Adm. James Watkins : An Unlikely Hero in War on AIDS

Last fall, shortly after Adm. James D. Watkins was asked to lead the embattled presidential AIDS commission, one of its members, New York cancer specialist Burton Lee, was confronted by several leaders of New York City’s gay community, hard hit by the epidemic. They were very upset.

“My God, a military man,” Lee recalled them saying. “How are we going to get any breaks from a guy like this?”

Lee, who already had a keen sense of Watkins from the early days on the panel, told them: “This guy is going to be one of your best friends. You won’t believe it now, but he’ll prove it to you.”

Wrap Up Assignment

Nearly a year later, Watkins has proved it. The commission’s 13 members are scheduled to meet today and wrap up their assignment--formulating a national strategy for dealing with the deadly epidemic--and forward their report to the White House.

Drafts of their document, which call for expanding laws that protect AIDS patients from discrimination and overhauling the health care system, have been almost universally praised--not only for ambitious public health policy initiatives, but for compassion and sensitivity.

And virtually all of those involved in the commission’s work, as well as many in the public health establishment, credit the 61-year-old former chief of naval operations as the person who single-handedly resurrected a commission on the verge of collapse and steered its diverse and squabbling members toward conclusions that were bold and thoughtful, yet devoid of moral judgments.

“My vision was a little blurred way back in October,” Watkins said in a recent interview. “But it’s clear now.”

Deeply Religious Catholic

The imposing, 6-foot-4, silver-haired former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed an unlikely hero in the AIDS war when he took over the commission last fall. Watkins, who had helped design “Star Wars” and called the military’s ban on homosexuals “a sound policy,” is a deeply religious Roman Catholic who is the father of six children.

But among those who know him best--men who served with him in the military, his family and his friends--the outcome of his commission work came as no surprise.

“It was vintage Jim Watkins,” said Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “He learned everything he could about it, analyzed it, then divided it up into manageable areas. It’s just the kind of thing he does so well.”

Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, agreed.

“He’s the kind of a guy whose name I keep in my little black book when a job needs to be done,” he said. “Obviously he’s applied the same principles in getting this job done as he did in the military--except that he had a platoon of commissioners to whom he could not give orders.”

Although, to hear Dr. William Walsh, a panel member, tell it, Watkins wasn’t above trying.

Command Situation

“He doesn’t like disagreement. He gets irritated if people disagree with him,” said Walsh, who frequently disagreed with Watkins throughout the commission’s work. “That goes with having been in a command situation most of his adult life.”

Nevertheless, Walsh insisted: “I’m still one of his biggest fans.”

Despite the worst fears of the gay community as the commission began its work, the Watkins-led panel emerged with a strong commitment to the dignity and civil rights of the AIDS-afflicted.

While acknowledging that “I really don’t know anything about homosexuality” and that it is remote from his own life in raising a large family, he said: “We simply shouldn’t get involved in positions that deal with promoting one life style over another--or we won’t get on with fighting the virus. If someone thinks a presidential commission on nationally approved life styles is important, fine--just don’t put me on it.”

His wife, Sheila, said that her husband was deeply moved by the many painful stories the commission heard from nearly 800 witnesses during the 10 months of hearings on the AIDS epidemic. Further, she said, the family shared some anxious moments last April, when one of their daughters, who lives in New York City--where the AIDS toll has been heavy--required a series of blood transfusions during pregnancy.

‘Really Brings It Home’

No problems with contaminated blood developed, she said, but “those kinds of things weigh on you. It really brings it home.”

Sheila Watkins said that her husband’s sensitivity to the human side of policy stems at least partly from his armed forces background. And Watkins himself dismissed the stereotype of the aloof, austere military man. People “think it’s all ‘stab-them-with-a bayonet’ or ‘hit-them-in-the-dark-of-night’--as if they have no feelings of humanity,” he said. “I believe that toughness and compassion are not mutually exclusive. The best leaders in the military are empathetic to people.”

Indeed, starting when Watkins was chief of naval personnel--and continuing into his four-year tour as naval operations chief before his retirement in 1986--he created programs that acknowledged the health and welfare needs of sailors and their families. In the late 1970s, for example, he began the Navy Family Support program, which now boasts 73 centers worldwide providing such services as day care, job counseling, legal assistance, drug and alcohol prevention.

Occasionally, Watkins became personally involved in a Navy family’s plight.

“I remember one morning where he’d read a local story about a sailor who’d been killed in the line of duty--and his widow had somehow been left behind in the bureaucracy. She hadn’t received some cash payments she was due. She’d been turned out of quarters and was almost living out of cardboard boxes,” said one former member of his Navy personal staff, who declined to be identified. “There’s nothing that gets him more mad--and it only takes the CNO’s visible concern to get the system working.”

Award From NAACP

Watkins also pushed hard to increase minority representation in the Navy and received an award from the NAACP for his efforts. He began a personal excellence program when the draft ended to bolster the credentials of naval recruits.

His strong feelings about personal excellence had begun years earlier when, as an ensign, like former President Jimmy Carter, he worked for Adm. Hyman Rickover in the nuclear submarine program. In fact, in 1982, when Rickover died, Watkins delivered the eulogy.

“The Navy changed me,” he said. “Rickover had an intense interest in getting involved with the best and the brightest and he drove it very hard. He shook me out of my malaise. Until then, I didn’t know what it meant to drive yourself to your maximum potential. He got me to understand the importance of education and doing everything you can to measure up to your God-given potential.”

Watkins knew little about AIDS when he first encountered it in the military. In 1985, when the Department of Defense announced that it would test all its personnel, Watkins, unhappy with the Navy’s proposed testing program, rewrote it himself--and offered the first hint of what was to come later.

“Counseling wasn’t even listed in the draft the (Navy) surgeon general came up with,” he said. “I was panicky. I knew the whole program would bomb unless we were sensitive to the human side of it.

‘Live in Close Quarters’

“We knew there was a high prevalence of AIDS among homosexual males and we could imagine what the discussions would be on the mess decks about this,” he continued. “These are sailors who live in close quarters and I knew the discrimination would be very severe in the Navy against anyone who tested positive. We had to be prepared for every possibility. We finally got the policy sensitive enough that we could pull the string on every possible case.”

James David Watkins was born March 7, 1927, the sixth of seven children, in Alhambra, Calif. His father, Edward Francis Watkins, grew up on a ranch next to George Patton, the most famous U.S. tank commander of World War II. They played together as children.

His father, who at one time had studied for the priesthood, owned the Southern California Winery Co. and grew grapes in what is now San Marino. After he lost his ranch during Prohibition, he eventually went to work for his father-in-law, George Clinton Ward, president of Southern California Edison Co. He became deeply involved in helping the Mexican-American community in Alhambra.

Watkins’ mother, Louise, was a woman who “was 30 years before her time,” Watkins says. She ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for Senate in 1938--an extremely rare activity for a woman in those days--and backed Gen. Douglas MacArthur for President in the 1940s. Sheila Watkins remembers listening to her future mother-in-law over the radio when she campaigned for the Senate.

Before marrying his father, Watkins’ mother had dropped out of college to study in France. “She learned French. She wrote several books. She was a historian, a woman of arts and letters,” he said.

Father’s Humanitarian Side

” . . . The influences from both were quite strong,” Watkins said. “I got the humanitarian side from my father and the intellectual side from my mother.”

He received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1945. His older brother had been graduated from there two years earlier “and had always held it on a high pedestal in life,” Watkins said.

Ironically, the first time Watkins applied for the naval academy, he didn’t make the cut. He remembers coming home and telling his mother: “You know what they asked me? Twenty questions on ‘The Tempest.’ I never read that.”

He recalled her response. She was disgusted. “ ‘The Tempest’ was one of (Shakespeare’s) worst plays,” she said.

Watkins said there were many stories that touched him this last year, as he was receiving his AIDS education.

‘Have No Place to Go’

“The little boy who was isolated, because no one would go to school with him--that gets you there,” he said. “All you have to do is walk into the pediatric ward of Harlem Hospital and see those children. Nobody wants them. They have no place to go. That gets you.”

He continued: “The ignorance that generates stupid policies. That gets you. People who aren’t willing to listen. That gets you. Those things all get to you.”

Watkins delivered a speech at the 1982 commencement at Marymount College, in Arlington, Va. Known as the “moral man” speech, it has been widely quoted.

“I am a moral man,” he told the graduates on that day six years ago. “I am constantly making choices every day of my life--choices between good and evil. It is a constant battery of choices . . .

“Where do we turn for answers? We make choices with the best guidance at hand, the guidance of our faith. I must ask: What do I believe about the meaning of life? What values do I hold? What is important in life? What have I been taught in school, at home and church, and from my peers. Ultimately, the choice is mine--and I must arrive at my decision alone. I must live with the consequences of that choice and not be afraid of it.”