Saint Margaret’s

Nancy Watson

A LEAF FROM OUR FAMILY TREE WHAT'S IN A NAME?

In the case of former Senior Warden Nancy Watson it can tell a lot. When she ran for judge of the Superior Court of L. A. County under her full name of Nancy Belcher Watson against six male opponents and won, her father, a prominent attorney, claimed it was her maiden name "Belcher" that tipped the balance, while her husband Philip, a well known public official, argued that it was her married name "Watson" that made the difference. To which she replied that she had won because "Nancy" was there.

Anyone who knows her knows that Nancy can stand on her own very nicely. Consider that she graduated from Los Angeles University High School in two and a half years at age sixteen, and Stanford in two and a half years at age twenty when she married and started a family. Three children later at the age of twenty-nine she entered UCLA Law School as the only woman in her class, to begin a distinguished legal career. After practicing in a Los Angeles litigation firm for a number of years, she was appointed Judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court by then Gov. Ronald Reagan. It was several years later she won her seat on the Superior Court bench on her own.

Nancy was born in Los Angeles and reared in the Hancock Park area, and attended the Hollywood Beverly Christian Church as a child. However, in her teen years she discovered St. James Episcopal Church on Wilshire Boulevard and was immediately attracted to the liturgy and music and joined the choir. After college and her marriage she returned to St. James and had her children baptized there. In later years she attended St. Thomas Episcopal and the Episcopal Church in Culver City where her husband was Senior Warden. His health problems brought early retirement for them both when they decided to move to the desert full-time. It was then that they began attending St. Margaret's.

After her husband's unfortunate early death three years later, Nancy became more active in the life of our congregation, first as a member of the choir, and then in the official governance as vestry and parish school board member, and then as Senior Warden during the critical period of transition after Fr. Brad Hall's death. She considers that among the blessings of her life have been the opportunities to serve as Senior Warden under Fr. Hall, to participate in the Call Committees for Fr. Robert Certain and Choirmaster John Wright, and also to serve as Fr. Certain's first Senior Warden. She believes our church has been blessed by all of the clergy we have had.

When asked to reflect on the growth and development she has seen at St. Margaret's, Nancy says that she had delighted in seeing the increasing number of families and children, noting the many baptisms lately and the twenty-eight children in the children's choir on a recent Sunday. When she started attending in the mid-1980's there weren't even enough children to serve as acolytes. And, of course, there has also been the growth in membership, the building of the sanctuary, the magnificent new organ, the establishment of the parish school, the paying off of the debt that has enabled the construction of the early childhood and middle school facilities and the recent purchase of property in La Quinta for a future St. Margaret's mission congregation.

Currently Nancy serves on the San Diego Diocesan Transformation Executive Committee of ten, along with Frank Marshall and Fr. Certain which made possible the purchase of the La Quinta property. At the local community level, she recently volunteered as a tutor in the literacy program that was offered at the recent Sunday Ministry Fair following the worship service.

If you were to ask Nancy to reflect on her life, we think she would tell you she has been blessed in many ways – with loving parents, good schools, lasting friendships, a gratifying career, and of course her four children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, including two sets of twins. And if you would ask those in our congregation who know her, they would tell you it's we who have been blessed.

Born March 14, 1956 Nancy died 9 February 2004, the church mourns the loss of a great woman who gave so much to this parish.

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