JOHN WATTS

WATTS III--John Hill. "There should be elephants," John Watts said to us. It was 1989 and he was planning the book party for friend David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace." He had secured space at the headquarters of the United Nations, but he wanted more - Elephants. Some camels. A Bedouin on a fiery steed. This generosity, humor and appetite for a larger-than-life life, was emblematic of John. John Hill Watts, III was born on January 21, 1938, in San Antonio, to John Hill Watts, Jr., an engineer for Westinghouse and Edna Mabel (Johnson) Watts, a math teacher. They raised John and his younger sister, Eddie, in Corpus Christi. The family escaped steamy Corpus summers at Eagle Nest Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, cooking over campfires and bathing in the icy Nueces River. John was ambitious, placing first in local annual kite competitions, earning his Eagle Scout rank, winning a scholarship to The University of Texas, enrolling in Naval ROTC. He was also eccentric. When others drove to high school, he rode a bicycle he had constructed from parts found at the dump. His 6'4" lanky figure would stride the halls of WB Ray High with bike clips on his pants legs and a slide rule in his shirt pocket. "Why I had no dates," he later said, "I'll never know." He skimmed over the wide Corpus Bay in a Comet with fellow Sea Scouts Charles Butt and Robert Marks. He and pal Terrence McNally were inducted into WB Ray's Quill and Scroll Society. As an engineering major at UT, he continued to stand out, as a Sigma Chi, a Pi Tau Sigma, Tau Beta Pi, and President of the Interfraternity Council. As a member of the Cowboys service organization, he donned black cowboy boots and hat to herd UT's longhorn calf, Bevo, onto the field for football games. John served as a reserve officer in the U.S. Navy (1960-1963) on a ship in the Pacific fleet and at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, VA, calculating missile trajectories on the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC), an early supercomputer. After resigning from the Navy, he attended Harvard Business School (MBA, 1967), where he was a Baker Scholar and received the Scott Award. He joined Brown Brothers Harriman's New York office where his mentor, partner Robert Roosa, encouraged him to move to Brooklyn Heights. In 1972, John and Brown Brothers colleagues Richard Fischer, Steve Francis and Jim Trees founded Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, the first stand-alone global fixed- income investment management firm. "We had one client, one filing cabinet and one year to make something or we all had to go find another job," he said. Over the next three decades at FFTW, John worked with pension funds, endowments, central banks, and sovereign wealth funds in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and FFTW grew to include offices in London and Singapore, with $32 billion under management. Fascinated by foreign policy, John authored papers for the Council on Foreign Relations, lectured at the Salzburg Seminar and served on the boards of the Salzburg Seminar, Robert College in Istanbul and the World Policy Institute. He was a passionate advocate for Hampshire College, where he served as board chair and trustee for 16 years. Although he retained a slight Texas drawl, John loved his adopted city, New York. He reveled in the history of the South Street Seaport and the grit of Washington Square Park. He sought out Sam Shepard at Playwrights Horizons, Beckett at Mabou Mines, Ronnie Matthews at the Blue Note, the latest funky restaurant recommended by the New York Times or Zagat. He was happiest on the water, underway, with a crew of family and friends, racing across Long Island Sound under full sail or slipping into a quiet harbor in Maine. He wore a cheap captain's cap and a big grin at the helm of whatever boat he was sailing: from his first, the pea green Solana, an O'Day 19, to Ardea, a Hinckley 41 yawl aboard which he explored the eastern seaboard from Orient to Maine, to Bandera, the 59' Hinckley yawl he designed with Sparkman and Stephens for a 1995-1998 circumnavigation. He maintained a life- long love for the Texas Hill Country. In 1988 he purchased his childhood paradise, Eagle Nest Ranch, and spent decades working with ranch manager Reginald Stapper to improve the range and build its cattle and pecan businesses. Every Thanksgiving and Easter, he and his wife, Martha, hosted family reunions there. John's work as an environmentalist was an outgrowth of this love of the sea and the Hill Country. He served on the Board of the League of Conservation Voters, was Treasurer of the National Park Foundation and chaired the board of the Waterfront Alliance. In May 1986, John joined the Brooklyn Heights Association Waterfront Committee, formed to save Piers 1-6 from high rise development. He spent the next 20 years working with other engaged individuals and community organizations to realize a bold vision of a "Harbor Park" stretching from Atlantic Avenue to the Brooklyn Bridge. The resulting Brooklyn Bridge Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, hosts more than five million visitors a year. John Watts died at home in Brooklyn Heights on Monday, January 13, 2025. The cause was Alzheimer's. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Martha Mast Watts, son Daniel and his wife Nadja Pinnavaia, daughter Laurel and her husband Torrance Robinson, grandchildren Luca John Watts and Tatiana Watts, Skye Robinson and Charlie Robinson, all living in Brooklyn, and his sister Eddie Mast of Austin, TX.