Governor W. Kerr Scott's work habits
Scott describes the not-so-glamorous life of a mid-twentieth century North Carolina governor. His father "was gone all the time," briefly consulting with his farm employees before his early-morning drive to Raleigh. Scott remembers also his father's habit of meeting his constituents under an oak tree, and the egalitarianism of his community that precluded a special status for him and his family.
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:
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Now, during this time, when you were in high school and then
transitioning into college, your father was serving in public office as
commissioner of agriculture, and eventually as
governor during that period of time. Was politics a subject of
discussion between you and your father?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
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No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I'm glad you asked that
question, because it's probably something that I can comment
on that I think maybe deflates a myth. I was not raised at my
father's knee, in terms of politics. He was gone all the
time, as commissioner of agriculture and as governor. I remember, as
commissioner of agriculture, he would leave out in the mornings at about
seven o'clock to drive to Raleigh. That was before
interstates, of course, and he drove NC 54, a winding road into Chapel
Hill and on to Raleigh. He would meet with the farm foremen and maybe
his employees before he left. And then he would get in about six or six
thirty in the evening, unless he had a meeting somewhere, which was
rather frequent. My mother almost ran the farm; she kept the records and
the payroll and all of that. But my dad was not there. Occasionally I
would go with him on trips, particularly if he was going to one of the
agricultural experiment stations where they would have field days, they
would call them, I was free to run around and so forth, but I really
didn't go with him much.
And we were not close, really, father and son. There was no animosity
there, but my mother was the one who was at home, she was the anchor
person, and so I was not raised at his knee. And even later, in college,
again, he was gone a lot, plus the fact that as a young college student
I really didn't want to be around my parents all that much. I
preferred living in the dorm. And even when he was governor, except for
a couple of summers—summer school, I
didn't live in the mansion. I stayed in the dorm. I would go
out there once in a while and get me some food, try to get a little
extra money, something like that. But I was not that close to him. So
the father-son relationship was not that close. Again, no animosity, no
problems. He had expectations of me, and I respected and in some cases
feared him, as a father. I knew if I didn't adhere to what he
believed in, I'd have to answer for it.
- JACK FLEER:
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From a career standpoint, do you think his expectations were merely
related to this Hall Fields community, the rural part?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
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That's conjecture on my part, but I would have to say yes. I
think he envisioned me taking over the farm. Because his father was a
farmer, he was master farmer in the days of Dr. Clarence Poe and the
progressive farmer and all that. And farming was a tradition. My father
had expanded our farm operation, and when I came back from the service I
expanded it still further, in terms of what we were doing. And I was
really into it. I thought that was the way I would go.
- JACK FLEER:
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Around the dinner table, with your mother and your brother and sister, or
with other members of the family, or even when your father was at home,
was politics ever a subject of discussion of any consequence?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
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Not in the family. I'm sure it was with my mother and so
forth. But there's eight years' difference between
me and my sister, and nine years' difference at least with my
brother. So you might say they didn't want to fool with me as
a young kid brother. And I didn't care
to be around them. I was sort of a loner, in that sense. I had a happy
childhood, but I didn't have siblings that I played with,
because their interests were different, they were older.
Politics was not discussed that much around the table, or else I
wasn't paying any attention to it—now, that could
very well be. Now, my father had lots of people who would come here, to
his home, where I was a child. There was a big oak tree out there, and
his friends used to say he held court under the oak tree. What he would
do, his friends would come on Sunday afternoon. Now, he took a nap after
church, after lunch on Sunday. That was one thing you did not do: you
did not wake him from a nap. Along about two-thirty or so,
he'd get up, and people would come, and if they came before
that, we'd just ask them to wait. They would sit out there
[unclear] under that tree, and
politics was talked, a lot of it. People came to see him about politics.
But again, I was a young kid, I was playing, I didn't know
about all this, didn't understand it.
- JACK FLEER:
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And among your own cohorts who were roughly your age, the fact that your
father was involved in politics, was that noted or commented upon?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
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Not in the community. We were very democratic in this community, there
was no feeling of, what am I trying to say, favoritism or another tier.
We were all very much the same. My father was a populist, in a sense. He
would get out there and do whatever the other men in the church would do
in the community. One of the traditions of our community for years was
that, quote, we bury our own dead, end quote. And
by that I mean that the men in the community—I
don't care what your standing in life was, socially or
economically or anything like that—they would gather together
and they would dig the grave for the person to be buried. As time went
on, of course, that practice was stopped, and they had the professional
gravediggers for the mechanical means of digging graves, but when my
father died the men of the community came together and dug his grave.
That always impressed me, that they would do that, because he was one of
their own.
When I was in the governor's office, and I'm
jumping ahead here a little bit but it relates to this point, it was an
hour's drive from the state capital. We lived in the mansion.
My children were small. And most Sundays, we came home to worship in
this church. A lot of times we'd try to spend Saturday and
Sunday here. And I remember one of my children asking about it one time,
why did we come up here every Sunday? I said, "This is our home
and this is where my friends are. These people will be the ones that
will come to our funeral. They are our friends now, they have been our
friends in the past, and they will be our friends in the future. There
are friends that we have, a lot of them in Raleigh, when we are out of
office, they are no longer your friends; they'll be
acquaintances." And I've tried to instill that in my
children, that this is where your roots are, don't ever
forget it, don't ever get, quote, above your raisings, end
quote. And I think [unclear] , because all
of them are here, except one daughter who's a missionary, and
she and her husband are in Africa.
- JACK FLEER:
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So they continue to live in the community, so to speak.
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
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They are all within sight, here.