Amidst his highly decorated military career, including 21 years in the Air Force, serving in WWII with the Navy and more than 500 combat-related missions in Vietnam, Col. Watson did more than lay his life down for his country; he dedicated it to nurse anesthesia. When pressures originating from the federal government threatened to eliminate the field altogether, he mounted the only tactical defense he saw fit: higher education. While serving as a senior consultant to the U.S. Air Force surgeon general, he drafted a plan for preserving the role of the nurse anesthetist by linking it to a Master of Science in Nurse Anesthesia degree. Col. Watson took his quest to VCU, where his distinguished vitae (including numerous academic degrees) earned him the chairmanship for the Department of Nurse Anesthesia. In 1981, VCU graduated the first students, nationwide, to earn an M.S. in Nurse Anesthesia. 

Col Watson followed his 17 years of service to VCU by gifting Nurse Anesthesia Faculty Associates (NAFA), a continuing education program he formed in 1979, to the department in 2007. In October 2012, he crowned a lifetime of selfless giving by fulfilling and endowment created in his honor, funding the department's first professorship: the Herbert T. Watson Professorship in Nurse Anesthesia.