Curtis J. Scroggins

Curtis James Scroggins joined an already crowded Depression household in Natchitoches, Louisiana on October 2, 1932. He was the seventh child, with one more on the way, in hard times that saw his father, Elva, take to the road in search of work while his Mother, Carrie, held things together. Life for Curt never included fame, his resources were bought with sweat and an ‘I’ve got this’ set of smarts, and his gentle but resolutely confident manners were beacons of the man we knew. The father of nine, the curious problem solver with a delightful wit, the diligent provider, the beautifully mannered man who knew himself so well that he never feigned humility and always shared himself sincerely. With great sadness, we said good-bye to him on Monday, December 23, 2019, almost 17 months to the day after his beloved wife of 66 years, Kat.

Throughout his adult life, Curt was known for steadfastness. A diligent worker who always moonlighted to earn extra money for the large family he and his wife welcomed. A devoted father who worked around the absences jobs required and always gave 100% of his attention. A charming wit, ready with puns worth groaning over and insightful humor that showcased his agile mind. A do-it-yourselfer with an amazing array of solutions both practical and a little dorky. And the consummate gentleman, always courteous, frequently smiling.

It’s true we, his family, hold him as an icon of valor, principle, and the generosity of mindful love. And because we always have, these last years in Curt’s life exploded with a new richness as his natural modesty about himself relaxed and we began to learn the ways in which our icon scraped, scrapped and scampered toward maturity. As death’s relatively gentle approach transformed him, his own transformation into the father we knew, in stories that brimmed and sizzled with fine details precisely repeated, was his gift to us.

As an enterprising kid with an eye for shrewd thrift, Dad described regularly collecting and selling pecans to a downtown Natchitoches bakery. When they had him deliver to the back door one day, he noticed that many of the pecans he had brought the day before had fallen unbroken on the kitchen floor. When the staff took off for lunch, he scooped them up into his sack and had a head start on the next day’s sale! He repeated this ruse for some time, with the staff assuming someone had finally and thankfully decided to clean up!

Shining shoes was another way to earn money in youth, and here Curt was on his very best behavior, especially keen to meet servicemen as World War II carved a new world. It upended family life too. A move to Shreveport, where his father had been living for a time, revealed that his parents’ marriage would not continue in a shared household.

Young Curt was a volatile test tube for the man we knew, outlandishly mischievous, smooth talking, but already fiercely loyal to love and kinship, intent on having heady satisfaction and the respect of self and others at the same time. In shy tones in his last years, he shared his quiet pain at the separation of his parents, both pillars of meaning for him, and his determination to hold his ailing father close. But the same Curt tagged along with his older brother Leonard (an orphaned cousin who had been casually but not legally adopted into the family), who was running a quite illegal moonshine operation in the woods of east Texas. One night when Leonard decamped suddenly for a side adventure, Curt, now about eleven, took over as salesperson at the isolated cabin, opening up wall panels as needed to sell off bottles Leonard had stashed therein, drifting off in the long silences between footfalls and discreet coughs.

And there was young Curt the street operator, delivering cigarettes and whatnots to the likes of Hank Williams at the Municipal Auditorium. Never mind that he scaled the walls and gutters to reach an upper story window, or that he was caught once just after having accomplished this same feat – a policeman below demanded that he “get back outside!” Well, Curt did. He simply jumped from the window, two stories down, landing in soft shrubs with a grin like the Cheshire Cat.

Romantic Curt had a few lessons coming his way though. He told us about a girl he became infatuated with, and he wanted to impress her with an overnight vigil outside of her house. But two problems had to be solved. He might be discovered by parents or other authorities, and mosquitoes. Curt’s solution was to get a good length of rope and climb the billboard that sat relatively close to this girl’s house. Up on the platform, he tied himself securely to the wooden slats, making sure he wouldn’t fall asleep and roll off during the hot, humid night. He never said if the girl was impressed. The mosquitoes, however, were both amused and well fed, while Curt had some things to scratch his head about.

Entering his mid-teens, Curt more openly wrestled adventurism and structure. His father was not well, and it distressed him. He was vividly conscious of important adults and peers, and grateful down to his shoes for kindness and the prospect of someone nurturing him, yet he careened like a cat that drank gasoline (one of his all-time, epic, I can’t-believe-I-listened-to-the-whole-thing Dad jokes) – he skipped school with the abandon of Peter Pan, he hitchhiked to New Orleans for Mardi Gras without telling his mother, he rode the rails for thrills, for the fun of mischief, for the simple Yes-I-can! of it.

His cartwheeling evasions of authority and profligate truancy ground to a halt in front of a judge, who bemoaned that Curt seemed like a good kid, but clearly needed a lesson, one that might be supplied at the Louisiana Training Institute for delinquent youth. Here is a linchpin in this tribute to Curt Scroggins, a story none of his children knew until recently, one some may just hear today. It started with a long, sobering car ride from Shreveport to Monroe, his parents together as he faced the most transformative moment of his life. It’s his own description of growing up, of becoming a man.

He was scared at LTI, but he knew he couldn’t show it in front of kids far tougher than him. He bowed his head in diligent observance of work and routine, and was soon chosen as the leader of his ‘group’ of 25 or so boys who lived together in a dorm. Under the watchful eye of the Campbells, house parents to this group of boys, he set up schedules for chores and schoolwork, and saw to it that the schedules were kept. He overheard the Campbells one day when they didn’t know he was nearby, and they agreed that if they should ever have a son, a boy like this Curtis would be a blessing.

All that boundless energy for random mischief flowed into new channels, and Curt’s considerable sports prowess, curtailed by his infrequent school attendance, now had a chance to matter, and he was chosen captain of the football team. In telling this private tale, his lip quivered, his eyes glossed with moisture – “they respected me, they really respected me.”

Reform school was a crucible for Curt, a place to forge his adult self. And it was a secret, albeit a mild one for a modest man, that he kept from his children until this wonderful time when we got to know him all over again.

Within a span of a couple of years, he laid his own father to rest, returned to normal schools but still chafed for something, and followed his restless, but now searching and not just wandering, feet to a path beyond home. With a handful of local buddies, he enlisted in the Air Force. Within a year, several of them were dead, having shipped out to Korea, and Curt paid respect calls on their families when he returned to visit his. In his own self-assured but modest way, he completed his G.E.D. And he prepared to ship out to a strange place, Truro, Massachusetts, along the windswept dunes of Cape Cod. There he would help open a radar base, a new link in the chain of Cold War surveillance sites. He would also meet his life’s love over a soda fountain in a pharmacy, captivating her with that courteous southern drawl.

Photos show a young man of easy but assertive bearing, a warm and open face, a gleam of the trickster. The uniform is crisp, creased and regimental. But deeper in those expressive eyes you see the romantic, the steadfast and devoted lover and friend, the man of principle who would rather model admirable behavior for you than argue with you about it.

On the way to Truro, Curt changed trains in Grand Central Station in New York City. He had never been so far north. His eyes took in everything, the amazing bustle, the sheer life of it all. He decided to slow down, spruce up and get a haircut. At the entrance to the barber’s, a black man offered shoeshines. Curt was adept at shining his own, having plied the trade himself, and he was about to decline the man’s offer when the barber yelled at him to stop bothering the customers. At the end of his haircut, Curt stood to pay the barber, who kept his hand out and said, “Don’t you have a tip for the barber?” Curt looked at him calmly and said, “No, sir, not for you I don’t.” He turned to leave, took more money from his wallet, and said, “But for him I do.” And he gave his tip to the shoeshine attendant.

Curt’s journey through Parkinson’s and dementia was long but oddly gracious like the man himself. He had periods of unfounded paranoia, anxiety about where he was and who was with him, huge struggles at times to find a simple word. And yet, when he was with us, he was with us totally, relishing all of the family stories and, finally, adding his own. Even to his last, at Thanksgiving, when he met his newest great grandchildren and made typical Dad jokes about their names.

Here was the fully formed man, this patriarch of so many lives touched by his openness to dignity and love. When we were kids and fought endlessly over nothing, our most dreaded punishment (and among our cherished memories now) was Dad forcing us to hug each other and say I Love You, sometimes including kissing (yuck). Time after time we repeated these words to each other, over our tears and indignation, as he patiently reminded us that people who love each other sometimes just need to stop and remember that they do.

Curt passed from life with this same gentle strength of spirit. He had shrunk so small, and the skin of his skull and bony hands was as burnished as the old wood of his shoeshine box. There’s a picture of him, carefully preparing for the last time he used it, to shine his shoes before his wife’s funeral seventeen months ago. He’s old and he’s frail in the photo, but you see that man who cared so deeply about what he did, why he did it, and who he did it for. A spirit like that never ever ceases to give, and we are all the more blessed for it.

He was preceded in death by his father and mother, Elva Scroggins and Carolyn “Carrie” Childs Scroggins; beloved wife of 66 years, Kathleen J. Scroggins; their two precious stillborn baby boys in 1970 and 1971; brothers, Elva Scroggins, Jr. and Donald Scroggins; sisters, Eleanor Scroggins and Nell Scroggins; cousins, who were adopted into the family as brothers and sister, Clarence Childs; Leonard Rachal and Rosalie Rachal Collier and son-in-law, Larry Ballard.

Mr. Scroggins is survived by his nine children and their spouses; Glen and Lynn, Kathy, Mike and Shannon, David and Helen, Sharon and Harvey, Danny and Chuck, Amy and Ray, Paul and Kaye, and Jody and Wade; thirteen grandchildren, Carley, Andrew, Joni, Nicole, James, Peter, Keeley, Stephen, Daniel, Phillip, Mitchell, Caleb, and Lily; sixteen great-grandchildren and two on the way in 2020. He is also survived by his brother-in-law Frank Carlos and his wife Susan, as well as his sister-in-law Sondra Scroggins, and a host of nephews, nieces, and friends.

Pallbearers will be Ray Vining, Harvey Carter, Chuck Drury, Wade Choate, Ellis Richard, George Mays and Michael Morris.

In lieu of flowers memorial gifts to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital will support charitable efforts to which Curt was committed.