Former governor dies, leaving memories

Former Gov. Bob Scott has died. Scott was governor during some of this state's most tumultuous times, from 1969-1973. He dealt with protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War. And most distinctly  to my college classmates, he ordered state troopers onto campus to break a cafeteria workers' strike at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cafeteria workers had gone on strike over wages, if I'm remembering correctly, and students, already in a demonstrating mood after civil rights and war protests, joined the picket lines. Support groups called on students to boycott classes in solidarity with the workers. The university was in a tough spot because its food services were not making money. The food was generally crummy, and most students ate off-campus as university cafeterias deteriorated. Most colleges now contract out food services to private firms.

Scott took a lot of heat for his tough, anti-union, anti-picketing stand, and the photo of a phalanx of state troopers in front of university buildings became infamous.

My most vivid memory of Bob Scott, though, was from the 1980 gubernatorial campaign. Jim Hunt was running for re-election as governor in the first election since a Hunt-backed constitutional amendment allowing gubernatorial succession. Scott, hoping for a political comeback and an opponent of succession, ran against Hunt in the Democratic Primary. Scott came to Wilson for a rally at the Wilson County Fairgrounds, in Hunt's back yard. I interviewed Scott after the evening rally, and I later had the candidate all to myself at the not-so-well-attended event.

After I asked Scott a few questions, he asked me where I was from, and I told him I grew up in Anson County. Immediately, he asked, "You know where White Store is?" Of course I did. It's a crossroads that had been a rural trading center where Union troops burned a Confederate grain warehouse in 1865. I used to ride a school bus through the crossroads, where a classmate's parents still ran a country store. I told Scott this, and he responded, "Well, you really are from Anson County."

Scott will be remembered for legislation he pushed through to consolidate all state universities and colleges and for his leadership of the community college system 1983-1994.

He was a politician from another time, like his father, Kerr Scott, and grandfather, a time when back-room deals, cash contributions and mutual back-scratching were the norm. That attitude was obvious when he defended his daughter, Meg Scott Phipps, against corruption charges over campaign contributions that might have been routine in her grandfather's day.