Obituary of Norma Lou Watts

Norma Lou (Bradley) Watts, 88, of Loveland, died March 7, 2023, spending her final days with family at her side.

Norma was born November 5, 1934 in Panola County, Mississippi, the third of 10 children to Dan and Opal Bradley. She grew up in the country, helping her parents pick cotton and tend to livestock as soon as she was old enough to work.

Norma often talked about the difficult, but resilient life of a sharecropper – poking her fingers on sharp cotton plants, packing a biscuit and onion for lunch at her one-room schoolhouse, and fetching water from the backyard well. Norma joked that she grew up in a house with four bedrooms and a path – you had to follow the path outside to the outhouse.

After graduating from high school, Norma moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where she worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant. She met the love of her life, William Watts, through a neighbor after William completed his service in the Air Force.

The two were married in 1962, and Norma turned her focus toward raising her three sons. In 1975 Norma and William, an air traffic controller, accepted a unique opportunity to move to Colorado where William would work at the Air Traffic Control Center in Longmont.

All her life, Norma was known for her humor, creativity, generosity, and her unforgettable cooking skills. She was an artist who quilted, sewed, crocheted and painted – at one time, a store in Estes Park sold her intricate needlework.

Norma donated money and time to her church, volunteered at the Community Kitchen, and often helped people who were down on their luck, a spirit that grew from her childhood in Depression-era rural Mississippi.

Norma was preceded in death by her parents; brother Dan Jr.; sisters Lillian, Dorothy and Margie. Her Husband William died tragically and unexpectedly in 1980 at the age of 40.

She is survived by her sons, Steve Watts and wife Julie, Ted Watts and wife Carla, Neil Watts and wife Brandi; brothers Joe and wife Jean, Harold, Gerald and Roger; sister Deborah; five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at a later date in Mississippi at the cemetery where her husband and generations of other family members are buried.