THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 11, 1995 TAG: 9501100135
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SURRY LENGTH: Long : 175 lines
KERMIT WATSON views battered furniture and battered souls the same way. Looking beneath the surface, he knows most anything can be salvaged.
``You don't throw nothing away,'' says Watson, grinning as one gold-rimmed tooth glistens in the sunlight at his small shop on U.S. Route 10.
An antique, oak buffet in the den of his home, next to the shop, exemplifies Watson's touch. Broken and black from being left in the rain, the antique was destined for the dump. Its owner gave it to Watson. When he'd finished with it, the 64-year-old Surry native says with a grin, the donor wanted it back.
Jeffrey Johnson is another example of Watson's influence.
Johnson said he started using drugs when he was 12. At 13, he was on probation. When Watson first touched his life, he admitted recently, he was addicted and running drugs from North Carolina and Washington, D.C., to Suffolk to support his habit.
He used cocaine, crack, marijuana, opium, ``anything I could get,'' Johnson said. He ran and sold drugs to make fast money, ``but it was never enough. I was destroying myself and destroying my family.''
Johnson said he probably was at his lowest point when he got a call from Watson, who was giving his wife spiritual counseling.
``My wife's nephew had just died from an overdose,'' Johnson said. ``I knew he had looked to me as a role model. When Rev. Watson called, . . . I was ready to talk to somebody.''
That was four years ago. Johnson, 35, now attends Bible study classes led by Watson, and has helped lead a number of his former drug-world acquaintances to Christianity.
One, who had robbed a bank when he was doing drugs, is a deacon in his church, Johnson said. ``It's amazing. My whole world is different. When you're looking for Christ, you have to have somebody you can see Christ in.''
For Johnson, Watson was that somebody.
The cabinetmaker has guided many similar transformations, said the Rev. Daniel L. Baltimore, minister of Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, where Watson is an associate minister.
Using many of the talents he has for working with wood, Baltimore said, Watson sands and polishes the soul until it shines again.
` ``He is very consistent, very slow and methodical, very earthy,'' Baltimore said. ``It's talking and listening - over and over - and that's exactly what some of these people need.''
Watson admits that he is attracted to what some might consider the dregs of society - drug dealers, drunks, bank robbers, thugs. He wants to see them change.
``Why, they are the best testimonial,'' he said. ``God has given me a gift of working with broken-down furniture. I'd like to think I can do the same with broken-down lives.''
Baltimore believes many of Watson's talents stem from his upbringing on a 75-acre farm, where everybody was expected to work. ``They, basically, never threw anything out,'' Baltimore said. ``Kermit is prone to see value in everything and everybody.''
Watson grew up on the farm with six sisters and three brothers. He was next to the youngest. But he never liked farming, he said, any more than he liked school.
He dropped out of school in the ninth grade and left the farm at 16 to work in a local factory that made wooden staves for nail kegs. At 20, he joined the Army and served in Korea.
Injured as he stepped into a foxhole, he passed time in a hospital by picking up another unusual talent he'd learned as a child - crocheting.
``The sewing circle used to meet at my mother's house,'' he said. ``I remember one woman, Lucy Hope, her fingers would be moving as fast as her mouth. That always fascinated me. I asked my mama to buy me a crochet needle, and I started using the string that they used to put on bags at the grocery store.''
At one point, Watson sold his handmade creations as fast as he could produce them. At the same time, he worked at Newport News Shipbuilding, where he was a crane operator and rigger.
There, he earned a reputation. ``Whenever they needed something done, they'd always say, `Get Watson. He can do anything','' he recalled.
Watson left the shipyard during a strike in 1979 and never went back. That's when he opened his cabinet shop.
``I figured, God had blessed me with the talent to work with wood, and it was my opportunity to use it,'' he said.
Watson has been active in his church and community. He served on the Surry County Social Services Board for 10 years and on the county School Board for five.
Watson has taught Sunday school. He plays several musical instruments, all self-taught. He's worked as a mechanic. He was a barber and had his own shop for 25 years.
It was about six years ago, he said, when he learned he was destined to use yet another God-given talent, working with people.
``It was a spiritual calling,'' Watson said. ``God spoke to me. I've always listened to God. He's in control. He's real.''
At the time, Watson was on medication for high blood pressure, diabetes and a heart condition. Today, he takes no medications. God, he said, is capable of healing mind, body and spirit.
Soon after his ``calling'' Watson was ordained an associate minister by his church. He began his new career going door to door, seeking souls to salvage.
It wasn't Watson's ministry that brought Judge William Park Lemmond Jr. to him. It was his woodworking. Unsuspecting, Lemmond saw Watson's talents meld together.
Lemmond, judge for the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Virginia, based in Prince George County, said he was at the Surry County Courthouse one day when he asked if anybody could recommend a woodworker. He had an heirloom bed, left to his daughter by her grandparents, that needed repair.
``I didn't take him the bed at first,'' Lemmond said. ``I took him something smaller, less important. I wanted to see the quality of his work.''
Satisfied with Watson's craftsmanship and his prices, Lemmond finally took the bed for repair. The antique was just the beginning of the relationship.
``It got so, every time I went to pick something up, I'd take something else for refinishing,'' the judge said. ``I had him refinish the oars from my dad's old john-boat, a couple of canoe paddles. At the time, I think there were things sort of happening to me in my spiritual life. Kermit would come at me without my even knowing it. It was a little scripture here, a little lesson there.''
Finally, Lemmond said he realized that he and Watson were working with the same kinds of people.
``Kermit was tending the flock; I was trying them,'' he said. ``They were young black males and young black couples. We were both working with them from different perspectives.''
Eventually, Lemmond said Watson was teaching him scriptures.
``And I didn't even know it,'' he said, chuckling. ``I am not the same person I was spiritually several years ago. It's on a different level now. There were various factors in my life. Kermit was one of them.''
Watson, he said, succeeds because he doesn't go around ``bashing'' people. ``He sees beauty in all things, all people,'' he said.
Most of those who have been captured by Watson's homespun philosphies and subtle religious convictions are as amazed by his talents as Lemmond. Delores Randolph, of Surry, said she is just as amazed that he can devote so much time to his ministry and still keep up his woodworking.
``He is always there,'' she said. ``It doesn't make any difference how long it takes. Often, his wisdom comes straight from the Bible. It's not his advice. He makes that clear.'' Randolph said Watson has the ability to quote just the right Bible passage for a particular situation. When she first sought his guidance, she said, he often referred to one of his personal favorite verses, Matthew 6:33: ``But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.''
``All these things,'' refers to material necessities, Johnson explained, food, clothing, money.
As another of Watson's students, he knows the verse well, and he has seen the results.
``When I got involved with Rev. Watson and gave my life to Christ, I never touched another drug or drink,'' he said. ``He has an unusual way of teaching, but it's awesome. I'm living better than I have ever lived.''
When Watson looks at furniture, Baltimore said, he looks beneath the surface to see what the piece once was, what it can be again.
He uses the same technique when he looks at a fellow human being.
``When I look at anything, I see the finished product,'' Watson said, grinning, as his gold tooth glistened in the sun. MEMO: PROFILE
The Rev. Kermit Watson, cabinetmaker, is married to Surry County
Assistant Treasurer Martha Watson. He has three children and six
grandchildren.
Watson is associate minister at Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, where he
teaches Sunday school and is chairman of the church trustee board.
Watson's outreach ministry includes a Monday night men's fellowship
in his home, a noon Bible study each Thursday at his church, a Bible
study every Friday night at the Super 8 Motel in Suffolk and a men's
fellowship on Saturday mornings at the same Suffolk location. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Watson sits in his living room, which is furnished with tables he
designed and built.
At his shop, Watson works on a cabinet that he's restoring.
Watson stripped this chair and replaced a broken spindle.
The Rev. Kermit Watson's mailbox, which he built, is a replica of
his home on U.S. Route 10 in Surry County. He opened his cabinet
shop in 1979. ``I figured, God had blessed me with the talent to
work with wood, and it was my opportunity to use it,'' he says.
by CNB