Frank Wills (security guard)

Former residence (red) of Frank Wills, located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Frank Wills (February 4, 1948 – September 27, 2000^[1]) was the security guard who alerted the police to a possible break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.. His actions eventually led to the discovery of the truth about the Watergate Scandal and led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.

Early life

Frank Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia. His parents separated when he was a child and he was primarily raised by his mother, Margie.^[2]

After dropping out of high school in eleventh grade, Wills studied heavy machine operations in Battle Creek, Michigan^[3] and he earned his equivalency degree from the Job Corps.^[4] He migrated north and found an assembly-line job working for Ford in Detroit, Michigan. He later had to give up his assembly-line job due to health issues - he suffered from asthma. Wills then traveled to Washington D.C. and worked at a few hotels before landing a job as a security guard at the Watergate hotel.^[3]

Watergate hotel

In June 1972, Wills, at the age of 24, was working as a private security guard at the Watergate office building on the shores of the Potomac River.^[3] This was the location of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. In the one year that Wills had worked here, there had been only one attempted break in so his job was not of major importance. It was also considered so safe that security officers in the building only carried around a can of mace.^[3]

On the night of June 17,^[5] Wills noticed a piece of duct tape on one of the door locks when he was making his first round.^[1] The tape was placed over the latch bolt to prevent the door from latching shut. He removed the tape and continued on his patrol. Thirty minutes later, Wills came back to the door and he noticed there was more tape on the door. Without hesitation, Wills rushed up to the lobby telephone and asked for the Second Precinct police.^[3] Five men were found in the DNC offices and arrested;^[6] details that emerged during their questioning and trials triggered the Watergate scandal. The five men arrested were Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis.^[7]

Aftermath

One story reports that after the Watergate break-in, he received a raise of $2.50^[4] above his previous $80 per week; another story states he wanted, but did not receive, a promotion for discovering the burglary.^[8]

A while after the break in, he quit his firm and found another security job that paid him a little bit more money, but it was still not enough to live on so he had to leave that job as well.^[3]

Wills played himself in the film version of the book All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's account of their reporting work on the Watergate scandal. Wills also appeared briefly on the talk show circuit.^[8]

The log entry Wills made on June 17, 1972 at 1:47 a.m. is in the National Archives.

Later life and poverty

Over the next 20 years, Wills struggled to establish and maintain roots and stability while suffering long bouts of unemployment. He shuttled between Washington and other Southern cities, with some time spent in the Bahamas.^[8] He said in an interview that Howard University feared losing their federal funding if they hired him. A security job with Georgetown University did not last long.^[4] He worked in a failed stint as a diet food spokesperson for the comedian Dick Gregory.^[8]

In the mid-1970s,^[8] Wills finally settled in North Augusta, South Carolina, to care for his aging mother, who had suffered a stroke while still working as a domestic. Together, they survived on her $450 per month Social Security checks.^[4] In 1979, Wills was convicted of shoplifting and fined $20.^[9] Four years later, he was convicted of shoplifting a pair of sneakers from a store in Augusta, Georgia and sentenced to one year in prison.^[9] By the time of his mother's death in 1993,^[8] Wills was so destitute that he had to donate her body to medical research because he had no money with which to bury her.^[4]

Only when significant anniversaries of the Watergate break-in occurred did the waning spotlight reach out towards him again. In 1992, on the twentieth anniversary of the break in, reporters asked if he were given the chance to do it all over again, would he? Wills replied with annoyance, "That's like asking me if I'd rather be white than black. It was just a part of destiny."^[10] That same year, Wills told a Boston Globe reporter, “I put my life on the line. I went out of my way. If it wasn't for me, Woodward and Bernstein would not have known anything about Watergate.”^[11] One day Wills was quoted saying, "Everybody tells me I'm some kind of hero, but I certainly don't have any hard evidence. I did what I was hired to do but still I feel a lot of folk don't want to give me credit, that is, a chance to move upward in my job.^[3]

Otherwise, Wills tended his garden, made the local library his study, and led a quiet life with his cats.^[4] Frank Wills died at the Medical College of Georgia hospital in Augusta, Georgia at the age of 52 from a brain tumor.^[2]

Recognition

Frank Wills was honored by the NAACP. The civil rights organization presented him with a truck.^[4]

Musician Harry Nilsson dedicated his 1973 album, "A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night" to Wills, for his role in bringing down Nixon.^[4]

An article by Workers World magazine in 2005 contrasted Wills's lack of compensation to the $5 million received by Woodward and Bernstein for their Watergate notebooks and files.^[11] Woodward was quoted saying, "He's the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly."^[12]

The Democratic National Committee gave Wills an award and the chairman said he had played "a unique role in the history of the nation."^[13]

References