Kate Scott | Spotlight on Lopezians
Published 10:47 am Thursday, November 6, 2014
About the Pacific Northwest island she grew up on, Kate Scott says, “I couldn’t get off that rock fast enough.” Not Lopez – Bainbridge. She wanted to see the “other” world. And now that she has seen it, Kate has found the rock she wants to stay on – not far geographically, but a long distance from her roots.
When asked about her early years, Kate laughs and says, “Oh lordy, can we just say I had a messy and violent childhood, that I survived and he didn’t, and leave it at that?”
Kate’s father was a WWII vet who suffered from PTSD, psychosis and alcoholism. “I grew up in a rough neighborhood. My father’s house!” she quips. “Of course kids don’t understand about mental illness when they are young…it’s only later – sometimes too late – they understand what all the pain was about.”
The family moved a lot; two different schools every year. Shy Kate “spent a lot of time crying in coat closets” at each new school.
Even when they stayed on Bainbridge, from fourth grade on, they still moved to different houses. “Restless, brilliant, rebellious,” is how Kate describes her dad, adding, “I probably took after him – the rebellious part. And stubborn.”
Her rebellion took the form of defending herself physically and joining churches.
But she also took refuge in the woods and in books, and she credits two teachers and a neighbor couple, “who should have been my parents,” with saving her in those hard years.
Restless again, her father bought an old farm in Ellensburg, and Kate was sent to help him, at age 16. After a particularly violent episode she escaped, making her way back to Bainbridge by bus, where the old neighbors took her in.
There she happily exercised the Thoroughbred horses they raised, cleaning barns for her keep while finishing high school.
After graduation in 1962, Kate took a nanny job in exchange for tuition at Olympic College.
She loved the family and reveled in its stability, but after a year and a half, she craved independence. Finding a position managing apartments in an old house in Bremerton, she hired on with a naval architect who designed elevators for aircraft in a giant carrier.
“I got to crawl through the ship’s bowels, carrying plans. It was fun.” One night at a party, a fellow announced he was driving to the Bay area – anyone want a ride? Two days later found Kate, her cat and all her belongings, heading south.
In San Francisco, Kate moved to the only place she could afford: a hotel in the red light district. “Naive country bumpkin hits the big city. What did I know?” she laughs. She quickly got a job at Macy’s, which put her in charge of accounts payable, and later found a tiny apartment above a restaurant, furnished with only a couch and a piano – “perfect.”
Kate discovered the “Beat” life in North Beach, artists and musicians. A succession of loves followed—a sailor/singer, a metallurgical engineer/jazz buff, a poet/musician who turned out to be gay, a farmer/activist, a carpenter/artist and a psychiatrist (“Can you imagine scruffy, irreverent me being married to a doctor?” she giggles.) An even longer succession of jobs followed in her California decades: draftsman, mail carrier, seamstress, shop owner, window display designer, bookkeeper, house painter, house cleaner and graphic designer.
Throughout these years, Kate always painted, read voraciously, danced and made music and she experienced heartbreak and great joy.
She lost her first baby, then had her son, Julian. She marched in various protests, and spent six days in jail for protesting the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. At age 40, a single parent, with the aid of scholarships plus her cleaning and painting jobs, Kate earned her Bachelor in Science in Graphic Arts and Design from Cal Poly. And she watched Julian grow into “an amazingly loving and compassionate human being.”
But the Northwest called her back. Driving north in the late 1980s to visit her mother and sister – her dad had committed suicide years earlier – Kate “saw those trees, and that was it – I knew I had to come home.” She started looking for property, and in 1989, discovered the San Juans.
Orcas was “too artsy-fartsy fancy,” San Juan “a zoo.” But Lopez? Kate had a picture in her head from her Bainbridge “supposed-to-be parents” place: a tree-shadowed drive, winding down to a simple cabin by the water. On Lopez, Kate found that vision. Now, “surrounded by dogs and cats, friends and rabbits and deer and crows, books and art and objects that delight my soul, and my mom, Earth,” Kate has found peace. She subscribes to the view of her “supposed-to-be-mom:” “Want to know God? Look out the window!”
On Lopez Kate has also found a family of friends with whom to make music, help the earth and get her hands dirty. A board member of the Solid Waste Alternatives Program, Kate creates its graphics and helps produce fundraisers like Trashion Fashion.
And she makes art – enough to warrant its own book, let alone a short article. Looking at her current displays in the Post Office and the Center, one sees Kate’s love for colors: “They match my passion for life and ideas. There isn’t much that is quiet about me!” Except, perhaps, that need to move on. That is quiet now.
Of her life, Kate says, “If nothing else, I’m resilient…broken hearts, betrayal, cancer, more deaths of family and friends than I can count…I’m a survivor and a pretty jolly one, if I do say so myself! Each gut wrenching experience has gotten me to the next amazing, heart- expanding one.” Including right here, on this rock.
