Jack J. Scott

Jack Jeffers Scott was born in Meade County, Kentucky, on July 27, 1922.  Jack was just a few weeks old when the presiding elder came to Big Spring Methodist Church and baptized him.  

Jack attended Meade County High School, along with his high school sweetheart, Minnie Alice Bondurant.  Jack and Alice married when they were teenagers.  Less than a year after their marriage, the U.S. entered World War II.  Soon after, Jack joined the Navy.  

After the war was over, Jack and Alice moved to Lexington, where Jack enrolled at the University of Kentucky.  He received a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from UK.  

Jack’s career included teaching agriculture, farming, farm management, and banking.  Jack was the founding president of Citizens Bank of Elizabethtown.  He also worked for state government as the director of marketing development in the Department of Commerce, and later was a stockbroker.

Jack and Alice were the parents of five children:  Alice Joan Scott Robey, Rachel Scott Marshall, John J. Scott, William L. Scott, and Ann Bondurant Scott.  Their daughter Rachel is a retired elder in the Kentucky Conference.  They had nine grandchildren, one deceased, and several great-grandchildren.  

With full encouragement and support from Jack, Alice entered the ministry as a second career, after their children were grown.  Alice received elder’s orders in 1982.  Jack was an active minister’s spouse, often singing solos in church, and helping out wherever necessary.  
Jack was elected as a lay delegate to General and Jurisdictional Conferences.  He served eight years on the General Board of Global Ministries, and was chair of the Investment Committee for the board during those years.  During his work on the board, he traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to work with pastors there in strengthening the work of mission. Together, Jack and Alice, along with some of their parishioners, went on mission trips to Haiti, Guatemala, and other locations.

Both Jack and Alice were faithfully committed to fairness and inclusiveness for all God’s children.  

In his retirement years, Jack devoted a great deal of time to caring for Woodspoint, the 500-acre family nature preserve on the Ohio River in Meade County.  He described it this way:  “It is a diverse woodland of springs, a creek, several ponds, both old- and new-growth timber, and an abundance of wildlife including bobcats, wild turkeys, deer, and smaller animals, and numerous plant species, some of which are endangered.”  Jack and Alice loved to go to Woodspoint, to walk in the forest, and to sit by the fire in the old log cabin.    

Jack and Alice celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary just a couple of months before Alice died in 2016.  Jack’s earthly journey ended on Oct. 23, 2018. He was 96.