Thomas Lee Scott

Our wonderful daddy, Thomas Lee Scott, passed peacefully from this life on May 16, 2025 after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis and prostate cancer. A native Houstonian, Tom was born on March 27, 1939 to Marie Coughlin and Thomas Philip Scott. Minus a few years in the military and at University of Notre Dame, Tom lived his whole life in Houston and loved the city, its restaurants, history, and growth. Tom attended Holy Rosary Catholic School downtown and was a 1957 graduate of St. Thomas High School. He took the scenic path through college and life before graduating from the University of Houston in 1967.

During his time in the United States Air Force Intelligence Service, Tom was introduced to the nascent computer industry. Back home as a UH student he began renting time on university mainframes to complete contracted programming jobs. This grew into a thirty-year computer consulting business, eventually named Seahorse Computer Systems. As one of the earliest computer programming professionals in Houston, Tom was instrumental in the founding of the Houston chapter of ICCA, the Independent Computer Consultants Association. A self-taught programmer, he worked in virtually every language from FORTRAN on. The brilliance of his dyslexic brain enabled him to see patterns others would miss, page-long printouts of 1s and 0s were as easily interpreted as a newspaper to him. He enjoyed the challenge of crafting exactly the right computer system for each client and his broad programming knowledge made him particularly skilled in computing changeovers for corporate acquisitions as outdated systems were like old friends to him. In the 1990s as desktop computing took off, Tom went “in house” and worked for the IT department at Amerada Hess Corporation, a job and company that he loved.

Always a proponent of “thinking outside the box” he tried to pass his love of creative problem solving on to others. In the late 1980s Tom volunteered to coach his daughter’s Odyssey of the Mind team and fell in love with the creative problem-solving program for children. He continued to volunteer as a coach, judge, and organizer with the program for over twenty years—traveling annually for competitions and coaching and hosting children from around the world.

Tom is survived by his beloved wife of almost 63 years, Jeannie Dyer Scott, daughters Angela Scott Richard and husband Eric, and Suzanne Scott Gibbs, and husband Michael, and grandchildren, Savannah, Gregory, Lillian, and Willow Richard and Cooper and Colton Gibbs. An avid genealogist and family historian, Tom was thrilled to learn in his final days that he was a fourth cousin to the newly elected Pope Leo XIV. Tom was known for his calm demeanor, good-natured teasing, and mischievous smile. He loved music, the theater, a good pun or play on words, and his family. He will be missed by all who were lucky enough to know him.