Hartsville's Lou Scott made a difference in many lives

HARTSVILLE - A former pastor once described Lou Scott as “a sermon in shoe leather.”

A former school teacher and founder of the Darlington County Disabilities and Special Needs Board – the Lou Scott Center in Hartsville – the lady known simply as “Miss Lou” to the countless individuals she helped to succeed when others thought they couldn’t died Thursday. She was 87.

Scott dedicated her life and career to serving others and distinguished herself as a champion of people with disabilities. She was described as “a lady of action, pounding the pavement … getting assistance for the programs she needed for the people being served.”

Her “never give up attitude” and her dream of a better life for those facing challenges, particularly children, made her extraordinary.

“I believe it was my calling,” she said in a 2006 interview with The Messenger.

“The most rewarding thing about my career has been seeing the children change and learn to do things to help themselves,” she said.

The things she taught them seem simple enough, but to her clients they represented monumental achievements. She taught children with disabilities how to wipe their noses by placing them in front of a mirror and putting a red dot on one side of their nose, telling them to wipe it off, then putting a green dot on the other side and telling them to do the same.

“It worked,” she said.

She taught a blind youngster to eat with a spoon by attaching the spoon to the child’s arm and hand with Velcro. Pretty soon, the child could go through the motions of feeding himself with the spoon without the Velcro.

“I tried to help the clients to live independently,” she recalled. “Parents sometimes feel sorry for them. I want them to learn to do what they can do.”

Scott began what would become the center that today bears her name in 1967 as a kindergarten program at West Hartsville Baptist Church, a program that started out serving two children with a budget of $2,700. Today, the Scott Center, serves more than 400 people with an annual budget of more than $4.6 million as the Darlington County Disabilities and Special Needs Board. Scott served as the center’s director until her retirement in 1994.

In 1984, with enrollment at an all-time high and confronted with a need for an appropriate work activity area, Scott went to work finding the money to build the current Scott Center on Damascus Church Road. She solicited funding from every source she could find, eventually raising $385,000. The center was completed in 1986.

Scott also played a key role in the organization of Hartsville Special Housing Inc. to administer two group homes, one for men and one for women. The homes opened in 1987. Since then, the board has acquired other small family-sized homes that allow clients to live in small groups independently. The DSNB also provides an array of services for its clients.
Scott worked for a time as a substitute teacher in Darlington County’s public school system.

“While substitute teaching, I worked with the handicapped a lot and had a good rapport with them,” she recalled in the 2006 interview. “I could make them behave, and I could see the good in them and play on their good points to help them succeed.”

Born on Jan. 12, 1923, on a farm in Angelus, a Chesterfield County community near Jefferson, Mary Louise Raley Scott was the daughter of William M. and Mary Francis Byrd Raley. She graduated from Angelus High School and attended Winthrop College.

She began her extraordinary career as a school teacher in Blaney, S.C., in 1943.

She later worked as a Civil Service employee at Fort Jackson where she met her husband, the late Ivan B. “Scotty” Scott, a military pilot and New York native. Later, she transferred to Washington, D.C., and in 1945 went to work as a news analyst in the Bureau of Public Relations at the Pentagon. One of her jobs there, she said, was to read everything she could find – good and bad – on Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Scott was working at the Pentagon when President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945 and when Harry S Truman was inaugurated as president. She continued to work there until the end of World War II.

“Scotty came back (from the war), and I married him,” she said. The couple moved to Hartsville in 1949, after Scotty finished college, and it was in Hartsville that Lou found her true calling.

A dedicated Christian, she was an active member of First Baptist Church in Hartsville, teaching Sunday school and training union. She was a member and past president of the Pilot Club, den mother for the Cub Scouts and was active in the Girl Scouts as well. She was a member of Easter Seals, the Human Rights Committee for the Saleeby and Pee Dee Centers, the United Way Board of Directors, the S.C. Human Service Providers Inc. and the Advisory Committee for the Rural Assistance Program for the S.C. Department of Transportation.

Among her other activities, Scott served on the Treatment Team for Darlington County, AGAPE Board, the Pee Dee Providers Association, and the JSEC Committee for the S.C. Employment Security Commission.

Scott also amassed numerous awards and honors throughout her career. They included Hartsville’s First Lady of the Year, Citizen of the Year in Darlington County, Tribune’s Special Mother of the Year, Job Creator Award, Lou Scott Day by the City of Hartsville, the Lena Fields Lifetime Achievement Award and resolutions honoring her from the S.C. Department of Disabilities and Special Needs, the Darlington County Legislative Delegation and the S.C. General Assembly. On her retirement from the Scott Center in 1994, Gov. Carroll Campbell awarded her the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest honor.

Funeral services were held Sunday at First Baptist Church in Hartsville with burial in Magnolia Cemetery.

Scott is survived by her sister, Margaret R. Clark of Bishopville; her son, Dr. Geoffrey I. Scott and daughter-in-law, Anne H. Scott of Rockville, S.C.; and three grandchildren of whom she was deeply proud, Christopher J. Scott of Hartsville, Cecile Hart Scott of Newberry and Geoffrey I Scott Jr. of Rockville.

She was preceded in death by her husband Ivan B. Scott; her daughter, Sondra L. Scott; and an infant son, William Scott.

Memorials may be made to the Lou Scott Memorial Fund at Scott Center, 206 Damascus Church Road, Hartsville, SC 29550.