Local barber wins businessman award

by Carnez Williams

Published on Fri., December 5th, 2008

Martin “Marty” Watson, owner of Watson’s Barbershop, hovers about his storefront shop chatting with customers as he styles a man’s hair, clippers buzzing. Watson never seems to touch the ground, despite the fact that he’s been standing all day.

Watson, 24, jokes back and forth with a steady stream of customers flowing in and out the door. Business for him is as good as usual, something he attributed mainly to quality work and professionalism.

“If I sit anybody down I know they’re coming back,” Marty said. “Within 15 minutes you get good conversation, a quality cut and your time — my full attention.”

Watson, also the Lawrence 2008 NAACP Minority Businessman of the Year, said he has somewhat of a monopoly in Lawrence. Watson says only two licensed black barbers reside in Lawrence: him and his employee Tim “Nellie” Nelson.

Marty serves about 15 to 20 customers a day, ranging from KU athletes and coaches to business professionals. No matter who the customer is, Marty’s gift of gab will put them at ease, Kasey Cullors, Wichita senior and Marty’s roommate, said. Marty is the same person at home as he is at work.

“Marty is probably the youngest old person I know,” Cullors said. “You think this person has got to be 50.”

Equally important to some patrons is Marty’s role as a counselor. Earle Mosley, a former KU football coach, said most coaches and players do not live a normal life.

Coming to Marty’s provides him and his players a comfortable place to relax, often with talk about sports, women, politics and the occasional gossip.

“Everybody needs somebody to talk to, someone they trust,” Mosley said. He also said that the players can find some normalcy.

Marty’s outgoing personality and eagerness to get to know people, is what Camellia Watson, his mother, said made him a special child.

As a child she said he could talk to anyone.

“He enjoyed talking to older people,” Camellia said.

His sister, Kendra Watson, 30, also said the fun-loving jokester that customers see today is the same outgoing, chunky kid she nicknamed “Fat” growing up in Parsons, a small town in southeast Kansas. She watched as he started up his first business, “Watson’s Back-Porch Barbershop,” as an eighth grader.

There, Kendra said she saw Marty’s personality and haircutting skills culminate. Every day after school, friends, family, teachers and community members lined their backyard for Watson’s $2 haircuts. People came from across southeast Kansas for haircuts.

“People still ask for him,” Kendra said. “People come all the way from the Pittsburg area because they remember he cut hair.”

His brother, Ronald Watson, Jr., 27, said Marty was always the most creative one in the family.

He said when he and Marty weren’t playing baseball or basketball or wrestling each other in a heated exchange, Watson would always draw designs for his customer’s hair.

“He has always seemed to be his own free spirit,” Ronald, Jr., said. “He kind of made his own path of how to do things.”

All three alluded to how much their father Ronald Angelo Watson, also a business owner, influenced Watson. His father died when he was 16 years old.

Ronald, Jr. said Marty often felt snubbed because his father missed part of his life.

“It was kind of a chip on his shoulders,” he said. “I think it motivates him to be a businessman.”

Marty won’t be missing any parts of his sons’ lives. He has three sons: Kyle, 3, and Adric and Gabriel, both 1. All three boys live with their mother. They often spend time with him in his shop, just like he did with his dad.

He spent countless hours working side-by-side with his dad, every day before school, washing, pressing and mending clothes at his dad’s cleaners, working to beat the day’s heat. The business was run by Ronald and his family and serviced all of southeast Kansas.

“He showed us the value of hard work at an early age,” Marty said.

A large portrait of Ronald, alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X with an image of the cleaners, hung opposite Marty’s barber chair as he recalled the day his father died.

In August 2000, Ronald, an outgoing, humorous man, who always wore his “good hair” neatly slicked back, woke up early one morning with chest pains. Later that day, Marty, then at basketball practice, got the worst call of his life: his mother was rushing his father to the hospital. He was having a heart attack.

Marty rushed to see his dad. As he arrived, doctors were trying to stabilize him and move him to a Missouri heart hospital. They couldn’t. Ronald died shortly after.

“When I got there they were still working on him,” Marty said. “After a few hours of fighting, his heart just gave out.”

Camellia said her husband’s death devastated Marty. He was so distraught, his grandmother bought him a car, just to keep him motivated to graduate from high school.

She said Marty began working harder than usual to compensate for his dad not being around. He took up a job at a local printing press. Suddenly, Marty felt like the family’s provider, the man of the house. His brother and sister were already in college. His mother was in a state of shock.

Three weeks after graduating from Parsons High in May 2002, Marty moved to Wichita to attend Old Town Barber and Beauty College. Only nine weeks later, Marty graduated from the barber school as the youngest licensed barber in Wichita at 19. Marty moved to Lawrence in 2004 and worked as a barber in several shops. He opened his own shop in 2005.

“When he starts something he’ll finish it,” Camellia said. “And he finished it in a hurry.”

Patrons say Marty’s get-it-done business style as well as his fun-loving attitude and the overall friendly atmosphere at Watson’s Barbershop, keep them coming back.

Marty said he has only been able to do this by getting their respect, not just their money.

“They don’t have to choose me,” Marty said. “The fact that they do is an accomplishment.”

— Edited by Arthur Hur

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