Carolyn S. R. B. Scott

Carolyn Beardsworth Scott’s unfinished memoirs begin with the words “Mother. No doubt she represents the strongest influence in my life.” She goes on to write that her mother, Susan Royster, “had a will of iron, but she also had a soft side. She was always there for me, always with time to listen, always honest in answering my questions, always affectionate, while brooking no sentimentality or weakness.”

Carolyn was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1921. The 1929 stock market crash led to the ruin of her father John Beardsworth’s music store business and to her mother becoming a divorcée, a scandalous status that extended in some people’s minds to eight-year-old Carolyn. But “feeling sorry for yourself,” she wrote, "was not allowed. If I came to [Mother] crying because someone had ‘hurt my feelings,’ she would gather me up onto her lap in her rocking chair, comfort me for a few moments, then admonish me to ‘consider the source’—which usually could be interpreted that the person who had hurt me either didn’t know any better or was nor worth bothering about. One must ‘rise above’ such things. As for fear, it destroys and must be conquered. You cannot live with fear.”

Carolyn worked steadily to excel throughout her school years and received an indispensable full scholarship to Randolph-Macon Women’s College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1942. In 1944 she married David R. M. Scott—who always maintained that he had fallen in love with her when they met in kindergarten. The newlyweds immediately traveled all night, sitting on their suitcases in the crowded wartime train, north to Ontario, where David was training as an artillery officer in the Canadian army and Carolyn was hired as a bilingual secretary to the colonel of a French Canadian regiment. After the war, she worked at the Sterling Memorial Library while David earned his Ph.D. at Yale Forestry School. They lived in Canada for several years, then moved to Seattle in 1955 with their young family so that David could join the University of Washington’s College of Forestry as professor of silviculture and forest autecology. Their twin daughters Margaret and Victoria and son David were joined by son Iain two years later.

A Latin major in college, Carolyn had hoped to do graduate study in archaeology, but WW II, David’s doctoral work, and raising their children intervened. Once Iain was in school, Carolyn embarked upon a fulfilling career in development, teaching, and technical writing, most notably at Children’s Orthopedic Hospital. Adding to her lifelong love of classical music, ballet, and art, she took up gardening, hiking, and cross-country skiing, plus sketching and pottery. In her eighties and early nineties, she nimbly took several long-wished-for trips to other continents. Carolyn’s abiding courtesy, curiosity, and interest in meaningful conversation made her home the center of countless visits from a large cast of beloved family and friends of all ages to the last day of her long life.

Carolyn and David and family benefitted beyond measure from living in the Pacific Northwest. The moment school got out in the spring, the entire Scott family, including David’s English springer spaniels, moved for two-and-a-half months to a cabin at Charles Lathrop Pack Demonstration Forest, 30 miles from Mount Rainier. There they spent halcyon summers running the dogs, shooting skeet, swimming and fishing, and hurrying up to the WWII lookout tower atop Pack’s Hugo Peak after supper to catch Mount Rainier turning pink in the sunset. Over the decades there were hikes to waterfalls and alpine meadows on Rainier, bird hunts in the sagebrush hills of Eastern Washington, camping trips with tents and trailers—“an endless storehouse of beautiful memories from which I draw when I feel I must shift gears,” as Carolyn wrote in her draft memoirs.

There were also “bereavements, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, anger, anxiety, and even desperation,” Carolyn wrote. “Learning from my mother, I’ve tried to maintain a positive attitude and constant thankfulness, hard as it may have been at times. There are regrets, of course, but while they sometimes haunt me, I cannot change them now and try not to dwell on them.”

Carolyn never expected to live as long as she did. She lost her dear sister Margaret (her best friend and second mother, whom she nursed until the very end); her beloved brother John, with whom she was reunited 15 years after their father disappeared with him; her brilliant, generous daughter Margaret, in a tragic accident; her incomparable, gallant husband David—“literally ‘my other half,’” as she wrote—and all her friends and relatives her own age. But her remaining family and friends sustained her. As the years went by, her son Iain and daughter-in-law Cindy shopped and cooked and visited daily, drove her to appointments, and renewed the flower garden on her balcony each spring, while other family and friends also visited regularly and pitched in, each in their own ways.

Shortly after turning 103 in late 2024, Carolyn declared that she wanted to go back to being 102 because old age was beginning to catch up with her. Her impeccable attire and sharp mind to the contrary, her physical capabilities were waning quite rapidly. In January 2025, she told dear friends, “I think death is like a dreamless sleep. I don’t know if it is, but I hope I’m right.”

Carolyn took the end-of-life medication on February 2, 2025—clear and fearless, unhesitating and humorous, matter-of-fact and loving to the end. She showed the way with unshakable dignity and grace.

Contributions in honor of Carolyn can be made to the David R. M. Scott Endowed Scholarship at UW, to End of Life Washington (EOLWA), or to the charity of your choice.