News - Local/State - Andrew Dys

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008

Workman's hands show the kind of life he lived

The kids from the high school band filing by noticed, the church members noticed, the heating and air guys noticed. So many pairs of eyes noticed the same thing in the casket. Jeff Watson's hands. The 42-year-old fingers had uncleanable labor on them.

Not because Watson wasn't a clean man, or because the funeral home did a poor job. But the meat of the fingers where the fingerprints come from could never be spotless on Watson's hands.

"You looked at his hands and saw the workingman," said the Rev. Larry Harrison, officiating the service that day. "I looked right at his hands for a long while. It hit me what kind of life he lived."

People at that funeral knew Watson was the driver who hitched the 28-foot Rock Hill High band trailer to his truck to get that band -- and his daughter the baritone player -- where it needed to go. They knew he was the one the kids called "Granny" because he drove so slow.

Watson took a special course to be able to drive the band activity bus. A couple of weeks ago, a mix-up left the band with Watson the bus driver, but no truck and no truck driver to haul the trailer.

"Jeff flipped his keys to another guy and said, 'Go get my truck, hitch up the trailer, and meet us there,'" said Joe Gulledge, Rock Hill's band director. "He was always the guy who made sure we got there."

The people at the funeral knew he was the sound man and fix-it man and that he taught kids and teens at Sisk Memorial Baptist Church in Fort Mill. They knew he was a new deacon. Watson was the driver to mission trips out of state. He helped with ministries, chaperoned uncountable events.

But they didn't know that Jeff's brother-in-law had to come over and cut the grass at the little house on Rock Hill's Princeton Road before people started to come over after Watson died last week. Watson was so busy helping others at church and at school and anywhere else that he couldn't find time to mow his own yard.

The coroner's office still isn't sure why Watson died.

Since his death, people have learned that Watson never wanted recognition for the things he did for others. He just did them.

People found out that one time, Watson took a big bunch of kids from church to a Christian rock concert at the big arena in uptown Charlotte. Walking in, this big guy, he tripped and fell.

"He was hurt, no doubt about it," said his daughter, Lindsey, 16.

But Watson hobbled up all those hundreds of steps to the nosebleed seats so the kids could get to see the show on the floor.

"Walked up there to the rafters and stayed all night, didn't want the kids to miss the show," said his wife, Lisa. "We only found out later he broke his leg."

The Thursday before Watson died, his 8-year-old son, Evan, won $50 in a Halloween contest for his Harry Potter costume. Watson missed it: He was running the sound-check at a wedding rehearsal at the church.

On Nov. 1, Watson drove the band trailer to Orangeburg for the state finals. He got home at 2:30 a.m. Nov. 2 and was at church before dawn. Before Watson left the church Sunday night, he left a note for a young lady going through a rough time in her life. Watson put the note, handwritten on a piece of paper torn from a notebook, under the windshield wiper of her car. It came back to the family with tears on it after he died. The note stated, "You are loved. God loves you. You are worthy of love. You deserve to be loved."

He came home and his family was asleep. Then Monday morning, Watson died.

Watson made his living in commercial heating and air conditioning. Up on a ladder, on a roof, every working day of his life.

Said Lisa, the wife, trying to joke: "I always thought he would fall off a ladder."

Watson had insurance in case something happened to him on that job. But he didn't have much more than basic life insurance, Lisa said. The college fund they started for Lindsey isn't what the couple had hoped it would be, Lisa said.

How could it be? Watson had spent so much of his time and effort, and money out of his own pocket, on others.

Watson has a giving extended family and church family, but he leaves two kids and a wife who works. But Lisa said she's scared in this brutal economy that costs more every day.

And now she's a single mother.

Thursday night, there was a moment of silence before the Rock Hill High versus South Pointe football game that would decide the city championship. Thousands in the crowd. But the moment was not for a player or community big shot.

It was for a guy many in the crowd didn't know.

And that band, which normally includes Watson's daughter, who wants to go to college to march in the band and become a music teacher, a band that got where it needed to go because Watson drove them there, stood silent.

Want to help? Write to Family Trust Credit Union, Ebenezer Branch, P.O. Drawer 10233, Rock Hill, SC 29731. Specify the Lindsey Watson college fund.