Interview with Frank Watson # ISL-A-L-2012-036 Interview # 01: August 7, 2012 Interviewer: Mark DePue COPYRIGHT The following material can be used for educational and other non-commercial purposes without the written permission of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. “Fair use” criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. These materials are not to be deposited in other repositories, nor used for resale or commercial purposes without the authorization from the Audio-Visual Curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, 112 N. 6th Street, Springfield, Illinois 62701. Telephone (217) 785-7955 A Note to the Reader This transcript is based on an interview recorded by the ALPL Oral History Program. Readers are reminded that the interview of record is the original video or audio file, and are encouraged to listen to portions of the original recording to get a better sense of the interviewee’s personality and state of mind. The interview has been transcribed in near- verbatim format, then edited for clarity and readability, and reviewed by the interviewee. For many interviews, the ALPL Oral History Program retains substantial files with further information about the interviewee and the interview itself. Please contact us for information about accessing these materials. DePue: Today is Tuesday, August 7, 2012. My name is Mark DePue, Director of Oral History for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Today I’m in Greenville, Illinois with former Senator Frank Watson. Good afternoon. Watson: Mark, good afternoon. DePue: I hope this is the first of many sessions that we have. Watson: It’s hopefully not as many as Jim Edgar had (laughs). DePue: But if we can get as much history as I think you’ve got in your mind down and recorded, I think that would be wonderful. We always start with these, and even though you were senate minority leader for many years and assistant minority leader for a long time before that, under James “Pate” Philip, you obviously had an earlier history as well. Let’s start it up with when and where you were born. Watson: I was born in St. Louis, Missouri—but I always lived in Greenville—1945, July 26. Frank Watson Interview #ISL-A-L-2016-035 DePue: St. Louis is quite a ways off. Watson: We didn’t have a local hospital back then. Highland had a hospital, about twenty miles away, but I’m not sure why we ended up in St. Louis. DePue: How long would the drive have been, to get your mother over to a hospital in St. Louis? Watson: Probably an hour and a half. You had to go Route 40, U.S. 40. Seventy, of course wasn’t there, and went through East St. Louis, Collinsville, all those metro east areas, so it was probably about an hour and a half. DePue: Did you have any older siblings? Watson: I have a sister, Melissa, who is older, six years older. DePue: Any younger siblings? Watson: Nope, just the two of us. DePue: I know that you have deep roots in the Greenville area. Tell me how the family got here in the first place? Do you know that history? Watson: We came here from Dayton, Ohio, the Watson family did. At that time, Charles W. Watson owned Watson’s Drugstore, and that was my great, great uncle. Then my grandfather came here in 1903, and he and George became partners in the drugstore. That’s when our family arrived here. In 1923, my dad, Charles I. Watson, got into the drugstore. Then, of course, I came in in 1968, into the drugstore. So we’ve been here a long time. Eighteen eighty-one is when the drugstore was founded by Charles I. Watson. DePue: So there’s a Charles I. Watson, a Charles W. Watson… Watson: Excuse me, Charles W. Watson founded the drugstore in nineteen… We’d better go back. DePue: Now I’m confused. Watson: Yep. Charles W. Watson founded the drugstore in 1881. DePue: Is there a Charles I. Watson? Watson: Charles I. Watson, my dad. DePue: And he picked it up in 1923? Watson: Nineteen twenty-three. DePue: That’s forty years difference there, thirty-eight years difference between those two. Did he come pretty late in your grandfather’s life? Watson: I’m not even sure. My grandfather was Frank E. Watson. 2 Frank Watson Interview #ISL-A-L-2016-035 DePue: Charles W. was your great… ? Watson: Great-great uncle. Then when my side of the Watson family arrived here… That was Frank E. Watson. DePue: How many generations of pharmacists are there? Watson: Four. DePue: Does that include your son? Watson: No. Both my kids were not interested in pharmacy. I was in politics for most of their life, so they never knew really much about the drugstore, although they did work in it. But they were not interested, and I didn’t press them. I didn’t push them, because I kind of felt like I was, a little bit. Not that I was pressured to do it, but I was expected to do it, and I did. I went to school at Purdue, the same school my dad went to, and then came back here in 1968 and took over the store. DePue: We should mention, Watson’s Drugstore is one of the most prominent businesses on the square, downtown Greenville, right? Watson: South side of the square, Greenville, Illinois. We’ve been there a long time, the same location. There’s a lot of businesses that were founded in such and such a year, but they moved. We, the same location and, other than we expanded into the two buildings next to us. DePue: How about your mother’s background? What was her maiden name? Watson: Logsdon. DePue: Her first name? Watson: Pauline. DePue: Logdson? Watson: Logdson. L-o-g-d-s-o-n. She was from Sorento actually, which is in Bond County. That’s where my grandmother, Synell [?] Logsdon—we called her, “Mangie,”—that Synell Logsdon came from New Mexico, where my grandfather had to be out there because of an illness, had to be in New Mexico. Then they came back here, and she came to Sorento and worked at DeMoulins, which is a band uniform company. DePue: The what again? Watson: DeMoulin, DeMoulin Band Uniform Company [has] been here a long time and still here. They make band uniforms. I’m on their board of directors, as a matter of fact. My grandmother worked there as a seamstress, and then my mother and her sister, my Aunt, Dorothy, my mother’s sister, worked for a lawyer here in town, and then my mom was a teacher, fourth grade teacher. 3 Frank Watson Interview #ISL-A-L-2016-035 DePue: In Greenville. Watson: In Greenville. DePue: Are there any private schools in Greenville? Watson: No. DePue: What’s the earliest memory you have growing up? Watson: Vacations, I guess. I can remember going to Pikes Peak. When I was five years old, I was at Pikes Peak, and when I was six years old, I was at Mount Washington, I believe it was; that’s out east. I think that’s right. Anyway, those two birthdays, that’s where I was. I do remember those trips, so that’s probably… I was probably about five years old. Remembering things here locally, other than growing up as a kid… Later on I remember a lot. DePue: How would you describe your childhood, especially the first ten to fifteen years? Watson: Oh, I had a great childhood. I played baseball every day. In the summer we’d get out; all we did was play, from sunup till sundown. We had a great neighborhood. Everybody kind of just stayed in their neighborhood. If you got out of your neighborhood, that was like going twenty miles. Everybody kind of stayed in their five or six block neighborhood. We had a great group of people, the kids in that neighborhood. We lived right across from Greenville College. Greenville College was a playground for us. There was all kinds of access there, the gymnasium, the front lawn of Holt Hall, the football field; Scott Field it was called. We spent a lot of time at Greenville College, playing ping-pong in the dormitories. Yeah, I grew up on the Greenville College campus (laughs). I had a great childhood. We went on trips to Sam Baker Park, down in Missouri, in the Ozarks. My dad, being a pharmacist, he couldn’t leave for a long period of time, so we would go over the Fourth of July. We had friends from the area, from Greenville here, that went with us. There would usually be ten, fifteen people would go down there, and we’d have a great time. So, I have fond memories. DePue: The 1950s and early ‘60s, most people look back very nostalgically, especially if you’re a kid, that baby boomer generation. Were you technically a baby boomer? Watson: I guess I was right before, ’45. DePue: Was your father in the military? Watson: No. He was too old for World War II and too young for World War I. DePue: Did you have some other relatives who were veterans of the war? 4 Frank Watson Interview #ISL-A-L-2016-035 Watson: Actually not. We have a memorial, up on the square here, and there’s only one brick in the memorial, of a relative of mine. And that was the Civil War. He fought for the North, by the way (both laugh).