive.[11][12] His use of a stylized headdress was often referenced as the reason for offense, as the headdress is a sacred, central cultural item for many tribes.[13]

gollark: From the official docs.
gollark: "Features:- Fortunes/Dwarf Fortress output/Chuck Norris jokes on boot (wait, IS this a feature?)- (other) viruses (how do you get them in the first place? running random files like this?) cannot do anything particularly awful to your computer - uninterceptable (except by crashing the keyboard shortcut daemon, I guess) keyboard shortcuts allow easy wiping of the non-potatOS data so you can get back to whatever nonsense you do fast- Skynet (rednet-ish stuff over websocket to my server) and Lolcrypt (encoding data as lols and punctuation) built in for easy access!- Convenient OS-y APIs - add keyboard shortcuts, spawn background processes & do "multithreading"-ish stuff.- Great features for other idio- OS designers, like passwords and fake loading (est potatOS.stupidity.loading [time], est potatOS.stupidity.password [password]).- Digits of Tau available via a convenient command ("tau")- Potatoplex and Loading built in ("potatoplex"/"loading") (potatoplex has many undocumented options)!- Stack traces (yes, I did steal them from MBS)- Backdoors- er, remote debugging access (it's secured, via ECC signing on disks and websocket-only access requiring a key for the other one)- All this useless random junk can autoupdate (this is probably a backdoor)!- EZCopy allows you to easily install potatOS on another device, just by sticking it in the disk drive of any potatOS device!- fs.load and fs.dump - probably helpful somehow.- Blocks bad programs (like the "Webicity" browser).- Fully-featured process manager.- Can run in "hidden mode" where it's at least not obvious at a glance that potatOS is installed.- Convenient, simple uninstall with the "uninstall" command.- Turns on any networked potatOS computers!- Edits connected signs to use as ad displays.- A recycle bin.- An exorcise command, which is like delete but better.- Support for a wide variety of Lorem Ipsum."
gollark: You would need to get rid of the autoupdate capabilities of potatOS itself, or swap them to your own pastebins/github stuff, and then keep everything in line with the current versions.
gollark: Anyway, <@151391317740486657>, what you can do is fork potatOS and get rid of the bits you don't like, but that's also hard (less, though) and would be very difficult to keep updated.
gollark: That doesn't count.

See also

References
  1. "Redskins Fans Pay Respects To Zema Williams At Funeral Service". Archived from the original on 23 March 2017. Retrieved 20 April 2017.
  2. Wise, Mike (September 3, 2013). "Chief Zee's time as Redskins' unofficial mascot is nearly over". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  3. "Super-Fan Chief Zee's Heartfelt Comfort to the Enemy". Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
  4. "Washington-Philadelphia". dataBse Football.com. Archived from the original on 2011-11-22.
  5. "Redskins fan sidelined". washingtontimes.com. July 17, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2016.
  6. McKenna, Dave. "Chief Zee, Washington's Naive, Aggressively Racist Mascot, Is Dead". Deadspin. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  7. "Marissa Newhall - Names & Faces". Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2016-07-20.
  8. Tomahawk returned
  9. Terl, Matt (April 21, 2016). "Unobstructed View: Pigskins Fans Lend a Hand to the Man Behind Chief Zee". The Washington City Paper.
  10. Stabley, Matthew (July 19, 2016). "Redskins Superfan Chief Zee Has Died". NBC Washington. NBC News. Retrieved July 19, 2016.
  11. "How Chief Zee Could Change the History of Washington Football". Archived from the original on February 19, 2011. Retrieved March 26, 2010.
  12. Milloy, Courtland (21 October 2009). "On the sidelines, the sad symbol of a sorry tradition". The Washington Post. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
  13. "Law Enforcement Repatriates Eagle Feather War Bonnet to Standing Rock Sioux". U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 1999-11-04. Retrieved 2016-07-20.
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