On a stretch of family property in Central, Louisiana, three generations of the Watts family live within easy reach of one another.

Mac is at the center. Eighty-two years old, living on the same piece of land where he was born, making daily rounds by golf cart — what the family calls his chariot. His son Wes lives about 30 yards away. Wes's daughter lives next door. Tyler, Wes's son, built on the property after college and lives there now with his wife and three kids. Eleven great-grandchildren in total; nine of them on the same land.

"The Watts Compound," they call it.

It's a joke, but not entirely.

Mac was already woven into this community long before Central existed as a city at all. When residents decided they wanted their own school system, they learned they'd first have to incorporate as a municipality. They needed someone to lead. They turned to Mac — the former science teacher, former basketball coach, man known to everyone — and asked him to be the face of something that didn't exist yet.

He said yes. And for the first 14 months, he did it for free.

"You built a city from ground zero," he said of those early years. "We had nothing to go by. Anything you do, you've got to have a good plan."

His first move was hiring someone to develop a master plan, securing state funding to back it. Mac served as Central's first mayor from 2005 to 2014 — long enough to see the city's foundation set, brief enough to escape the political side of small-town politics.

Education, though, remained the family's deepest thread. Wes had been heading toward physical therapy school when something redirected him — he got married, wanted to be a present father, and felt called toward a different kind of impact. He wound up teaching science and coaching basketball at Central High School for sixteen years, eventually serving as dean of students and athletic director. He later became principal at Zachary High School and superintendent in West Baton Rouge before eventually moving into financial advising.

The title he still claims first: coach.

What he did not mention until it needed saying — because in this family it goes without saying — is that when he taught science and coached basketball at Central, he was working in the same classroom, teaching the same subject, coaching the same sport his father had.

"Central High and the Central community have been better to us than we could ever imagine," Wes said.

Tyler came to teaching sideways. After graduating from Central in 2011 and from Southeastern Louisiana University in 2015, he spent time working in the family's apparel and screen-printing business — started by his grandmother and uncle, taken over with his grandmother after his uncle died of cancer at 50, and eventually sold in 2020. Somewhere in that stretch, something shifted.

"I just felt led to be in the school building relationships with the kids," he said.

He now teaches graphic design at Central High — Adobe software, digital creativity, and visual communication. He coached basketball his first three years before stepping back when his own children, now 4, 6, and 9, started filling up weekends with their own sports.

When his grandfather describes him, the words come out unguarded.

"You couldn't find a better person to be teaching in a school and influencing young people.”

Tyler received this.

"Makes me feel pretty good," he said. "But also like I don't deserve it."

Mac still has about 25 former players saved in his phone. Texts them every so often, just to check in.

"It's important to me to make sure they're going to  continue on," he said.

When Wes was asked what makes Central special — what he'd tell a stranger at the beach — he answered without hesitation.

"There's not a lot of industry in Central," he said. "The industry in Central is its people."

Most afternoons, somewhere on the compound, a four-year-old boy with curly hair comes and finds his great-grandfather. The two of them sit together and watch the television show, Mario.

Mac Watts — first mayor, former coach, 82 years old and still making his rounds — wouldn't have it any other way.