When William Perkins Homans, Jr. was born on March 19, 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts, his father, William, was 34 and his mother, Edith, was 28. He married Ann Constance Beecher on September 25, 1948, in Asheville, North Carolina. They had one child during their marriage.

During a summer trip to Germany in 1938, Homans became so distressed at anti-Semitism in Germany that by the time the United States entered World War II in December 1941 he had already joined the fight. As soon as he graduated from Harvard in June 1941, he joined the Royal Navy (but only because, at 6 feet 4 inches tall, he was too tall for the Royal Air Force) and served on corvettes and anti-submarine trawlers (Mediterranean). He later transferred to the American Navy in 1945 and served as an officer in the Pacific.

After the war he returned to Harvard for a law degree. After working in Washington for three years he entered private practice in Boston in 1951, and quickly made a name for himself. William died on February 7, 1997 at the age of 75 and was buried in Milton Cemetery, Massachusetts.

Source of information: https://www.unithistories.com, https://www.nytimes.com, www.ancestry.com