Alsace has been a border region for most of its long history. It was a German territory in 921, a French territory by 1648, German again in 1871 and French again after World War I.
Ann Watkins' mother, Marie Bader, was born in Alsace at the time it belonged to Germany. During World War I, the French army advanced to Marie's small farming village. She fell in love with an American named Law Watkins who served among its ranks. (Like others who were eager to fight, he had joined the French army before the United States entered the war.) After the war, the two married in Paris and returned to the states on a troop ship.
They settled in Cresson, Pa., where Law worked for a coal mining company, like his Welsh and Scottish ancestors. He quickly became president of the company, and rich as well. He employed many servants in his household, including a chauffeur. Law was an early auto owner.
Ann is the third of Law and Marie's four children. She was born in 1922 in New York City, in a "lying in" hospital where wealthy mothers-to-be spent the last few weeks of their pregnancies before giving birth.
Although the family had a cook, their vegetable garden in Pennsylvania was Marie's domain. As a child, Ann whiled away hours in the garden, sometimes pulling a carrot out of the earth and putting it directly into her mouth. "I can still taste those good, fresh, dirty carrots," she says.
When Ann was 7 years old, her father tired of the mining business. Feeling financially secure, he took a lower paying job, teaching painting at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, D.C. It was October 1929.
Just when the family moved, the stock market crashed and Law lost everything. Fortunately, he still had his new job, which saw the family through the Depression. During the 1930s, Law also painted murals as part of the Works Progress Administration, a nationwide work relief program. The family lived in Bethesda, Md.
The Watkins children grew up listening to classical music. Ann and one of her sisters often played the piano together, playing classical pieces for four hands. The only fragment of popular music in the house was one Rudy Vallee record.
Ann graduated from a public high school in 1939 and went on to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass. She majored in art history and graduated with honors in 1943.
It was the middle of World War II, and Ann's first two jobs out of college were war related. Initially she did drafting for an aircraft company, but the detailed work was hard on her eyes. Then she was hired as a secretary at the German desk of the Office of Strategic Services. "It was terribly dramatic and exciting," she says. "We got top-secret cables from spies behind the lines who were hunting Hitler. We had to put everything in a safe every night."
After the war, Ann went into her chosen field. She got a job at the National Gallery of Art, assisting with a huge project called the "Index of American Design." All over the United States, artists painted realistic watercolors of antique furniture and other objects such as tools, toys and textiles. Ann's job was to unwrap the paintings, catalog them and help the curator assemble them into exhibitions and write a comprehensive book.
On the job, Ann met her future husband, Willis (Bill) Woods. Having served in World War II, he was enrolled in graduate school at American University, working toward a degree in museum administration. He received an internship at the National Gallery as part of his studies.
The two married in 1948. Before the end of the year Ann gave birth to their first child, Sarah. Soon after that, the young family moved to Florida. Bill never got his degree. He was offered a job without it.
Opening doors
Bill became director of the Norton Gallery, a small museum in West Palm Beach. In 1951, Willis Jr. was born. "I was overwhelmed with young children," Ann says. "Plus, Florida was insulated from the rest of the world, so I wasn't too aware of current events."
But events in the outside world nonetheless affected her. Bill had remained in the reserves and was called back into service during the Korean War. They moved first to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where daughter Laura was born in 1953, and then to a base near Yuba City, Calif. "It was awful being an Army wife," says Ann. Bill served a total of 19 months before returning to his job in Florida.
Once Ann's children were in school, she taught second grade for a couple of years. "I was not meant to be a teacher," she says. "Kids would run off in the middle of class. I counted the days between vacations.
"But for one glorious year after that," Ann continues, "I was Bill's assistant at the Norton Gallery."
In 1962, Bill's career took off. He became director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which had just built two new wings. The family moved again. Ann enjoyed the life of a museum director's wife, attending previews, lectures, concerts and dinners with famous people, as well as traveling. "My husband opened many doors for me," she says, "doors for growth."
But she didn't like Detroit. "It was grim," she says, "ugly and flat. And it was racially tense-there were race riots right around the corner from the museum. Once we had to interrupt a vacation to come home and rescue paintings."
With an empty nest, Ann and Bill moved in 1974 to Seattle, where Bill became director of the Seattle Art Museum. Ann worked at SAM herself a while, helping catalog and install works of art. "Bill brought the King Tut exhibit to Seattle," she says proudly. Soon after that success, he had triple bypass surgery and had to retire.
Bill's handsome severance pay from SAM supported them for a few years, but eventually Ann had to look for a job. She was 59. She had no luck applying at several small museums in town. Finally Ann found employment, first as a receptionist, then in the accounting department at a tax shelter company for HUD subsidized housing.
For 13 years the Woods lived in the Canterbury neighborhood, near the end of East Madison Street, but with Bill's health problems they could not keep up with the extensive yard work. They moved to Queen Anne in 1987. Sadly, Bill died one year later.
Ann continued to work until 1991, when her mother died and left her an inheritance sufficient to retire herself.
A thing for dragons
Since retiring, Ann has done volunteer work, working a few hours a week in the gift shop at Providence Hospital and as a receptionist at St. Anne Church, knitting for charities through the Fremont Public Association's Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) and editing the quarterly newsletter of SAM's Asian Arts Council. She also reads detective novels and indulges her dragon fetish.
When Ann was a teenager she became fascinated with 15th century paintings of St. George and the Dragon. Since then she has collected different representations of this mythical monster in pursuit of the pearl of wisdom: bronze, ceramic and wooden statues, a ring, and even a Beanie Baby. She likes other fabled creatures as well, like unicorns, and ones she imagines herself, which she calls "dinnywops."
In 1947 she wrote and illustrated a children's book entitled "Edgar Puddleduck and the Magic Hat," which describes the adventures of dinnywops named Timbo, Purpoon and Dinny-Flop. She still has the manuscript and the rejection slip from a publisher. At least her two grandchildren have enjoyed it.
Ann is now facing her own health problems. She has suffered from congestive heart failure for many years, which was recently aggravated by a viral infection that landed her in the hospital. She is still recovering.
But it's just a temporary setback. A palm reader once told her that she has a long lifeline. She has more time to chase the pearl of wisdom.[[In-content Ad]]
