This story originally appeared in the inaugural edition of the Owensboro Times quarterly newspaper.
On September 15, 1970, Tom Watson started his day like any other. He checked his tractor-trailer to ensure it was in good condition and loaded a five-ton bulldozer onto his lowboy trailer before heading from Owensboro to Bowling Green for work.
He had no way of knowing that day would change his life forever.
Upon arriving at the job site, Watson successfully unloaded the bulldozer. Another bulldozer, this one equipped with a bucket instead of a blade, needed to be moved to Tompkinsville. Unfamiliar with this model, Watson was unaware that counterweights had been installed to keep it from tipping backward when loading gravel into a dump truck. As he attempted to drive the dozer onto the trailer, the front, much lighter due to the bucket, continued to rise.
“I heard someone holler ‘jump,’ but I was trapped underneath the radiator and couldn’t free myself,” Watson recalled.
As the dozer flipped backward, he was thrown from the seat. The machine came crashing down, landing on Watson. The tracks continued to turn until bystanders rushed in to help. They managed to redirect the machine, preventing it from crushing him entirely, but not before it severely damaged his right leg.
“Ten thousand pounds landed diagonally across my body, from just outside my neck on the left side down to my right knee,” Watson said.
The damage was devastating. Watson fractured his collarbone, shoulder blade, and pelvis and suffered a dislocated left arm, 12 broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a mangled right leg.
“I only felt pain in my chest and had no idea my leg was injured,” he said.
Fighting for his life
As Watson drifted in and out of consciousness, the ambulance arrived. He recalled an attendant repeatedly checking Watson’s eyelids, seemingly unsure if he was still alive.
“I finally hit him in the nose and told him, ‘I’m not dead, just get me to the hospital,’” Watson said.
Once at the Bowling Green hospital, doctors worked to stabilize him. It wasn’t until a doctor leaned over him that Watson fully grasped the severity of his injuries.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Son, we are going to have to take your leg off,’” Watson recalled.
“I began cussing and screaming, ‘There is nothing wrong with my leg! My chest is hurting!’ And then he said, ‘There’s not enough left to put in a shoebox. Can someone put this big SOB to sleep?’”
Watson woke up in a hospital room, facing a new reality. His right leg was gone. With no intensive care unit in the rural hospital, he was placed in a makeshift recovery ward known as the “Amen Corner,” a place where family members could pray or say goodbye to their loved ones.
“I would recognize some of the guys I played high school and college football with crying, and I thought, ‘Somebody in here must be in really bad shape,’” Watson said. “Little did I know, it was me.”
He said his mother reassured him: “Thomas Hart, everything happens for the best. You will be just fine.”
Road to recovery
Watson remained in the hospital for 70 days. At one point, fluid filled his right lung, leading to an emergency bronchoscopy.
“The doctor said, ‘This is going to hurt. I’m going to insert a tube down your throat to try and pull some of that fluid out. Don’t fight me,’” Watson said.
The procedure was agonizing, and Watson lashed out, even breaking a handrail off his hospital bed in pain. But it wasn’t the end of his suffering. He was given morphine for pain management, but after 22 days, he made the decision to stop.
“I finally said, ‘No more,’” Watson said.
His withdrawal was brutal. At one point, he called his doctor at home in the middle of the night, begging for just one more dose.
“He got out of bed, came to the hospital, gave me one last IV shot of morphine, laid the syringe on my chest, and said, ‘That’s it,’” Watson recalled.
A shift in perspective
Watson’s perspective on his own struggles changed one night when a male nurse, Joel, wheeled him down the hall to visit another patient—a young man who had lost both legs in a train accident and had also lost his wife and daughter.
“Joel looked at me and said, ‘And you think you got it bad?’ That was the defining moment that put me on the right track to never give up,” Watson said.
His recovery continued, and eventually, he was cleared to return home. Owensboro-based Texas Gas Transmission provided a private plane to transport Watson, and the same ambulance crew that had first scraped him off the ground was there to take him home.
“The guy I hit in the nose said he couldn’t believe I was alive and apologized for what he had said that day. I apologized, too,” Watson said.
A life of service
That accident could have ended Watson’s story. Instead, it shaped him. He dedicated his life to helping others, entering the field of prosthetics in 1972. Along with his wife, Barbara, he co-owned Tom Watson’s Prosthetic and Orthotics Labs, Inc., serving individuals with limb loss for 50 years.
Watson also gave back through youth sports, helping found the KFL youth football league, coaching at both the high school and collegiate levels, and serving on numerous local and state boards.
Watson first served as Mayor of Owensboro from 2005 to 2008. He was re-elected in 2016 and again in 2020 and 2024, making him the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history.
Despite the challenges he faced, Watson has never wavered in his commitment to his community. He credits his resilience to the many “guardian angels” who helped him along the way—from the bystanders who saved his life to the doctors, nurses, and strangers who guided him through his darkest moments.
“A good attitude is everything,” Watson said. “That’s what got me through. And that’s what keeps me going.”
