Edwin "Pa" Watson

Edwin Martin "Pa" Watson (December 10, 1883 – February 20, 1945) was a U.S. Army Major General and a friend and senior aide to President Franklin Roosevelt, serving both as a military advisor and Appointments Secretary, a role that is now encompassed under the duties of the White House Chief of Staff.

Early life and career Edwin M. Watson was born on December 10, 1883, in Eufaula, Alabama. Raised in Virginia, he was the son of a businessman in the tobacco industry.

He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, among contemporaries George S. Patton and Jonathan Wainwright. Watson entered with the Class of 1906 on June 16, 1902, but was discharged for a deficiency in mathematics on April 9, 1903. He was readmitted as a plebe on August 23, 1903, but resigned in the middle of his third class year on December 29, 1904. He re-entered the academy as a member of the third class in August 1905 and graduated in the Class of 1908.

His classmates gave him the nickname "Paw", with his yearbook entry joking,

He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Infantry. In 1908 he was elected as a member of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati by right of his descent from Captain William Penn of the 1st Continental Dragoons who died in service in 1777.

Watson served overseas twice, in the Philippines and Mexico, before he was transferred back to the United States in 1915. There, he gained his first experience with presidential service by acting as a junior military aide to President Woodrow Wilson. He transferred from the infantry to the field artillery on January 13, 1917.

Association with Roosevelt Watson would continue this pattern of service until becoming Senior Military Aide to the newly-inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. managing access to the President and dictating the tenor of his daily schedule.

Watson lived with his wife, the professional pianist Frances Nash Watson, on a Virginia estate called Kenwood. The land, just beyond Monticello, was once owned by Thomas Jefferson, and the estate house was designed by Roosevelt's cousin, the celebrated architect William A. Delano. Watson and Roosevelt were personally close above and beyond their close professional ties, and Roosevelt adopted Kenwood as his "Camp David" during his presidency and retreated there on several occasions for vacation. The guest cottage was built in 1940-41 for Roosevelt, but he stayed there on only one occasion, preferring the social activity of the main house. On subsequent visits, including four days in June 1944 while he was awaiting the Normandy invasion, Roosevelt slept in the front bedroom of the main house. Mrs. Watson later bequeathed Kenwood to the University of Virginia, which, in turn, has leased the property to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Watson and Roosevelt's son James were the ones who enabled Roosevelt to stand and to walk on the occasions when he did. Roosevelt had to wear steel braces. Watson and James would on those occasions support him on his left arm.

By virtue of his proximity to the President, Watson was present at some of the defining moments of the Second World War. These included a meeting about the Einstein–Szilard letter, which would eventually lead to the creation of the Manhattan Project, and Roosevelt's agreement to the Atlantic Charter alongside British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, providing a framework for those values that would guide the postwar world. He was in constant contact with Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. He attended the Tehran Conference, where the first of the negotiations between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin took place. Although in poor health, he attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945 as well, where the Big Three negotiated for the future of Europe. On the return voyage, he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage and died at sea aboard USS Quincy on February 20, 1945.

Watson was buried in Arlington Cemetery with the President in attendance. The President himself died two months later in April.

The War Department, in recognition of his service, posthumously awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal, which was presented by President Harry Truman and by Eleanor Roosevelt to his widow, Frances Nash Watson.

Awards Distinguished Service Medal Silver Star with oak leaf cluster Mexican Border Service Medal Victory Medal American Defense Service Medal American Campaign Medal European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal World War II Victory Medal

Dates of rank