May 5, 2000 10:50 a.m.

(Robb Scott was introduced by Prof. Dick Williams, retiring this year, who has administered the Biology award for the past 25 years. After Robb Scott’s remarks below, Prof. Williams--winner of this year’s first annual Alpha Chi Teacher of the Year award--presented the Biology awards and Robb Scott presented the English award.)

Good morning.

One August afternoon shortly after the end of World War II, Virginia Lee Huffman was in her second floor dorm room at the old McCreery Hall when she heard someone whistling for her outside. She went to the window and looked down and saw what appeared to be John Scott, all covered in grease and grime from his job at a local filling station. John asked Virginia if she’d like to go with him to a large picnic over at Sterling Lake--their first date--and she accepted. Ten minutes later, he was back, all clean and neatly dressed, and when people saw them at the picnic they thought they had been going together all summer. They married in 1948.

In the early 1950s, John Scott began to feel called to serve Kansas as a physician. He first moved the family to Wichita, Kansas, where he built a small house for them to live in while he spent the next year taking pre-med classes at Wichita State University during the daytime and working at the Cessna plane factory at night. He was accepted at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and the family lived the next four years in Kansas City.

When John Scott determined that he would go back to school and change the course of their lives by becoming a medical doctor, Virginia was right there with him. Not only did she watch the children while he studied, but she also obtained her Kansas teaching certificate so that she could make extra money while her husband was in medical school. She bought day-old bread to save money during those years and used her home-economics training to ensure that the children got proper nutrition despite the financial hardships that accompanied this stressful period in the life of the young Scott family.

Dr. John Clark Scott graduated in 1959 and then specialized in urology, a field of medicine that he saw a need for during his one year of practice with an established urologist. The family moved to Staten Island, New York, where Dr. Scott completed a residency in urology at the Public Health Service base.

In 1967, Dr. John Scott finished his obligation to the U.S. Public Health Service, and moved the family back to Kansas to set up his private practice in Great Bend. Virginia had recently lost her mother and the move to Kansas brought her closer to her father, her brother Ted, a preacher at that time in Oswego, her brother Ed, an educator in Altamont, her Aunt Esther Unruh in Hutchinson and countless other close friends across the state and the Midwest.

Virginia was always vivacious and enjoyed the company of others. Every Christmas, the Scott children would help her address cards to literally hundreds of friends and acquaintances from the different places the family had lived. She was an active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) and volunteered at the local hospital, Central Kansas Medical Center. She made friends with many people and was a good friend, always willing to help in a time of trouble. Virginia was a fervent believer in Christian faith and she knelt and prayed in churches from Switzerland to South America. She loved to sing and always was ready to share her faith with anyone she met.

The Scott family attended church every Sunday at the Sterling Reformed Presbyterian congregation in Sterling, a one-hour drive each way, for morning and evening services. It was one of the great joys for Dr. and Mrs. Scott to rekindle their fellowship with the residents of this small town where they had attended college and fallen in love many years earlier. During the long drives across the beautiful central Kansas countryside, the Scotts would sing, listen to gospel music and enjoy the weekly Billy Graham broadcasts on the radio.

On a cloudless Kansas Saturday morning, October 4, 1975, Dr. John Clark Scott and his wife, Virginia lee, were taken away from their children--John, Bill, Elizabeth and Robert--their relatives and their friends when their airplane crashed on landing at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport.

The funeral was held at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Sterling, with Rev. Bruce Backensto and Rev. Luther McFarland presiding. Nearly 500 people filled the old RP church, many traveling long distances to be there. The Scotts are buried in the Sterling cemetery. Their gravestone was designed by their children and includes Mrs. Scott’s favorite Bible verse from the Book of Ruth. Ruth 1:16 But Ruth said, "Entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God, my God."

On behalf of my brothers and sister, I want to congratulate the winners of these two awards who are now going to be announced.