ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602270013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: New River Journal
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
I've never had the nerve to describe my first summer job on a resume. Growing up in a college town, the job options could be pretty strange - and most of them didn't offer a sun tan.
My first venture into professional life involved pureeing sheep droppings and then surveying the mix under a microscope looking for parasites. And that was the part of the job that smelled good.
But the plus side of the job, which I remembered as being dandy fun, was the people who worked at Virginia Tech's Veterinary Science Department.
The boss was Duke Watson - a man honored at Virginia Tech recently as a major figure in veterinary science for 35 years - a mentor for a whole generation of Tech students.
He was the genial head of the red brick laboratory perched above Prices Fork Road, a place that seemed a small world to itself the summer of '65.
My lasting impression was one of a good humored boss and a good humored staff, folks such as Violet Drake, who patiently coached a clueless high school graduate.
Coffee breaks at the lab were seminars in Toms Creek Road cultural anthropology. I listened fascinated to heated debates over whether soap operas were a mirror of real life or a wildly exaggerated fantasy of an average joe's dull lifestyle.
For someone whose previous discussion groups took place at Training Union in the Blacksburg Baptist Church this was pretty eye-opening stuff.
The lab's big event was an annual summer barbecue, presided over by Duke Watson
Finally, here was a job I was trained for - plucking chickens. It was a farm girl's worst nightmare. Not one chicken to pluck for the dinner table - but 27. All those feathers, all those tiny bits of fuzz. I now understand what it must have felt like to be scullery maid in a medieval castle.
Despite the two dozen-plus chickens, the barbecue was a big event for the whole staff. That event and Watson's annual Christmas party were two reasons the department felt like a family rather than an office staff, remembers Drake. "He was an excellent boss. He was always fair, generous, interested in his staffers' welfare."
Being chef to the summer cookout was just one of Watson's many faces.
A ceremony at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine last month celebrated other facets of his life.
Old friends and family honored Watson for the role he played "in the history of Virginia agriculture and veterinary medicine."
The record of his life is something that most of us tamer folks can only dream of.
He was a lieutenant colonel in the Military Veterinary Corps during World War II. After the war, he traveled to Peru and superintended a ranch that could be an entire nation: 1.25 million acres, 225,000 sheep, 17,000 cattle and 1,500 horses and mules - not to mention 12,000 pigs.
You would think life in Blacksburg might seem a tad tame and mundane after ranching in Peru. But not to Duke Watson.
At Tech, his energy and veterinary skill led him to head the Department of Veterinary Science at Tech from 1959 to 1974. He became a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine when it opened 15 years ago.
The head of Virginia's Veterinary Medical Association praised Watson, now retired and living in Blacksburg, as the man who taught him "more about foot rot and black leg" than he thought there was to know.
But my guess is that most of us think of Watson as Del. Jim Shuler does ... as a man "who took the time to teach us something about life" in addition to veterinary studies.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Douglas F. "Duke" Watson and friendby CNB