Slideshow: Cherokee Nation citizen opens historic Watts hotel

A front view of the restored Howard Hotel in Watts, Okla. (Photo by Jami Custer)

By Jami Custer
Staff Writer

WATTS, Okla. – The Howard Hotel, a historic hotel in this Adair County town, is slated to re-open on Nov. 21 as a bed and breakfast in restored fashion.

Phyllis Hagan, a 70-year-old retired Watts teacher, has worked at restoring the three-story building for the last 17 years, which included removing carpet, painting, laying tile and other projects.

The Cherokee Nation citizen grew up in the community and always felt connected to it.

“As a youngster my father was the postmaster of this town and we lived about a mile away in the little community of Ballard,” Hagan said. “I went away after college and my husband was in the military and I carried a long a poster about Watts. So I traveled around showing people my hometown.”

She eventually came home and taught at Watts Schools for 26 years. But it wasn’t until after her personal life took a bad turn that she bought the hotel 17 years ago and began restoring it.

MORE INFORMATION Phone: (479) 220-2434 E-mail: haganphyllis@yahoo.com Address: 102 First St. Watts, Okla.

“My life kind of fell apart on me at that point like it does for a lot of people…my husband was a Vietnam vet that kind of fell over the edge,” she said. “And to start again I decided to just come down here and buy the oldest building in the community and go to work on it because right about then I had a lot of excess energy.”

But before the restoration could truly begin, her life took another turn. She found a kid living in a local park and took him in.

“He got thrown away at 14, and so I just said, ‘just come home with me and we’ll get this all straightened out,” Hagan said. “The school counselor said ‘you’re going to be sorry, you’ll have more than that.’ And I was like ‘no, no, no.’ It turns out he was right.”

For the next 10 years, she took in “throwaways,” housing and feeding them, 31 of them to be exact. But it wasn’t a one-way street. She said each one of those kids helped her work on the hotel while they stayed with her.

“It was a really happy home for those young folks,” Hagan said.

But the Good Samaritan home didn’t last. Because she was paying for the hotel’s restoration and the kids who she took in, she was accumulating debt. Seven years ago when it was time to retire, she had to stop her charitable act of taking in young people. Eventually she got out of debt and began restoring the hotel again.

“I started getting out of debt…then I had a little bit more money to work on the place because up until then I had spent all my money on kids,” she said. “I would have made a lot more progress working on it if I hadn’t got sidetracked, but I don’t regret getting sidetracked one bit.”

The grand opening of the hotel is set for 3 p.m. on Nov. 21. State Sen. Jim Wilson is expected to be the featured speaker. The building is on the Preservation Oklahoma List and is decorated in antiques from the area and around the world.

The hotel was built to accommodate people who came to Watts after the Kansas City Southern Railway Company announced its decision to move the division point from Stilwell to the Watts switch in 1912. The hotel was one of the first structures to be built after the railroad “boom town” sprang up overnight, Hagan said.

She said she’s proud of what she has done with the help of her friends and family and hopes to revitalize the small town with the restored hotel. But because Watts isn’t the boom town it used to be, she does not think she will have much business. Her marketing ploy for the hotel is for it to be a stopping point on people’s journey, not a final destination.

“Rather than go into to it in a big ambitious money spending way I am just going to edge into it.”

Reach Staff Writer Jami Custer at (918) 453-5560 or jami-custer@cherokee.org