Jock Scott

Jock Scott

John Wyeth "Jock" Scott, II (June 29, 1947 – April 25, 2009) was a lawyer and college professor in Alexandria, who served three terms from District 26 in the Louisiana House of Representatives, first as a Democrat (1976–1985) and then as a Republican (1985–1988). He was defeated in a race for the Louisiana State Senate in 1987. He also lost two bids for the United States House of Representatives: a 1985 special election, when he ran as a Democrat, and in the 2004 nonpartisan blanket primary for the Fifth Congressional District, when he challenged fellow Republican U.S. Representative Rodney Alexander of Quitman in Jackson Parish.

Scott was born in Alexandria, the seat of Rapides Parish and the largest city in Central Louisiana, to Nauman Steele Scott, II, (1916–2001) and Blanche Hammond Scott (1920–1985). He graduated from Bolton High School in Alexandria in 1965. One of his classmates was another future Louisiana state legislator, Charles W. DeWitt, Jr., from neighboring District 25. The two were House colleagues from 1980-1988. DeWitt, later Speaker of the Louisiana House, said that Scott always worked for the betterment of the public, not for his personal financial gain.

In 1969, Scott received his bachelor of arts degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He obtained his law degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He was in law school at the time that U.S. President Richard M. Nixon named Scott's Republican father to a new Alexandria-based U.S. District judgeship. Scott had been married since 1970 to the former Cynthia "Cyndy" Henderson (born 1948), a speech pathologist whom he had first met while she was a student at the since defunct St. Mary's Dominican College in New Orleans. Scott was the father of three grown children, Natalie Seeling and her husband, Michael, of Alexandria, John W. Scott, III, and his wife, Kristin, of Trinidad, and Elizabeth Scott of San Francisco, California. He had two young grandsons too, John W. Scott, IV, and William Henderson Seeling.