WAKING: Remembering a Father

My father, Phillip C. Watts, passed away March 10, 2014. I was fortunate to be there, holding his hand while humming the songs his mother had hummed to me. His funeral was on March 15, 2014 and I gave this remembrance of him to help contextualize a complicated man who often had complicated relationships. 

(Dad on the Pacific coast with beloved sun and water.)

Dad loved the sun. He loved sailing beneath it in the San Francisco Bay. He basked in the sun’s golden hues in Chama, New Mexico, atop the Rockies, even in the flat span of his own backyard. To him, the sun had so much more to offer than light. The sun represented an opportunity to reconfigure our own understanding of power and possibility. He once said to me, while we sat on the patio, “If you think about it, the sun and the moon have seen all there is to see about humanity; the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs; The moon and sun have witnessed it all - the best, the worst. And we’ve never thought to consider the wisdom, the stories they could tell!”

Of course, after a glass or two of wine – oh how he loved wine - he’d also ponder the possibility that extraterrestrials dropped in to say hello to the Ancient Egyptians just in time to collaboratively solve the complex engineering dilemmas of the pyramids over cups of roasted sunflower shell coffee. That’s just the way Dad worked. He loved, as a matter of intellectual habit, to imagine the sort of plot twists to history that could turn all human understanding upside-down and inside-out. He distrusted the narratives we inherited as “inarguably true” absolutes, particularly those that seemed to cordon us off from imagination, from our inalienable right to question, create, and explore our own possibilities. This habit of mind, this willingness to revise the stories of what we know and why we think we know it, was an ethical imperative to him. He was a genesis man – thrilled by beginnings, and the generator of questions most of us would never think to ask. He was a believer in what Ralph Waldo Emerson termed, “Self-Reliance.” He wanted his own life to be an epic on his own terms, an adventure, a story worth passing on.

(Dad loved getting outdoors, wine in hand)

Dad’s fascination with stories ran deep within him, a rich vein from which to mine both a sense of history and a pathway to the future. Stories, such as those he mapped in his notebooks while working in his shop, tales of revolutionary sciences that could reinvent the way we imagine the world, were but a fraction of his personal library. You see, to Dad, each one of you in this room was a story worth reading. He believed you were capable of great things if you could just bear the weight and responsibility of picking up your pen and writing your way into the world. As much as he wanted to be revolutionary and innovative, he wanted even more for those he respected and loved. Like his father, he believed each of us comes into this world hardwired to make significant and important contributions to the lives of others in lasting, meaningful ways. “Everybody leaves a legacy, Kid,” he often said to me, “Make sure you pick a good one.”

(The first trench for his ground loop, right before he accidentally severed a power line for his entire block)

The fact that the words, “philosophy” and “philanthropy” both begin with my father’s name is no coincidence given the purposeful way he lived his life. I study rhetoric for a living – I’ve spent more time with ancient Greek philosophers than anyone really should. In Dad I saw both Aristotle and Socrates. Aristotle’s unbridled curiosity carried him as a thinker and writer across many fields of study, two millennia and counting, and to many discoveries – many of which are foundational to modern scholarship. Socrates, by contrast, used dialectic reasoning – argument more precisely – as a means through which to make new knowledge. He questioned everything and everyone, often to their frustration, because his quest for knowledge was a means to fulfill service to God, and thus mankind. Socrates worried the fray of current thought, irritated some, and vexed his contemporaries so much they sometimes wanted him to, you know, shut up. I also saw in Dad a reflection of ancient Greek maxims, guidelines young men memorized in order to set their moral compasses to a true, faithful north. In him I saw so clearly these imperatives:

Know thyself.

Be a seeker of wisdom.

Do not tire of learning.

Teach a youngster.

In fact, many of the youngsters my father taught are here today. They are his children and grandchildren, the big and the small.

The thing is, and this is important: When Phil sensed in you the kinship of curiosity, of wondering, he argued with you as a philosopher committed to making new knowledge. He was the wet stone to many blades, sharpening through friction, in order to cut a clearing, a path of meaning. And even when it seemed he was not hearing what others had to say, when others’ words weren’t reaching him, I want you to know he listened with profound precision to everything. Though Dad may not have thought to tell you that he had heard you, he did. You refined his thinking and perspective, and he always carried that forward. Dad often called me in Lincoln to share his experiences, and his stories were built from the meanings he made while talking with you. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about my dad this week, and most of them began with the sentiment that, “Man, your dad was sharp.” I just wanted you to know he was sharpened by you, the discussions you had, and the things you helped him to think about. He will always be my favorite philosopher, a modern Aristotle, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many of his basic ideas surrounding alternative energy become foundational to future scholarship.

(Dad and his wife, Denese, celebrating the arrival of his first issued U.S. patent)

As dad grew wiser, as he taught many youngsters in his life, he also held true to maxims such as:

Give back what you have received.

Share the load of the unfortunate.

Dad believed these to be a code of ethical responsibility, a way to live one’s life as a Good Samaritan. His work with the Round Pantry, his concern for others, was embedded deeply within his sense of personal responsibility. He learned this from his father, Leo, while growing up in Powell, Wyoming. Breaking bread was important to him, soul-sustaining, and he wanted everyone to know the joy of a full belly so that they could aim their thoughts beyond sustenance. He wanted the children of those coming to the pantry to have a sense of fullness, of possibility, and to know that there would always be bread upon their plates. He loved cooking for church suppers, for what he considered to be a grand party that soothed many. There was only one supper that left him disheartened.

He called me to say, “Kid, they want me to be Santa this year. I just realized I’m the old guy fat enough to pull that off.”

“Ho, ho, ho?”

“You wait. Someday you’ll be sitting in my place.”

“I doubt it. Nobody asks for a Mrs. Claus. Eat your cranberry crunch – you’ve got big boots to fill.”

As I recall, he told me I was an ungrateful elf who’d be getting coal that year. I didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t touch coal with a ten-foot Watts ThermoElectric ground loop. All the same, Dad embodied yet another maxim: Be the master of feasts. He invested so much of himself, including his own body as he labored on the pizza oven in his backyard just to be the master of many feasts with many people. That oven, its stone and hearth, with Denese’s own welded oven door, is a monument in itself to the joy my father valued most. It was through feasting and dining, through cheese and wine, that he found his way to connecting to others, and helping them connect to each other. His epicurean adventures and foodie fixations are cherished family lore.

(Dad tending the oven fire in his yard he called, "Tuscany Villa.")

A few months ago, he asked me about a date I had with a literature professor (exciting, I know). We had dinner at an expensive and exclusive restaurant.

“How’d it go?”

“Well, Dad, after his third gin and tonic the guy had the tragic wingspan of an epileptic chimpanzee, and then came in for a kiss like a frantic carp.”

There was a slight pause, and then Dad said, “Yeah, but what did you eat?”

(Dad acknowledges the day Pope John Paul II visited Denver, CO in November 1993)

  While some people think of philanthropy as something one does, Dad thought of it as something one embodies, an attitude, or even the calling of one’s heart. Dad was consistently himself, to say the least, and this extended into the ways he saw others. If Phil sensed within you the sacred lifeblood of a philanthropic heart, if he sensed that you were a caregiver, kind, and sensitive to your life’s story, he approached you as a friend. This week, I’ve also heard many stories about how wonderful my father was, how he never knew a stranger, and how often he had supported those who were doing the quiet, but important, work of the heart. “There’s no one out there like your dad,” one said.

“He was just so good to us, always bringing us ideas,” said another.

“He was our favorite customer,” said one shop owner. “We loved it when he came to visit and told us stories.”

Dad fulfilled the maxims, “Guard Friendship” and “Do a favor for a friend” every day. He made daily rounds about town, dropping in on the small and independent business owners he knew, eager to offer support and ideas. Dad wanted you to succeed in your endeavors, especially when he thought your business was unique, brought people and stories together or simply represented the one big hope in your heart. He knew that behind every counter in every shop and restaurant there stood a dreamer hoping to write a success story. He knew, too, that every parent in business wants to leave a something for her or his family. So he would collect ideas, copy magazine articles, clip news stories, and then go visit folks he often called, “good people.” Having owned his own storefront business for a decade, he knew the sacrifices people have to make when striking out on their own adventures. He simply wanted you to know you were not alone in your work. If Dad thought he could help, he would. If he thought he could fix something for you, he would. If he thought his small idea could make a big impact on your bottom line, he brought it to you with great excitement. Dad valued work. Through work, he refined our characters. He was always thinking of ways to help others succeed.

Just as Dad was the stone for the philosophers’ blades, he was also the mirror for those with philanthropic hearts. If you felt joy, if you laughed, if you felt a wellspring of warmth as he told you stories and jokes, I want you to know that Dad was just reflecting what he saw in you. And without you, the best parts of him would have gone unseen. I’m a rhetorician and theorist by academic trade, so I can’t help thinking about these things. I can tell you that all relationships are contextual sites of communication – codependent, reflexive moments and interrelated reflections of Self and Other.  When we meet someone kind, caring, and enthusiastic about life, who manages to at once contain and expand our capacity for love and joy, we are not experiencing some miracle outside of us. We are experiencing the best parts of ourselves made manifest within another. Dad knew that. He wanted you to know that, too.

As one of Phil’s children, however, I can only say that he set one hell of a standard.

Dad had his own maxims, of course, and I’m going to have to paraphrase for the Socratic sense of brevity because Dad’s aphorisms weren’t tidy one-liners in the Greek tradition. They were quite elaborate logical structures often anchored to his disgust with China’s global economic policy, and “that rogue socialist in the White House.” – so I’m going to give you the abridged version of his Philosophical wisdom. According to Dad’s life philosophy:

Gather, eat, drink.

Play cards. Laugh.

Get thee to the winery.

Open a great many bottles of wine.

Bake bread.

Be one with the cheese, then share it with the dog.

Take the train.

Follow your passions, don’t look back.

Find your life companion.

Embark on grand adventures.

Write your life’s story with bold ink.

As far as legacies go, I think he picked a good one. He managed to reach the end without sorrow something I believe was due to finding his life companion in Denese – the absolute love of his life. And through Denese, he was able to be the man he so wanted to be, content with his life and love. She emboldened him. She softened him. She brought to him her family, and in doing so, gave him a love that multiplied. The Philosopher married the Philanthropist, the good heart. And my word, what a story they wrote together! What a story he wrote with all of us.

(Dad and the grapes he tended, hoping to become a vintner one day.)

In the first novel my father gave me, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the story ends with people wandering the forest, each having memorized a story. They were the living books, the future. So it is with you, with all of us. The question, the possibility living beneath the sun and the moon, is “What story will you become? What story could you be if you lived your life as passionate exploration, a great adventure worth leaving for those who follow you?” As you contemplate the adventures awaiting you, I’d like to leave you with the following Irish blessing. We’ve included this poem in Dad’s program to ease you on your way.

(I prefer to remember him this way - with coffee and a relaxed smile.)

Beannacht – by John O’Donohue

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.