Happy 100th Birthday Horace Scott!
As featured in the print edition of the Granville Sentinel.
Christmas was a VERY special day at Slate Valley Center for a Mr. Horace Scott.
Not only because it was Christmas, but because he turned the big 100!
Woodworking … preaching … serv-ing his country … morticianing .. . selling magazines and furniture .. . politics … Horace H. Scott has done it all – and he’s had a century to do it. Scott was born on Dec. 25, 1917 in Poultney, Vermont, and grew up in Whitehall. “We have to write 1917 now,” joked Donna Austin, Scott’s daughter. Scott remembers he got his first job when he was just 10 years old, selling magazines.
Later, Scott worked at and eventually ran a pair of businesses with his father Harold Scott: Scott Funeral Home in Whitehall and Scott Furniture in Granville and Whitehall. He earned enough money to buy his first car: a Dodge G-Boy. The vehicle had curtains and extra seats in the back for all his friends, Scott said. “A whole bunch of us would get in that thing and go to SunnySide,” he said. “We used to go swimming where the slippery slide is.” Scott also got into politics, being elected as the mayor of Whitehall and the Whitehall town supervisor in the 1960s and 70’s. Asked why he got into politics, Scott said: “I was asked by a very important lawyer.” Added Scott: ‘i\nd I wanted to eliminate the overhead pass at Comstock.”
And he did. Scott called the Route 4 overpass a “death trap,” because its tight turns often caused accidents. “Because he was in the funeral business, he had to go pick people up there,” Austin said. Blasting through miles of rock on the section of Route 4 between Comstock and Whitehall to lay a flat road eliminated the need for a curvy overpass. Also during his tenure, Scott accomplished many noteworthy feats. such as attracting businesses.
Mr. Scott had a long and fulfilling life, we hope he lives to be 200!
