Emmett Watson
Encyclopedia
Emmett Watson was a newspaper columnist
in Seattle, Washington
whose columns ran in a number of Seattle newspapers over a span of more than fifty years. Initially a sportswriter
, he is primarily known for authoring a social commentary column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(P-I) from 1956 until 1982, when he moved to The Seattle Times
and continued there as a columnist until shortly before his death in 2001.
Watson, who grew up in Seattle in the 1920s and 1930s, was a tireless advocate, through his column as well as through a fictional organization he created called Lesser Seattle
, for limiting the seemingly unbridled growth and urban renewal that dramatically altered the Seattle landscape during the second half of the twentieth century.
the following year and his father, an itinerant laborer unable to care for his son, arranged for Emmett's adoption by long-time friends John and Elizabeth Watson of West Seattle.
, he played baseball
with future major league pitcher Fred Hutchinson
. Emmett graduated from Franklin High School in 1937.
He continued his baseball career with the University of Washington
Huskies, and then played very briefly with the Seattle Rainiers
of the Pacific Coast League
, amassing one hit in a total of two at-bats. He often blamed his lack of success in professional baseball on his inability to hit a curveball
. After leaving baseball, Watson worked in the Seattle-Tacoma Shipyard during World War II.
, Emmett, along with some friends, produced a newsletter to send to baseball players serving in the military. The newsletter brought him to the attention of an editor
at the Seattle Star
(a now defunct daily newspaper) where Watson was hired to cover the Rainiers in 1944. It was while working at the Star that Watson contracted polio.
In 1946, The Seattle Times lured him away from the Star. At the Times, Watson continued to cover sports until 1950 when he received an offer from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that The Seattle Times chose not to match. Watson initially wrote a sports column at the P-I. In 1956 the P-I was pitched the idea of an "Around the Town" column by a group of restaurant owners who offered to partially underwrite the costs of producing the column in exchange for an occasional plug. The new column, "This, Our Town," was assigned to Watson.
-style column. It was these essay-style columns that provided most of the fodder for his 1993 book, My Life in Print.
In his column, as in his life, Watson was an early champion of civil rights
, social reform
, and the anti-war movement
. He denounced urban renewal
plans aimed at flattening Pioneer Square
and radically altering Seattle's Pike Place Public Market
. He was the founder and leader of "Lesser Seattle," a parody of Greater Seattle, Inc., which advocated several schemes for Seattle's civic improvement and development that Watson considered ill-advised. Feeling that the influx of outsiders, primarily from California, was ruining the city, Watson often published tongue-in-cheek columns suggesting ways to make visitors to Seattle feel unwelcome. He also invented a fictional organization called Keep the Bastards Out
(KBO) that fought against the influx of newcomers to the Puget Sound
area from out of state.
suicide, which had initially been incorrectly reported by Hemingway's wife as an accidental shooting.
Bill Dwyer were ringleaders in the anti-trust suit against Major League Baseball
when the Seattle Pilots
were moved to Milwaukee after a single season in Seattle in 1969. It was the effectiveness of this action that proved to be instrumental in Seattle being awarded the Seattle Mariners
Major League franchise in 1977.
eventually led to the P-I reducing the frequency of his column. Watson remembered, "I picked up the paper and saw the column wasn't in there. The managing editor called and said he was thinking of cutting me back to one column a week. I said maybe we should make it zero columns a week." On October 30, 1983, after a stretch of more than three decades, Watson's column appeared once again in The Seattle Times.
Emmett, along with his friend Sam Bryant, opened the city's first oyster bar on February 18, 1979 Watson sold his share of the Oyster Bar to Bryant in 1987. Still in business today, Emmett Watson's Oyster Bar is located in Seattle's Pike Place Market
and is currently owned by Sam Bryant's son, Thurman.
at Virginia Mason Hospital
in Seattle. He died of complications from the surgery on May 11, 2001.
of the San Francisco Chronicle
and Jimmy Breslin
of the New York Daily News
and he considered himself a protégé of Caen's. He wrote four books (including My Life in Print) and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists
' Western Washington Chapter in 1998.
Columnist
A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....
in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
whose columns ran in a number of Seattle newspapers over a span of more than fifty years. Initially a sportswriter
Sports journalism
Sports journalism is a form of journalism that reports on sports topics and events.While the sports department within some newspapers has been mockingly called the toy department, because sports journalists do not concern themselves with the 'serious' topics covered by the news desk, sports...
, he is primarily known for authoring a social commentary column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
(P-I) from 1956 until 1982, when he moved to The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...
and continued there as a columnist until shortly before his death in 2001.
Watson, who grew up in Seattle in the 1920s and 1930s, was a tireless advocate, through his column as well as through a fictional organization he created called Lesser Seattle
Lesser Seattle
Lesser Seattle was a mythical Seattle, Washington anti-growth and urbanization organization popularized by longtime Seattle native and newspaper columnist Emmett Watson. The name "Lesser Seattle" was a play on the pro-growth group Greater Seattle....
, for limiting the seemingly unbridled growth and urban renewal that dramatically altered the Seattle landscape during the second half of the twentieth century.
Childhood
Emmett and his twin brother Clement were born on November 22, 1918, the sons of Garfield and Lena McWhirt. Emmett's mother and twin brother died of Spanish InfluenzaSpanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
the following year and his father, an itinerant laborer unable to care for his son, arranged for Emmett's adoption by long-time friends John and Elizabeth Watson of West Seattle.
School and baseball
Watson suffered an ear infection as a child that permanently damaged his hearing. He first attended high school in West Seattle before transferring to Franklin High School, where, as a catcherCatcher
Catcher is a position for a baseball or softball player. When a batter takes his turn to hit, the catcher crouches behind home plate, in front of the umpire, and receives the ball from the pitcher. This is a catcher's primary duty, but he is also called upon to master many other skills in order to...
, he played baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
with future major league pitcher Fred Hutchinson
Fred Hutchinson
Frederick Charles Hutchinson was an American professional baseball player, a major league pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. He also was a manager for three major league teams...
. Emmett graduated from Franklin High School in 1937.
He continued his baseball career with the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
Huskies, and then played very briefly with the Seattle Rainiers
Seattle Rainiers
The Seattle Rainiers, originally named the Seattle Indians and also known as the Seattle Angels, were a minor league baseball team in Seattle, Washington, that played in the Pacific Coast League from 1903-06 and 1919-68...
of the Pacific Coast League
Pacific Coast League
The Pacific Coast League is a minor-league baseball league operating in the Western, Midwestern and Southeastern United States. Along with the International League and the Mexican League, it is one of three leagues playing at the Triple-A level, which is one step below Major League Baseball.The...
, amassing one hit in a total of two at-bats. He often blamed his lack of success in professional baseball on his inability to hit a curveball
Curveball
The curveball is a type of pitch in baseball thrown with a characteristic grip and hand movement that imparts forward spin to the ball causing it to dive in a downward path as it approaches the plate. Its close relatives are the slider and the slurve. The "curve" of the ball varies from pitcher to...
. After leaving baseball, Watson worked in the Seattle-Tacoma Shipyard during World War II.
Early writing career
During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Emmett, along with some friends, produced a newsletter to send to baseball players serving in the military. The newsletter brought him to the attention of an editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
at the Seattle Star
Seattle Star
The Seattle Star was a daily newspaper that ran from February 25, 1899, to August 13, 1947. It was owned by E.W. Scripps and in 1920 was transferred to Scripps McRae League of Newspapers , after a falling-out within the Scripps family...
(a now defunct daily newspaper) where Watson was hired to cover the Rainiers in 1944. It was while working at the Star that Watson contracted polio.
In 1946, The Seattle Times lured him away from the Star. At the Times, Watson continued to cover sports until 1950 when he received an offer from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that The Seattle Times chose not to match. Watson initially wrote a sports column at the P-I. In 1956 the P-I was pitched the idea of an "Around the Town" column by a group of restaurant owners who offered to partially underwrite the costs of producing the column in exchange for an occasional plug. The new column, "This, Our Town," was assigned to Watson.
Columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Watson's new column quickly broadened its scope to cover all aspects of life in Seattle. In 1959 it was rechristened "This, Our City." By 1962, the column, primarily a "three dot" compilation of short items, was running five days a week. When a particular issue caught his attention, Watson would produce a longer, essayEssay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
-style column. It was these essay-style columns that provided most of the fodder for his 1993 book, My Life in Print.
In his column, as in his life, Watson was an early champion of civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
, social reform
Reform movement
A reform movement is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society, rather than rapid or fundamental changes...
, and the anti-war movement
Peace movement
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...
. He denounced urban renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
plans aimed at flattening Pioneer Square
Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington
Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood...
and radically altering Seattle's Pike Place Public Market
Pike Place Market
Pike Place Market is a public market overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington, United States. The Market opened August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest continually operated public farmers' markets in the United States. It is a place of business for many small farmers,...
. He was the founder and leader of "Lesser Seattle," a parody of Greater Seattle, Inc., which advocated several schemes for Seattle's civic improvement and development that Watson considered ill-advised. Feeling that the influx of outsiders, primarily from California, was ruining the city, Watson often published tongue-in-cheek columns suggesting ways to make visitors to Seattle feel unwelcome. He also invented a fictional organization called Keep the Bastards Out
Keep the Bastards Out
Keep the Bastards Out or KBO is a fictional organization invented bySeattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Emmett Watson. The KBO was a tongue-in-cheek group which never actually existed, but which expressed his frustration with the influx of newcomers to the Puget Sound area from out-of-state...
(KBO) that fought against the influx of newcomers to the Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
area from out of state.
Reporting the suicide of Ernest Hemingway
Emmett Watson received international notoriety in 1961 when he broke the story of novelist Ernest Hemingway'sErnest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
suicide, which had initially been incorrectly reported by Hemingway's wife as an accidental shooting.
Major League Baseball in Seattle
Watson and long-time friend U.S. District JudgeUnited States federal judge
In the United States, the title of federal judge usually means a judge appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate in accordance with Article II of the United States Constitution....
Bill Dwyer were ringleaders in the anti-trust suit against Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
when the Seattle Pilots
Seattle Pilots
The Seattle Pilots were an American professional baseball team based in Seattle, Washington for one season, . The Pilots played home games at Sick's Stadium and were a member of the West Division of Major League Baseball's American League...
were moved to Milwaukee after a single season in Seattle in 1969. It was the effectiveness of this action that proved to be instrumental in Seattle being awarded the Seattle Mariners
Seattle Mariners
The Seattle Mariners are a professional baseball team based in Seattle, Washington. Enfranchised in , the Mariners are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. Safeco Field has been the Mariners' home ballpark since July...
Major League franchise in 1977.
Growing disenchantment with the Seattle P-I
In the early 1980s Watson left the P-I after he believed he was treated unfairly by a new editor, although he still contributed to the paper as a freelancer. Watson's criticisms of then Mariners owner George ArgyrosGeorge Argyros
George Leon Argyros is the former United States Ambassador to Spain. He is also a successful real estate investor, and was the owner of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners from 1981 to 1989.-Early and personal life:...
eventually led to the P-I reducing the frequency of his column. Watson remembered, "I picked up the paper and saw the column wasn't in there. The managing editor called and said he was thinking of cutting me back to one column a week. I said maybe we should make it zero columns a week." On October 30, 1983, after a stretch of more than three decades, Watson's column appeared once again in The Seattle Times.
Columnist at The Seattle Times
At The Seattle Times Watson continued to write his column in the style that had made him a well-known fixture of Seattle journalism. As was his custom, he continued to skewer the rich and powerful in his columns, always fighting against the kind of development and modernization that he felt was destroying the city he knew and loved. Over the years the tone in his columns softened somewhat and they often consisted of his reminisces of "Old Seattle." In November 2000, when his union, The Newspaper Guild, went on strike against The Seattle Times, Watson, then in his eighties, made regular, daily appearances on the picket lines. During the strike he wrote for the Seattle Union Record, the strike paper of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild.Oyster Bar
Pike Place Market
Pike Place Market is a public market overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington, United States. The Market opened August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest continually operated public farmers' markets in the United States. It is a place of business for many small farmers,...
and is currently owned by Sam Bryant's son, Thurman.
Death
In March 2001 Emmett Watson underwent surgery for an abdominal aneurysmAneurysm
An aneurysm or aneurism is a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. Aneurysms can commonly occur in arteries at the base of the brain and an aortic aneurysm occurs in the main artery carrying blood from the left ventricle of the heart...
at Virginia Mason Hospital
Virginia Mason Medical Center
Virginia Mason Medical Center , founded in 1920, is a private, non-profit organization located in Seattle, Washington.-Organization:Gary S. Kaplan, MD, serves as chairman and CEO....
in Seattle. He died of complications from the surgery on May 11, 2001.
Accomplishments
Watson was called "one of the greats" by contemporaries Herb CaenHerb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen was a Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco journalistwhose daily column of local goings-on, social and political happenings,...
of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
and Jimmy Breslin
Jimmy Breslin
Jimmy Breslin is an American journalist and author. He currently writes a column for the New York Daily News' Sunday edition. He has written numerous novels, and columns of his have appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City...
of the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
and he considered himself a protégé of Caen's. He wrote four books (including My Life in Print) and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...
' Western Washington Chapter in 1998.
Published works
- 1982 Digressions of a Native Son ISBN 0-9609450-0-8
- 1992 Once Upon a Time in Seattle ISBN 0-9634102-1-0
- 1993 My Life in Print ISBN 0-9634102-2-9
- 1994 Above Seattle (with Robert Cameron, photographer) ISBN 0-9186844-1-2
See also
- Keep the Bastards OutKeep the Bastards OutKeep the Bastards Out or KBO is a fictional organization invented bySeattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Emmett Watson. The KBO was a tongue-in-cheek group which never actually existed, but which expressed his frustration with the influx of newcomers to the Puget Sound area from out-of-state...
- Fremont Arts CouncilFremont Arts CouncilThe Fremont Arts Council is a community-run organization that supports arts and artists. The Council resides in the Fremont, Seattle, Washington, but its members are from throughout the city....