Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 19, 1993 TAG: 9302190106
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
NEIGHBOR, FRIEND, NEAR-MOTHER GAVE OTHERS HER ZEST FOR LIFE
For a story last summer on Ruth Bailey Scott, I quoted one of her neighbors:"If you're ever depressed, the person you need to call is Ruth."
It stuck in my mind, and over the last eight months I went back in many blue funks for a dose of Mrs. Scott.
The first time, she was sitting out on her porch on Patton Avenue Northeast in Gainsboro. She wore a flowered cotton pantsuit she'd made 30 years before, crisp as new.
She spun out a history lesson that bolted me to the wooden step where I sat.
Her father, Robert B. Bailey, was born a slave. Emancipated as a child, he eventually became night boss of Norfolk and Western Railway janitors in Roanoke. He bought the house at 9 Patton Ave. N.E. in 1921 when Ruth was a teen-ager.
They were the first black family on the block. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in their yard.
Robert Bailey sent his wife and five children to the attic the following night. A black security force hid in the bushes. They fired into the air when the Klansmen returned, and the white-robed terrorists rode away.
Mrs. Scott told all this without bitterness or even pain. It was just the way it was.
She told how her father belted a white cop for telling a family guest she couldn't use the whites-only ladies' room in the train station. Mrs. Scott laughed heartily at the outrageous things people do - the cop, her dad, everybody.
She went to Virginia State College and taught school in Roanoke County from the 1920s to the 1940s. She married Ernest Scott, a house painter.
She moved back to her childhood home on Patton Avenue when he died around 1960. Money was tight, so in her last years of work she was a maid at the Hotel Roanoke.
At 88, she defied all my stereotypes of old people as folks who've lost touch with the juice of life. She was forever focused on what matters most - good friends, good humor and honest talk.
She was as interested in the present and future as she was in the past.
"I never heard her say a mean thing about anybody," said neighbor Helen Davis. "She just made you feel good, made you happy."
All last summer, Ruth Scott perched on her porch, waving to her neighbors. She swore she was a lousy cook, so they brought her dinners or took her out to eat.
I looked for her every time I drove through.
Mrs. Scott and I had something in common. Neither of us had children, but we were drawn to younger people.
She was intensely proud of her nephew.
There's a story about how she was cleaning a hotel room one day and chatting up its occupant, a Virginia governor. She talked on and on about her nephew Bob, the Fulbright scholar in England.
Robert Benjamin Bailey III - named for Mrs. Scott's father, his grandfather - earned a master's degree from the University of Munich and a doctorate from a university in the Netherlands.
Mrs. Scott, never a snob, was most proud of what a nice guy he was. He sent her hats, sweaters and blouses from Europe. He got a Roanoke community group to install a new furnace in her house.
Last year, Bob Bailey retired as chairman of the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. After his 30 years of fighting to win foreign exchanges for minority and financially strapped students, an organization in Washington established a million-dollar national scholarship in his name.
Bob Bailey wasn't the only man Mrs. Scott considered near to a son.
Years ago, she was out on her porch when a 40-ish Norfolk Southern Corp. worker was searching for a place to park. She invited Bill Amos to pull into her driveway. She had no car.
He parked there for the next 13 years, even when his office moved across town.
When she had surgery and woke up in intensive care, he was holding her hand. She became a friend of his wife, his mother, his daughter, his friends.
After rough workdays, she'd cheer him up before he drove home. "In a lifetime," he said, "you don't run into too many people like her." He loved her like a mother.
I wanted to meet Bill Amos, so I managed to be out on her porch one fall day about quitting time. Pretty soon, he came ambling down the sidewalk. She watched him lovingly from a distance. "Just look at him," she cooed. "Isn't he something?"
She was doing really well back then. One day, she went with a friend to three malls - Crossroads, Tanglewood and Valley View. She was still strong, still muscular and as smooth-skinned as, well, a 60-year-old, at least.
She'd ride the bus down to Tudor's Biscuit World and order the breakfast platter - eggs and fried apples mushy enough to be gummed. She'd lost many teeth. She and owner Louis Tudor kidded about how they were going out dancing at the Marriott.
She loved to dress up and go out to lunch, and she was so much fun, she had plenty of invitations. If anything at all was going on at her church, Williams Memorial Baptist, she was there. She was wild about her pastor, the Rev. Paul Johnson, and her close friend, Roberta Johnson, his wife.
Around Thanksgiving, heart trouble landed Mrs. Scott in Community Hospital. She said she'd had an enlarged heart all her life.
She went home for a while. One day, I knocked at her door. She huffed and puffed for 10 minutes to get there and open it. Then, friends couldn't get her to open the door at all. She was too weak to be by herself and she wouldn't let anyone stay overnight. She went back to the hospital.
Around New Year's, they moved her to Friendship Manor nursing home. The Johnsons, the Amoses, her neighbors or her church friends were there just about every day. Effie Wright in Room 211 said she was the nicest roommate.
Mrs. Scott didn't think old people should complain, so she didn't. Young people didn't want to hear it.
"People are so good to me," she'd say in amazement. She raved about the staffs at Community and at Friendship Manor.
She began to slip away last month. Friends bought her a little television/radio set. She beamed about them doing it, but she left it in the box. For the first time, she was losing interest in the world.
She died Thursday just before dawn.
As her heart was weakening a month ago, she said she was satisfied with her life. "I'm just grateful for the time I've had," she said.
We are, too, Mrs. Scott. We are, too.
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