The following transcript was dictated from audio recording made of the memorial service for James Rose Watson and Charles Gray Watson on January 16, 2000. An audio recording of this memorial is available.
Charles Gray Watson, Chuck, was an amazing man, and I do mean amazing, with a generosity of spirit that pervaded all his accomplishments. I knew him first and best as a physician, and surgeon, and a teacher. And these roles, these professional roles, were central to his being.
Chuck was a real scholar. Despite stories about that four-room schoolhouse in Rosslyn Farms, he grew up excelling at the best schools in the most competitive environments: Andover, Princeton, Columbia. He flirted briefly with a career in internal medicine but he completed his surgical training in Boston at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital under the tutelage of Dr. Francis Moore, who was considered the greatest academic surgeon of his generation.
But he returned promptly to Pittsburgh and became one of the founding members of Hank Bahnson's full time faculty at Pitt where he completed his career as Professor, Chief of General Surgery, and Vice Chairman of the Department of Surgery in charge of education, in charge of what we do. Indeed, Chuck recognized from the first what his own natural talents were, and he went right out and fulfilled them. Not only was he a super surgeon, who became widely known for his knowledge and technical skill, he was a major contributor to the new specialty of endocrine surgery. His colleagues elected him President of the Eastern Surgical Society and the Pittsburgh Surgical Society and a Governor of the American College of Surgeons. The Watson Chair of Surgery honors the whole surgical dynasty. The new Charles Watson Education Center is the latest of our inadequate tributes to Watson family of surgeons.
Well Chuck, as everyone knows who knows him, delighted in seeing patients, visiting them and revisiting them in his clinic was almost religious quest. No patient was ever lost to follow up, he was never late for clinic, no one was ever discharged, no chart was ever lost in 30 years of practice. Few patients missed the opportunity of a free follow up visit to their surgeon 20 years after the fact. He was obviously very happy to see them.
Chuck also loved his students and the residents. We all know that the students called him the "velvet harpoon" in tribute to a gentle, but pointed, Socratic teaching technique. But they voted him the Golden Apple award as clinical teacher of the year on three different occasions -- 10% of the awards for the Golden Apple in the last 30 years. The Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award was bestowed in 1994 and in 1999 the Medical School graduation class and the alumni together dedicated the graduation ceremony to him. Chuck took on the task as the personal advisor to each and every student in every class who was interested in surgery as a career. During those 30 years he would write all their letters of recommendation; he recognized and emphasized all their virtues; he minimized all their vices. He was absolutely incapable of a snide remark. His joy was in each student's success.
Chuck's hospitality and that of his family was legendary. A generation of surgeons, young and old, visiting, arriving, or departing were put up on the third floor of the magnificent house on Wightman Street. The dog would wake you at your favorite hour, and even when the family was not home, the old BMW was in the garage for your personal use.
There's a great picture of Chuck in the paper on Wednesday. His head tilts slightly to the right. He is listening with genuine interest and pleasure. He is formally dressed in a dark jacket. Chuck always dressed well. He respected the people he was with and wanted to show them so. The silk in this picture, the silk on the bowtie glistens. His eyes are intense and he is literally wreathed in smiles. He is deeply engaged as he always was. Andrew told me that I was on the other side and I hope so, but whoever was there knew that Chuck was her friend and that Chuck found him interesting.
Chuck was like that with everybody. Youthful, intense, full of life, engaged. Full of tales of sailing, adventures, trials with the boat, Thanksgiving trips to the house on the Cape, or a gorgeous parathyroid adenoma that he had just excised. He was very modest but full of pride in the accomplishments of Nancy, or Gray, or Andrew, or Ritu, or Rosemary, or Tim. Full of optimism and the excitement of the most recent book read. The patients were always getting better. The students were the brightest. The resident class was the most promising. And he was right. The grass was always greener, exactly where he was standing.