When funeral director Jim Braaten closed the casket and walked to the rear of Grace Lutheran Church Saturday morning, he was smiling.

Saturday, September 16, 2000

When funeral director Jim Braaten closed the casket and walked to the rear of Grace Lutheran Church Saturday morning, he was smiling.

"I couldn’t help it," Braaten of Clasen-Jordan Mortuary said later and why not? The Austin Swing Band was playing "I’ll Remember April" at a funeral service.

When the Rev. Arvid Jovaag solemnly led mourners down the aisle to take their seats for the service, the band played the Glenn Miller classic "Moonlight Serenade."

That’s the kind of send-off given Donald Watts.

Gabriel could blow a horn, but so could Watts and today St. Peter has another accompanist for heaven’s angels and the sound to be heard outside the pearly gates will be big band swing music.

"Nobody loved to play music more than Don," said the Rev. Glenn Monson, a member of the Austin Swing Band. Monson knew Watts for only four years, but like so many others, the deceased left a lasting impression on him.

Watts died last Wednesday at the age of 88. A native of Livermore, Iowa, music was his first passion in life.

As a teenager, he played piano background music for silent movies. As a young adult, he took up the trombone and traveled with bands throughout the Upper Midwest.

When he moved to Austin in 1941, he played six nights a week at the Oasis Club and toured with the Chuck Hall Orchestra and Henry Charles Band.

By 1947, he entered the restaurant business and purchased the Lansing Corners Supper Club. He temporarily put the trombone aside to make the supper club one of the most popular restaurants in southern Minnesota.

By 1979, he sold the restaurant and when the Austin Swing Band was organized, he took a chair in the brass section, once again playing his trombone.

At his funeral Saturday, a legion of music, restaurant and other friends attended.

It was a first for Grace Lutheran Church to allow the Austin Swing Band and it’s Dixieland Ensemble play music.

Thanks to Clark Toland and Ben Bednar, the band members deftly went through their paces – "Trombone Soliloquy," "Flying Home Shiny Stockings" and "Satin Doll" and accompanying the mourners with "Amazing Grace" and other numbers.

Faye Bollingberg’s solos sparkled, but the band, playing in the church’s altar area, stirred the souls of audience members as much as the man they came to mourn did to so many lives.

"It was too sudden," began Rev. Jovaag in eulogizing Watts. "Sure, he was 88 years old, but he was still very much filling his life. He was in the midst of living, but then death intruded."

Jovaag quoted the deceased’s widow, Toni, as saying, "I lost my best friend" and one could see heads nodding in agreement.

Jovaag praised the musicians, "What a tribute you are giving through your music to one who gave so much to so many in his life."

After the service, mourners either talked about the music they heard in the church or the man they remembered so fondly. Pinky Erickson and his brother, Don, Jack Tedrow, Donaldson Lawhead, Doug Fladland and others seemed stuck on the phrase "Whatta great guy he was."

When the church was empty, the band members put away their instruments.

Dick Chaffee returned to Austin from LaCrosse, Wis. to bid his "best buddy" farewell with his trumpet.

"He’s the reason I got into the music business and he got me started in the restaurant business, too," said the leader of the Stardust Band. "He was my best buddy."