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Photograph by Ryan Olein
Campbell's biggest booster adds some music to her repertoire
Since her husband's death eight years ago, City Councilwoman Jeanette Watson has composed nearly 100 songs about grief, joy and recovery. Now, she's ready to publish.
Jeanette Watson greets me on the deck of her 1930's Mediterranean-style home, which fronts Winchester Boulevard, to talk about a secret project she's been working on.
Although the city councilwoman and former mayor has completed an impressive number of endeavors--she wrote the city's official history book, Campbell , the Orchard City; launched the effort to remodel the Heritage Theater; founded the city's Civic Improvement Commission, and was instrumental in the movement of the Ainsley House--this enterprise is different. It's personal. So personal in fact, that it took some doing for Watson to decide she is ready to go public. Today she has decided she is ready.
"It's such a personal thing," she says, hesitating, "but I think it could help some people."
The project began eight years ago after Watson lived through one of the most devastating experiences of her life--the death of her husband, Courtland Watson, with whom she had shared 37 years of her life.
The grief that followed seemed unforgiving. It recalled practically every sad moment in her life, including the memory of her second son Andrew, who died just two days into his life. With all this sorrow, Watson needed some sort of an outlet.
Almost instinctively, she believes through the direction of God, Watson began writing music.
"I'd wake up at 4 in the morning and these words were going through my head," she explains. "I'd go to the keyboard and set my hands there, and there would be this melody. I think that when you're suffering a loss you're so vulnerable and open, I think that's a passageway through for the spirit."
Today, Watson pulls out a white, plastic-covered binder filled with more than 100 songs and poems. The songs were written in her "music space," a closet-sized room on the second story of her home, with a black Yamaha keyboard on one ledge and an AST 386 PC computer on the other. From here she can gaze at the serene swimming pool in her backyard, which is sparkling clean but never used unless her grandchildren visit.
On a software program she doesn't know the name of, Watson records the music directly from her keyboard onto the computer.
While many of the songs address the heavy heart of a widow and the grief of losing a love, other songs are upbeat, light and intended to lift the spirits. Some of the songs, including "Who's that on the Telephone," "On the Merry Go Round" and "Earth to Grandma," were inspired by Watson's eight grandchildren, who live in Scottsdale, Ariz., Minneapolis, Minn., and Meadow Vista, Calif. Another song that Watson wrote but never put to music was written in memory of Terry Beaudry, a Campbell police officer who died an untimely death in 1996.
And then there's "Orchard City Green," written about the grassy square in downtown Campbell flanked by City Hall, the library and the Ainsley House.
Watson sits at her piano bench to play this tune, which has become Campbell's unofficial town song.
"I'm not a singer," she warns, pulling a black microphone to her mouth. At the chorus, her fingers speed up and her voice becomes louder:
"Come to the Green, come to the Green in the Orchard City and you'll see what I mean/The people are friendly, they'll greet you with a smile/Walk around, relax; you'll want to stay for a while," Watson pauses to turn the page, flashing a shy smile.
"The library's filled with thousands of pages/the amphitheater seats people of all ages/and in the museum our history's well told/the Ainsley House shows how orchard crops turned to gold."
Watson plans to publish her music within the next year. It will be a mixed bag of songs about Campbell, her grandchildren and people she knows. It will also deal with her grief. On the first page of the compilation, Watson has typed a message to her late husband Courtland.
"Enjoy your new life my love, and thanks from the depths of my soul for the dance." Watson can't say when she'll begin aggressively pursuing a publisher. She feels that she still needs to form a more clear definition of her song book.
"Here's my dilemma: where would this fit in the library?" she asks rhetorically. "I suppose they have those self-help sections now, it could go there. But it's music too."
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Photograph by Ryan Olein
Keys to her Heart: Jeanette Watson has turned her creative energies over to writing and recording original songs.
Having been the first woman president of the Chamber of Commerce in 1978 and Campbell's first-ever woman councilmember in 1985 and later mayor, she is far from a novice at treading new ground.
Watson still vividly remembers her first run for City Council in 1985. She spent many hours canvassing door-to-door, at times with her three sisters. Although she was the first woman to run for the council since the city incorporated in 1952, in her mind she was just another candidate.
Others however, including Mike Kotowski, who was on the City Council at the time, remember there was hesitation from certain people about having a female councilmember.
"There were the old clunkers who feel that a woman's place was in the home, and from time to time a letter would show up being negative on women being involved in government," Kotowski says. "But that happened all over, not just in Campbell."
Once elected, Watson says she felt completely accepted. Her only issue was all the letters and city documents that came addressed "Dear Councilman." After about six months in office, Watson finally spoke up and successfully had the term changed to councilperson. But during her pre-election canvassing, she never campaigned on being a woman.
"I never made an issue about being the first woman," she says. "I don't think a lot of people even knew that there hadn't been a woman before."
Instead, Watson felt she was following in the footsteps of her father, Joseph V. Gomez, who was born and raised in Campbell and sat on the city's first-ever City Council. The Gomez family--Jeanette's parents, grandparents and her seven brothers and sisters--lived together on a 30-acre farm on Hamilton Avenue. They raised prunes, apricots, walnuts, a mongrel dog named Jack who guarded the fuel tank, and a cow whose name Watson can't remember. Watson's grandfather, Joaquin Gomez, had built the home in the late 1900s after emigrating from Portugal.
"In 1969 we sold it because we were being taxed as if it was a multiple-family dwelling and there was no one in the family to carry on with the ranch. We all had our own lives," she says sadly. "I took my mother out of town when they tore it down. We just couldn't watch."
Today, Carrow's Restaurant and Mama Mia's occupy the space that was once the Gomez family home.
At council meetings today, Watson will often hearken back to her days on the farm, usually when an issue about the changing character of the city is being discussed. But Watson doesn't think change is bad, rather she has emphasized the importance of remembering history. That can be seen through her work founding the Campbell Historical Museum, moving the Ainsley House, restoring the Heritage Theater and of course writing Campbell, the Orchard City, her book about the history of Campbell.
According to Kotowski, former Campbell councilman and two-term mayor, Watson--whom he refers to both as the city's "First Mother" and "Iron Lady" (because she reminds him of Margaret Thatcher)--has become an institution in the city.
"She has this very large Christmas party in her home every year," Kotowski reports. "The party is for her immediate family first, and then each year she would invite new people that had moved into the community. In Campbell, if you get invited to that thing, you've reached some kind of plateau."
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Campbell, California
