Remembering Hilary Watson: Wife of Tom Watson was his hero, setting an example for all
One morning in May 2018, Tom Watson was speaking over the telephone about his wife, Hilary. A few weeks before, she had undergone surgery at the Mayo Clinic that provided fresh hope as she was contending with pancreatic cancer.
As he talked about her courage and determination to stay true to herself despite the horrific disease, even through the phone you could practically feel him light up when she entered the room.
“Here she comes now: She’s going to let the dog out while it’s raining,” he said, laughing and adding, “Alright, I’ll go get the towel.”
Then he asked me if I’d like to speak with her, which surprised me but soon made perfect sense.
All at once, here was Hilary Watson: strong and warm and funny with an unflappable attitude you could imagine would be contagious. In those few minutes, she made the sort of indelible impression that she left on virtually all who encountered her.
Referring to her recent appearance at a National Cutting Horse Association competition the month before in Fort Worth, Texas, she laughed and said, “I keep popping up where people are thinking, ‘What are you doing? Why are you here?’
“I think that’s what kept me going through all of that, having those shows and being enthusiastic and excited about doing something. Whether I’m feeling good or not, I was going to still get on that horse. And have some fun doing it. That’s been a godsend for me.”
As she was a godsend to so many who will carry her in their hearts after her death on Thanksgiving eve, “surrounded by her family, friends, and her dogs,” per the obituary lovingly written by her husband.
“Her dignity, honesty, and toughness, along with her love of family, friends, and all animals — especially her dog Sam — will remain her everlasting legacy,” Tom Watson wrote.
That legacy of Hilary Watson, who was 63, was celebrated Wednesday in a beautiful and uplifting ceremony at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.
Tom Watson asked that details of the service be kept private, so we will simply say that it affirmed her grace and elegance and wit and will and wisdom and infectious impact on all around her.
And her legacy is something more yet.
We all grieve differently, all have our own belief systems about the meaning of life. But every so often, you come across a person whose example offers what might be called a universal resonance.
Today is the day.
It was a quality of hers that Tom Watson expressed poignantly in a text message to John Feinstein, who has worked closely with Watson to raise money for ALS research since Watson’s longtime caddie Bruce Edwards died of the disease in 2004.
“She said she was dying to live, not living to die, throughout her entire ordeal with her cancer,” Watson wrote to Feinstein. “She’s my hero.”
In the same text, Watson also wrote, “The void she leaves will be filled by memories which will always remain as they leave indelible marks on our souls which we will never forget.”
(Those words made me think of something powerful and soothing he had said to me in that 2018 conversation, which came only a few weeks after my mother had died. The topic came up as we spoke, and Watson went out of his way to offer consolation.
He urged me to embrace the memories to try to help fill the emptiness, adding, “Because the memories are rich. You laugh with them, and you cry with them. That’s just being human.
“She’s still there. She’s still there in your mind. Absolutely, she’s still here. They never leave. No, they’re always there. Maybe they’re not there physically. But mentally is just as important as physically sometimes.”)
No doubt that will prove true when it comes to Hilary Watson, for him and for their family and their friends. And maybe even for the rest of us, who could prosper by pausing to appreciate the seize-the-day spirit of a woman who was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1956.
Born Hilary Holton, she was an outstanding athlete who qualified for the 1976 Montreal Olympics in three track events (long jump, high jump, and hurdles) only for the Rhodesian team to be banned from the IOC because of apartheid.
But nothing could thwart her greatest passions.
“Hilary’s passionate love of animals came from her father, who took in every stray dog or cat he found stranded without a home,” Watson wrote in her obituary, noting that she’d soon be riding horses and that “waterskiing with the crocodiles and hippos living in Lake Kyle added a bit of excitement to their family holidays in the outdoors and nature.”
After working for the Rhodesian Tourist Bureau promoting international tourism, she moved to South Africa and worked in public relations for Southern Sun Hotels in Capetown.
She married golfer Denis Watson in 1985, and they moved to the United States and had three children. They later divorced, as did Tom Watson and his first wife, Linda. Hilary and Tom were married in 1999.
They shared too many wonderful adventures and ventures to count. And they shared in this chapter, too — from that Halloween day in 2017 when they were shopping in a Wal-Mart and Tom burst into tears when he got the call that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
They made a plan, though, starting with the chemotherapy and radiation and the surgery that left them optimistic and were buoyed by the loving support of what he called her “posse” of remarkable friends.
All with the idea in mind that “she doesn’t want her life to stop because of this,” he said in 2018.
So the constants remained in place, even the improbable ones.
For all the changes and twists and turns in her life, through moving across the world and motherhood and in sickness and in health, horses (and dogs) were always as much there for her as she was for them.
She won numerous buckles and nearly $400,000 in earnings in cutting-horse competitions. Including excelling, somehow, in the last year. According to the National Cutting Horse Association, she had more than $84,000 in winnings in 2019.
Along with continuing to share love with friends and family and her dogs, that surely was part of what she meant when she said she was dying to live, not living to die.
It was something she expressed in as many words that day in 2018, when she spoke of her eagerness to get back on a horse.
“Alive again, yeah, it’s been fantastic for me to be able to have that” between previous treatments, she said. “Because I think that’s what gives you the will to keep moving on.”
A will that shows a way for most anyone who ever knew her … and anyone else who might want to heed it.