Everybody Has A Story: Dana Watts - From Syracuse To Washington, D.C.

by Garry Warner | July 2, 2026

She described herself as a “bookie”! She loved to read growing up, and she considered herself a bit of a bookworm. Her story began on May 29, 1978, born to Ron and Becky Watts (now Wallace). Dana began her life in Bryan, Texas, but moved to Syracuse when she was just one year old. The move was made for her mother to become the Hamilton County Extension Home Economist. Her mother’s job would play an important role in young Dana’s life.

Dana and her younger sister, Kari, (3 years younger) would grow up in Syracuse and attend school there. Dana’s mother remarried to Doug Wallace when Dana was eleven. Dana has two other half siblings as well. Jordan was born in 1994, and Jesse came along three years later in 1997 when Dana was in college. Kari, Jordan, and Jesse all live in Manhattan, Kansas now, as well as Dana’s mother.

I’ve already mentioned that Dana liked to read. She told me she especially liked fiction, lots of animal stories in her elementary years, especially horses. But in between the books, some great friendships developed. There was Teresa Allen and Jennifer (Jenny Verry Holdredge who’s story we told a couple months ago). Those were lasting friendships that would continue all through school and beyond. There was also Alan Kirby and Sandra Gutierrez.

When I brought up teachers, she quickly said she remembered all of them, and they ALL made a difference in her young life. I could tell I was talking to someone who was a good student. More on that later! But after a little reflection, she lifted up Ron Ewy. “He was my cross country coach...and track.” As she remembered, she suddenly started talking about Rick Mathias, the longtime Syracuse choir director and music teacher. Rick is another one of those teachers that touched lives in school, on the golf course, on Sunday mornings as the Methodist Church choir director. “I sang in the regular choir and was selected for the Syracuse Singers” As she spoke, I heard her respect and appreciation for Rick and the outstanding job he did in Syracuse for many years with the music program. The Syracuse Singers were the pride of southwest Kansas, winning prestigous competion awards year after year. Her family attended the Methodist Church, and Dana also sang in the church choir. Thank you, Rick Mathias and Ron Ewy for your impact on Syracuse Graduates!

Dana was on a roll now. She brought up coach Connie Pontious and Coach Nanette (Nan) Rasmussen. Dana played girl’s basketball all through Jr High and the first three years of high school. “There’s something about having adult attention of, first person, not like necessarily teaching you reading, writing, and arithmetic, but just like, hey, here’s this other cool thing that we’re doing together as a team, teaching us how to interact with people, and, quite honestly, develop your personality, just letting you learn to express yourself. Sometimes, that’s a journey, especially for somebody that reads a lot of books” As she spoke and shared this very personal insight into her past, I quietly gave thanks for teachers like Ms. Pontius and Ms. Rasmussen and others. As they taught this young woman and her classmates the fundamentals of basketball and teamwork, and personal expression on the court, I am sure they had no idea they were shaping the beginning of a career that would lead to Washington, D. C. as an attorney practicing International Law. God bless our teachers everywhere!

Dana was a good student. The year she graduated, there was a four way tie with students who had attained a 4.0 grade average. “But they did some sort of lottery, and I ended up being the salutatorian.” Before graduating, she had already started thinking about being an attorney. “I think I just, I just like telling the story. I like putting the pieces together and making it into a coherent whole. And I think that’s what lawyers do, right? They take all the pieces of the story, and they weave it together into something that makes sense, hopefully persuasive. So yeah, I like that part of it a lot!”
 
“So I went for free to undergrad, which is an amazing start in life, right? To not have any debt coming!” She had majored in business marketing and Spanish. Dana was also a member of Alpha Phi Omega, the largest campus based service leadership development organization in the country. She also sang in a small honor choir. Dana’s voice was very low in quality as she talked through our interview, so I heard the very low pitch of her voice when she told me she sang tenor in the choir. As she shared these details about her young life, I was not surprised. Dana has a caring heart, and it shined through our entire interview. The Spanish threw me a curve but then she shared that she went abroad for a year.

Dana wasn’t just smart. She was an adventurer! When we discussed the gap between 2001 when she graduated from Pittsburg State and 2007 when she enrolled in law school, I asked her if she would call herself a free spirit? I loved her answer! “I would describe myself as curious, and I liked to travel. I graduated as an undergrad debt free that gave me options like moving to Australia for six months, just supporting myself like a backpacker basically.”

I marveled at her courage as a young woman traveling alone half way around the world. In that sweet soft voice that you never get tired listening to, she explained. “I liked it. I liked it! I got a taste for, you know, just international travel and meeting other people on my year abroad in Spain.” She had spent a year in Spain while an undergraduate at Pittsburg. It was an exchange program for students. She studied for a year at the University of Salamanca located in the cities of Castille and Leon where she studied Spanish. Only a few hours transferred back to Pittsburg, but she described that year as a “memory of a lifetime.” Each year, the college selects one male and one female to speak at the graduation ceremonies. Dana was selected to represent the women in her class as the outstanding woman.

After coming back home from Australia, Dana decided to spend a couple years in Manhattan living with her sister. She would split her time between working for McCall Patterns Company and the Kansas State University Union Program Council. “We brought in movies, different educational and some nighttime programming, just all kinds of comedians and educational speakers, even carnivals, just things for the students to do.”

Dana wasn’t quite finished with her world travel. There was Japan! “So after Manhattan, I did three years in Japan with the Japan exchange and teaching program. It’s been around since the 70’s. But every high school and junior high in Japan has a native English speaker, and they bring them in from the USA, from England, from the UK, from Australia, and from New Zealand. Its a very well established program, and they help you get an apartment, and pay your salary, so I did that for three years.” So Dana had not yet reached 30 years of age, and she had lived more than many get to live in a lifetime, going to Spain, traveling halfway around the world twice!, and she was debt free! Law school was beckening!

Dana would finally enroll in Kansas University Law School along with 5 or 6000 other students in 2007. She would graduate after three years in the class of 2010. Once again, she would graduate with honors. Dana would graduate in the top 25 percent of her class.
The typical law school graduate with grades and honors like Dana has dozens of offers waiting for them and a high paying job in a big law firm. But Dana was not typical. Once again, she had a different idea, uniquely Dana!

“When I got out of law school, I went to Washington, D. C. without a job.” Then came another of those wonderful crazy stories that shaped Dana’s life! “My mom was the home extension economist, and she got me into 4-H the whole time I was in school in Syracuse. I was in 4-H until I graduated from high school. They used to have a program where they would send you to Washington, D. C. for a week. It was called Citizenship Washington Focus, and you did it like just before your senior year of high school. Drift Wood was also on that trip. We were on a bus with other kids from Western Kansas, and it took three days and we did sightseeing both ways. We stayed at the National 4-H Center just outside Washington D. C. You could stay overnight and take some meals there.”

“And then I came back twice when I was an undergrad at Pittsburg as a program advisor with the National 4-H Center. It was in the summers. Once, I was a program assistant and the next year I was a program director, and then when I came back to Washington after graduating from law school, I lived with somebody that I met when I was a program assistant. Her name was Jennifer Brand.”

Dana’s past achievements kept opening doors for her. Those years in 4-H were still giving. She was now in Washington with a place to live and growing her dream! But she was also unemployed. “I’m an optimist. I’d already moved a few times at that point without a job or a very well defined plan. I figured it would work out. Luckily, I had a law degree.”

As I sat there listening to her tell her story, this quiet book reading student from Syracuse, Kansas who had already done some amazing things in her short life, now in the nation’s Capitol with out a job, sitting there telling herself that it was going to work out. THAT’S CONFIDENCE! THAT’S BELIEVING IN YOURSELF! THAT’S OPTIMISM! And of course it did!

“I could do what they call document review, but it’s basically supporting big Washington, D. C. law firms as they have to review all these documents produced during litigation. So somebody’s getting sued, and their company has to produce all of these emails and other documents, and somebody’s got to go through them one by one. It paid pretty well, and you had to have a law degree to do it. It paid my rent.”

She did that for about a year. “In the meantime, I joined the Washington International Trade Association and Women and International Trade and whatever organization with people in the field I wanted to work in. I wanted to work in international trade. And I was sending out resumes. I landed a job with a law firm.”

She had a job...In Washington D. C....with an international trade law firm...she was just 32 years old...all the way from Syracuse, Kansas! As we were chatting, I suddenly realized that I was getting a glimpse of this young woman’s soul, her type A soul, hidden behind all those books she loved to read, I was looking at the driving force that made Dana Watts who she was!

“...all that bookish type A. It’s in those people, they end up here, and yeah, so...” Yeah, and she was one of them! She would stay with that firm about four years. “I moved to another law firm and then another one. I’ve been with law firms ever since 2012. By then, she had purchased a condo in downtown Washington, and was on her own.

COVID and marriage changed things. Dana now works from home in Arlington, Virginia, a Washington suburb. She works remotely for a Florida based law firm still specializing in internaional trade. This allows her to care for her two small children while working.

I wanted to know more about her children, her marriage, her husband. It was all just as amazing as the rest of her life. They met online. His name is Jonathan Morgenstein. His family was from New York. “Jonathan has been to 72 countries. He had done his share of world traveling before we met. He works in renewable energy for a quasi-governmental agency. He works mostly from home, but there is a Washington D. C. office, and the company is Colorado based.”

I asked her how long was it before they met in person. “Years, years and years, years and years! I was online dating other people, yeah, you know, it’s hard to pick one person you think you can live with.” Both of them were single, and neither had been married. There were others she met along the way. But Jonathan was different...and special. “I don’t know, it was just easy with him. It was easy, and it was fun! Jonathan and Dana got married almost exactly one year after their first date. He is a fantastic life partner! We have two beautiful kids. Yeah” Married for the first time at 42! The perfect husband! Two amazing love partners who are living amazing lives! Two beautiful children, Raeden and Bryndis, they adore! A fairytale that began in Syracuse, Kansas!

Raeden means god of thunder in Japanese,. “But R-A-E is also my sister’s middle name from my dad’s middle name which was R-A-Y, so it’s a take on a family name.” Yep! With a real “Dana” twist, so well thought out like so many things this incredible woman does! “We gave a lot of thought to our kid’s names.”

And then, Bryndis came along. “It’s ancient Icelandic, meaning armored goddess” As she shared these deeply personal details about her husband and her two small children, the love in her soft low voice just radiated through the phone! It was a privilege to hear her tell her story. I could hear the inner peace and happiness in her voice.  As I said earlier, I was getting a beautiful glimpse into Dana Watts’ soul.

Jonathan is Jewish. Dana is Christian. Both Christian and Jewish holidays are celebrated. Respect and honoring the different heritages is just another example of the love in this household.

I asked her to give me a little bit of a glimpse in how they live their daily lives. “Oh, D. C. has all kinds of things to do around this area. There’s just a lot of non-profits and community based entities that put on all kinds of programming. We’re real close to the Shenandoah Mountains. You can do hiking here in Arlington. We try to get outside on the weekends.”

I always ask everyone I interview to take a look back at their growing up years in Syracuse. Now, it was Dana’s turn.

“I’m really glad I got to grow up in Syracuse. It’s a great place! It was a great place for me! You can get to know a lot of people. You have the same kids in Kindergarten as you have in your senior class when you graduate. The school presents so many things you can do and try. And then when you are done, the world’s a big beautiful place. It can be explored if you want to.”

Thank you for exploring, Dana! Thank you for using all those tools you learned back in Syracuse, Kansas SO WELL! And the most exciting part is that you are still exploring! May God bless and surround you and your family as your story continues to be written! SYRACUSE PROUD!