Irene Shumaker Scott was the first educator and the only Scott grandma I ever knew. In 1942 when she was a 37-year-old grade school teacher, Irene met and fell in love with my grandpa, A.C. Scott. By marrying him, Irene took on the responsibility of a family of four sons, ages 12, 14, 18, and 19 and a man who had been divorced once and widowed once. Many women might have thought twice before this marriage, but Irene took on the challenge.
Irene was born on 31 Mar 1904 in Stueben County, Indiana, the oldest daughter of Elijah and Emma Wolf Shumaker. Elijah had been previously married in 1895 but was widowed with three children by 1901. Six months after losing his first wife, Elijah married Emma Wolf. She was only twenty at the time but just like her daughter would do forty years later, Emma took on the responsibility of raising children who weren't her own. Emma and Elijah went on to have five children together.
When I was learning to read, Grandma Irene Scott gave me a book that she had used when she was teaching. I felt special to own that book and read and reread it many times. When I was older and thinking of becoming a teacher myself, Grandma gave me the school bell that used to sit on her desk. She lived long enough to know that I had graduated from college with a teaching degree but by the time I started my job that fall, Grandma had died.
When I think of Grandma Scott I remember how she loved costume jewelry; baked the most amazing gigantic soft sugar cookies topped with sugar and a raisin; insisted on good table manners; and had a no-nonsense personality. She was never a warm fuzzy grandma but she took an interest in me when I stayed on the farm and I knew she loved me. I have a long string of wooden beads she gave me one day, saying they were her "flapper beads" from the 1920s. I only wish I could have seen my proper school teacher grandma dancing with her flapper beads.
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