Relaxing in his downtown Plymouth office is Bill Watson. The News Agency is closing today at 5:30 p.m. as Watson plans retirement. Pilot Photo/Ida Chipman

PLYMOUTH — According to Bill himself, he and Lois, owners for the last 18 years of Watson’s News Agency in downtown Plymouth, are going to become “swingers” and “rockers.”

“I’m going to be on one end of the porch, swinging and Lois is going to rock in her chair at the other,” he said, chewing on his unlit cigar.

The News Agency, a fixture in Plymouth for the past 114 years, ever since Brown’s News Stand opened in the building at 118 N. Michigan St. in 1895, will close its’ doors at 5:30 p.m.today, June 30.

Watson Meloy ran the store from 1946 to 1988 when Dave Weedlind bought the business.  The Watsons became the owners in January of 1991.

Bill and Lois, living upstairs, sold the three-story brick building because of mounting health issues.
“I’m a little aggravated,” Bill said.  “I hate to give it up.”

The couple took turns last year running the business alone.

Bill did it all when Lois, a breast cancer survivor, was ill and she ran the store when Bill had multiple heart issues in 2008: Four stents and five by-passes.

“Neither one of us could do it alone and it has really has become too much for both of us,” he said.
The Watsons are going to take a month to move into their new digs, the former home of his mother and step-father.

A Sam Goebel Re-Max auction of articles from the sales floor and basement will be held on July 31.  A week later, on Aug. 7, the antiques and collectibles will be auctioned.

Bill, 67, grew up in Plymouth.  His early childhood was full of pain.

Born in 1942, with severe birth defects, including a cleft palate and serious skull and facial impairments that made breathing and eating nearly impossible, he struggled to live.

As a newborn, he could not nurse and was hydrated and fed intravenously.

“I had at least two surgeries a year until I was 18 years old,” he said.

He vowed that no one was ever going to cut on him again.

Until the heart problems last year.

“Well,” he grinned, “if they tell you it’s that or die, you change your mind pretty quick.”

By 1956, when he was 15, he moved out of his father’s second family’s home and started supporting himself.  He went to work as a stock boy at the Schultz Brothers Dime Store.  He graduated from Plymouth High School in 1960, and went to Columbia City as an assistant manager of the Schultz store there. At 22, he was the youngest manager in their national chain of 90 stores.

In February of 1961, Bill married a woman he still calls his “saint” for putting up with him –Lois Hammond of Argos.  By the early '70s, living in Plymouth, the Schultz hierarchy wanted to transfer him to another store, in another state.  The Watsons decided to stay and Bill went to work for Dave & Ray’s Supermarket as assistant manager.  He later worked for 12 years with Whitley Products in Plymouth.

He raced stock cars across the Midwest for more than 20 years, served on the Plymouth Park Department board, was a member of the Moose Lodge for 41 years and was elected lodge governor three times.  Having overcame his speech impediment, he was a regular on a talk show on the local radio station WTCA for six years.

The Watsons have three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

The moving will not be easy. What to keep and what to sell?

Bill has a huge collection of antique pedal cars, tricycles, bicycles and Whizzers.  He repaired gasoline lawnmowers and bicycles as a sideline in Willieworld USA, his basement, which was off-limits to all but a select few.

Willieworld is probably what this amazing man is going to miss the most.

And Plymouth shoppers who for years depended on him for their newspapers, magazines and South Bend Chocolates, are going to miss this amazing man.   

In addition to having been published in numerous national and international publications, including Chicken Soup for the Soul, Ida Chipman is the obituarist for the Johnson-Danielson Funeral Home in Plymouth. She and her husband, Eugene, have four children and 11 grandchildren and live in West Twp. To contact: chipman@thenet anywhere.com or call: 574-936-1125.