THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS

Playing the baritone ukelele is one of many activities that fill Frank Watson’s busy days.
[In the newspaper article, there’s a Mike Fender/The Indianapolis News photo of Frank playing a baritone uke on the porch inserted here.]

FRANK WATSON

HOOSIERS

Living
page A-6

SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 1990

By MIKE REDMOND
The Indianapolis News

Around the Near Eastside, “you ought to go see Frank Watson about that.” is a widely distributed piece of advice.

“I just got in the habit of, instead of shrugging someone’s problems off... well, if I couldn’t do anything else I’d listen.” says Watson, 47. “When you get to know enough people, you find there’s usually somebody you can call. If you don’t have an answer or a resource, you can call somebody who does and you can help people find things.”

Helping people find things – money to pay the gas bill, a place to stay during a domestic crisis or a sympathetic ear – keeps “Grandpa” fairly busy. But it isn’t all he does.

He’s a househusband. (“I wash the dishes,” he answers when asked how he earns his keep. “I'm lucky. My wife’s an executive.”) He’s a poet, a philosopher, a singer-songwriter-guitarist, a storyteller, a ukelele player. He’s a community activist.

He’s a student, closing in on a philosophy degree from Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. He’s the producer and host of “How Sick Is It?” – a community events-comedy program on local cable television. And he’s a deacon in the Presbyterian church.

He may be the living embodiment of synergy – Buckminster Fuller’s explanation of a state that exists when the sum of the whole is greater than its parts – and the core of Watson’s personal philosophy.

“You take a tractor and put all the parts in a pile and add the gas and oil and the spark, and you get burnt parts,” he says. “But if you assemble them correctly, they do more work than it took to produce them. That's synergy.”

That thinking led the former farm boy from Trafalgar to both his Christian faith and his activism.

“I asked myself, ‘What is it that for human beings produces the greatest synergistic state?’ The question and the answer came at the same time: Love.

“The next question, of course, is ‘Who's the historical expert on love?’ The only person I know of that really preached love is Jesus. And I was hooked.”

With Watson, “love thy neighbor” also means “you’ve got to pay attention to your neighbor’s condition.” In his case, that means a lifelong fight against racism and poverty and dedication to changing the system to make it . . . well, kinder and gentler.

“Most of the people I’ve talked with receiving benefits like welfare or AFDC or food stamps, they are generally treated with a minimum of respect,” he says. “They’re condescended to. They’re patronized. They’re not treated with courtesy, and they’re not treated in a business-like manner.”

He’s upset at what he calls laws “designed to break up families.”

“You can’t get housing if you’re married,” he said. “You can't get the AFDC if you're married. And that’s a disgrace. It’s a shameful, shameful thing.”

So he plans to put his faith where his mouth is.

“My hope is that within the two years of my term as deacon I can organize some sort of legislative approach,” he says. “I really would like to get the church to go down and do some lobbying.”

Okay, add lobbyist to the Frank List. But don’t put it anywhere near the top.

He was asked once, during a church retreat, to imagine himself arriving in heaven. What accomplishments would he have to show for his life? What name would God call him by?

“The one that came to my mind.” he says, “was ‘Patriarch.’ ”

As in “Grandpa.”