After working in the restaurant industry and then spending 10 years as an agent for Farmers Insurance, a dying elm tree sparked John Scott’s lifelong passion for art.
He quit the insurance job and created an 11-foot bronze sculpture of an Indian, which he originally carved into the tree. That sculpture is displayed at the Peak National Bank in Evergreen’s Bergen Park.
Scott, an artist who had a love of his Scottish heritage and lived in a log cabin in the woods that he built himself, died of a heart attack June 28. He was 96.
“He was always working and always looking for something to throw himself into completely,” his wife, Dorothy, said. “We did have lots of good fun.”
Scott was born on July 29, 1919, in Farmer, S.D. In 1945, he and his business partner, who was also his brother-in-law, put an ad in the local newspaper for someone who could take shorthand notes and do clerical work. His soon to be wife answered the ad. They married in 1947.
The couple moved to Colorado in 1949 and opened a restaurant called the Cup and Saucer on Colfax Avenue. For a birthday years several years later, Dorothy Scott bought her husband an easel and oil paints, which inspired him to pursue his passion for art.
“He would study paintings wherever he saw them and he liked colors. He would talk about them and try to get me interested in them,” she said. “He built his own casket and wanted to be buried with a paintbrush in one hand and his bronzing tools in the other. He even painted the inner lid of the casket.”
Scott is survived by his wife, Dorothy; son, John Robert Scott of Atwood, Kan.; daughter, Laura Scott of Littleton; three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
His funeral is set for 10 a.m. July 6 at Bullocks Mortuary, 1375 E. Old Hampden Road in Englewood. Burial will follow at Fort Logan National Cemetery will a full military service.
