Deborah Watrous: Building Community

By Christopher Eiswerth

  "Music is a symbolic language. The text for vocal music really interprets that abstract sound, kind of like a wonderful book does," says Deborah Watrous, director of the New Hampshire Humanities Council.

  A former opera singer, Watrous has changed her focus from music to books. Since 1994, she has been running "What Is New Hampshire Reading?" a book discussion series that works with local libraries and organizations to bring scholars and the community together to study literature.

  Themes have included: "Journeys to the Edge," "Humor Here and There," and "Jane Austen and Her Time." For 2007, Watrous is creating a series on science fiction and fantasy works.

  Before moving to New Hampshire, Watrous received her master's degree in music from the University of Cincinnati. The classically trained mezzo-soprano worked with the Cincinnati Opera Chorus for four seasons. "It was great fun to wear the elaborate wigs and costumes and work with some world-class musicians." She eventually looked to what she saw as more stable careers. She became an insurance claims adjuster and then membership director for New Hampshire Public Radio. In 1990 she joined New Hampshire's Humanities Council as a fundraiser. Over the next decade, Watrous brought in such people as writer Elie Wiesel, filmmaker Ken Burns, historian David McCullough, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the council's annual dinner. After taking a three-year break to be with her children, Watrous returned in 2004 as executive director of the council.

  Watrous is once again a public voice, this time on the radio on a monthly show called Human Ties. On the show, Watrous interviews scholars and local leaders in the humanities.

  One of the interviews she recalls was with the University of New Hampshire's Judith Moyer, director of the theater production It Had to Be Done, So I Did It, based on oral histories collected from the women of Warren, New Hampshire. The play tells the story of women and work from 1900 to 1950 by focusing on the bartering system, farm work, and telephone operators. "Her message was that having these programs and bringing people together continues to create community just as telephone operators kept communities going in some rural communities," says Watrous.

  It Had to Be Done, So I Did It tours through the council's speakers bureau, which features about one hundred presenters listed through the council's Web site. The program encourages community groups to invite scholars for face-to-face conversations; more than two hundred events take place each year in New Hampshire.

  Next for Watrous and the council is "Shifting Ground: Religion and Civic Life in America." This initiative will examine how religion has been used in public policy through the perspectives of education, protection of privacy, foreign policy, and the environment. The program will begin with a two-day conference this March, featuring National Public Radio's Steve Curwood and professors Kenneth Miller of Brown University and Calvin DeWitt of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It will begin two years of programming, including television and radio broadcasts, community forums, and a teacher institute.

  The program, says Watrous, "returns us to the roots of state humanities councils, which were formed to use the humanities as a lens through which to discuss public policy issues." She says, "Our goal with this project is to have a really broad tent, engaging people in conversation who don't usually come together to talk."