A loan as courtship ritual
Scott remembers a loan that played the role of a courting ritual for him and his future wife, Jessie Rae. When Jessie Rae ran out of money to pay her tuition at North Carolina State University, Scott lent her some of his savings. They drew up a contract for the loan, and when Scott proposed, Jessie Rae refused to say yes until she squared the debt.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Robert W. (Bob) Scott, February 4, 1998. Interview C-0336-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACK FLEER:
-
Now, would her circumstances have been different from yours in that
regard?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
Yes, they were. The people who grew up in the mill community of
Swepsonville, all of them worked at the mill, a typical Southern textile
mill. The Hall Fields community, the adjoining community, was a farming
community, and they kind of looked upon us as the landed gentry. And she
said it took her years after we got married to realize I
didn't have any money. [Laughter]
- JACK FLEER:
-
A little late, huh?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
As a matter of fact, another story that I'm very proud of, for
her. I was a student at NC State. I went to Duke for two
years—if you remind me, I'll come back to that. I
was going to be a country doctor. But anyway, I graduated from NC State.
Well, we knew, my wife Jessie Rae and I, that we were probably going to
get married. And during the last year, when it became time for her last
semester, she said, "I just don't have the money to
go back." She worked in the dining hall for four years, the
four years she was in school, and she worked every semester in the
dining hall to earn money to help get her through school. And she said,
"I'm going to have to drop out until I can make
enough money to finish." And I said, "If you ever do
that you'll never go back." Well, knowing that we
were going to get married, and thinking that we would—I had a
part time job at NC State and I had been squirreling away a little money
for our wedding, and so I said,
"I'll lend you the money to pay all your tuition and
to help," and of course she would keep working in the dining
hall. And we drew up a little formal note—I've
forgotten the amount; by today's standards, it
wasn't all that much, but to us, it was a lot of money. And
she signed it, and completed school, graduated. Because I was a transfer
student, Duke to NC State, I had to go another semester to make up some
courses that I didn't get because of the transfer. So I had
to go back in the fall semester. But we had decided that we were going
to go ahead and marry, and did, on September the first, and I continued
and graduated in December. But I asked her in the spring to marry me,
and she turned me down, and she said, "No, I'm going
to get me a job this summer and I'm going to pay you what I
owe you. I would not marry you owing you anything." And she
did.
- JACK FLEER:
-
So does this explain the story that I've heard that you are
the only governor to have proposed to your wife in the
governor's mansion twice?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
That's exactly right, and that was the reason for it. I
proposed to her in the spring, and you know, I was young and naive and
full of ego and thought, this is no big deal, you know, and so I
proposed to her, and for the reason I just explained, she turned me
down, and then later that fall, that summer, she had paid off her note
to me, and I proposed again and then everything was fine.