Jack Jeffers Scott Biography

Jack Jeffers Scott was born in the original log house that his ancestors had built in Stith Valley when they came across the mountains to settle this land soon after 1800. Ruth Fontaine and Walter Lee Scott were his parents, and he had six siblings: Walter, Soil Conservationist; Rena Lou, a teacher; Jessie, an office manager for the General Accounting Office in Washington; and Mary, a farm homemaker; (all of these are now deceased). William, Retired Air Force colonel and Soviet Defense Specialist who lives in Washington,DC; and James, a lawyer and CPA, who lives in Madison, IN. The children attended Hall School, a one- room school, and Meade County High School. The home Jack grew up in was heated by a large fireplace, a drum stove and a cast iron kitchen stove. The wood for the stoves was cut by hand on the farm. Water was carried from a spring 200 yards behind the house. In the summer milk, butter and other foods were stored in a wooden box in the spring. An outhouse stood behind the house near the chicken house. All the food was home grown in garden, orchard and fence rows filled with berries. There were cows to milk, hogs to feed, sheep to shear, and chickens, turkeys, guineas, geese and ducks to protect from the wild animals in the woods. Hogs were butchered for winter meat. Hunting and trapping were pastimes Jack enjoyed. The game was a welcome addition to the food supply and the pelts provided needed cash to buy a gun, ammunition and traps. Recreation was roaming the woods and exploring caves. His younger years were different from life today. Jack's father ran for sheriff in 1933.

After the election, the family moved from the farm to Brandenburg. There they still had milk cows, hogs and chickens. Mr. Scott died after the 1937 Flood, having been exposed to the rain and cold for extended periods as he attended his sheriff's duties night and day. Jack, Bill and Jim carried papers to help earn a living. After Jack graduated from high school, he and his mother bought a general merchandise store in Brandenburg and operated it for a few years.

Jack and Minnie Alice Bondurant, daughter of Zula Powell and James W. Bondurant, were married in LaFayette, TN, in 1941. Jack worked at Fort Knox for a time, and Alice continued to attend high school. They converted the barn at the Scott home in Brandenburg to a house, and lived there for a time. Then they moved to Bardstown, KY, where Jack operated a service station. Alice attended high school there, and they lived in the old John Fitch house (inventor of the steam boat before Robert Fulton).

After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, war talk was everywhere, and in April, after Alice graduated from Meade County High School, they moved to Louisville where Jack was in defense work at Reynolds Metals. At the end of summer, Jack joined the Navy and Alice took a job teaching at Rock Ridge School near Woodspoint. She boarded with a family in the neighborhood and walked to school. They were still to own a vehicle, but that was not unusual. Jack had boot training at Great Lakes, and then was sent to Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) to Radio School; Alice went to Auburn and lived in the home of a professor's family. She played piano and helped with activities at the Service Club there. It was a tense time, since the sailors knew their time in the states was short, and the paratroopers in training at nearby Ft. Benning came to the Service Club and they all sang, often sad songs about leaving. At the end of that assignment, Jack was sent to Miami for advanced training, and Alice boarded there with the McGee family, who were family friends. In early May, Alice went back to Kentucky, and Jack went to Norfolk to prepare for going to sea. At that time, they knew that a baby was on the way, and chose names for it. Jack picked up his ship, the USS Pope, at Orange, TX. A Destroyer Escort, it did convoy duty in the North Atlantic, and was a part of the group that captured a German submarine, the only ship captured on the high seas since the War of 1812. They took the men as prisoners, and this capture enabled the US to break the German code, thus hastening the end of the war. Alice Joan was born November 4, 1943, and Alice's father sent a wire to Jack's ship which was in Norfolk. Jack got leave and came to see Alice and Joan. His seasickness resulted in serious stomach hemorrhages, which eventually led to a medical discharge in 1945.

Jack attended the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture and graduated Summa Cum Laude. He and Alice ran a rooming house for students during the college years, and Jack carried morning papers and worked at the Meats Lab to earn expenses. Alice attended classes part-time. Rachel Melissa was born in Lexington on March 30, 1946. They bought a car soon afterward, and were ready for Jack's first teaching job at Horse Cave High School, in Horse Cave, KY. That school was soon consolidated, and Jack took a job teaching at Irvington High School. He and Alice bought a farm near Guston in Meade
County and lived there two years, raising sheep and cattle. Alice taught for a time at Irvington; then John Jeffers was born on March 29, 1949. Seeing an opportunity to go into lending work with the Farmers' Home Administration, Jack and the family sold the farm and moved to Marion, KY. Jack went into the turkey business, raising 4000 a year. William Lee was born on December 12, 1953, and Ann Bondurant was born on October 22, 1957. Jack then accepted a job with OhioValley National Bank in Henderson, KY, and the family lived there five years. His work was managing 16,000 acres (40 farms) of land for the bank, much of it the rich river bottoms. During this time, the Woodspoint land became available, and Jack and Alice bought it, to bring it back into the family since it had been out of the family for half-a-century. Jack attended the University of Wisconsin Graduate School of Banking, earning a banking degree.

Mercantile Trust Co. in St. Louis offered Jack a job as Correspondent Banker, relating to the banks of the Midwest with their agriculture economy. He was made a Vice-President of Mercantile, St. Louis's largest bank. After two years, the family wanted to go back to Kentucky. Jack and Alice saw the need for a second bank in Elizabethtown. They did all the paper work and made numerous trips to Kentucky to get a bank organized there. Jack was president and chairman of the board of the bank, which was named Citizens Bank of Elizabethtown.

After selling the bank in 1975, Jack went with then Governor Julian Carroll's administration in Frankfort as Director of Marketing Development. Out of his Brussels office, he and Alice traveled over Europe seeking sales for Kentucky products and new business groups for Kentucky. After four years in Frankfort, he left state government.

      Jack worked with the International Executive Service Corporation, an Executive Peace Corps, for the Mexican Banking system introducing a plan for supervised farm lending, similar to our Farmers Home Administration, in the rural areas of Mexico. They lived in an apartment in downtown Mexico City. During this period Alice and Jack bought a vacation home in the Caribbean, enjoying many visits and experiences in Belize. After this service, he worked briefly for the Small Business Administration in Louisville. They purchased a condominium in Louisville while Alice completed her Seminary work. They sold their Elizabethtown home to their son, John, and Sandra, and moved their home base to Ferncliff, a woods community next to Woodspoint.

      During the farm crisis, Jack worked for FDIC, closing banks in the Midwest for two years. After a stint in the veal business, Jack studied and became a stockbroker opening investments office in Elizabethtown, and he and Alice moved from their home at Ferncliff to Elizabethtown, where they envisioned their retirement years. Alice, having earned a Master of Divinity degree, was pastoring churches, and this was a good center for her.

      Jack and Alice kept 12 exchangees from various countries in their home during the children's growing-up years. They traveled to several countries, and have served with five foreign mission teams on short assignments, including Haiti. Jack served 8 years on the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries in New York, and has served the church in many other capacities.

      Presently Jack and Alice live in Elizabethtown, gardening and looking after the Woodspoint land. Their home is a center of activity every day, with Alice mentoring young pastors, and Jack advising persons on financial questions. Joan lives in Lexington; her husband, Lyle Robey, a lawyer, died in 1992. Their son, Matthew Lyle Robey, a lawyer, is married to Dawn Diamond, a design artist, and lives in Houston, TX. Their second son, Lucian Dow Robey, died in an accident in 1992. Rachel, an ordained minister is a District Superintendent in the United Methodist Church, and her elder son, Bill James, a Medical Administrator, lives in Houston. Her second son, Ted James, is a chemist in Lexington. Their father, Bill James, Sr. is president of a bank in Glasgow. John, a lawyer, practices in Elizabethtown, and his wife, Sandra, is head of the math department of Kentucky's largest high school. Their son, David, is a First Lieutenant in the army and is stationed in Bosnia; daughter Alyssa is a senior at the University of Kentucky, and daughter Emily is a junior at University of Tennessee. Bill, an international geographer and dealer in Ethnic Art, and his wife, Marjorie Haskell, a nutritionist whose specialty is Vitamin A, live in Davis, CA, their home base while they work on projects in Third World Countries for the University of California. Dr. Haskell serves on the International Atomic Commission as Nutrition Specialist. Ann is a Real Estate Appraiser in Central Kentucky, with an office in Elizabethtown, where she lives. Her son, Scott Hudson, is a fourth- grader, and son, Alec Hudson, is in second grade. Their father, Peter Hudson, is with a computer firm in Louisville. Jack has had a long relationship with conservation and outdoor life. A long time member of the Sierra Club, he has led many backpack and canoeing trips in various places in the country. The joy of life for Jack and Alice is time spent at Woodspoint with members of their immediate family and the extended families and friends.