Early Life
Otto Joseph Scott was born Otto Scott-Estrella, Jr. in New York City and was the son of a broker. Constantly troubled in his youth, he was unable to complete high school, yet with his initiative he was able to get work as a reporter for a newspaper in Fort Eustis, Virginia when he was 16 years old. He then worked for United Features Syndicate and the San Diego Union. When World War II broke out, he joined the United States Merchant Marine.
After the war, Scott worked in the advertising industry, then became editor of a manufacturing trade journal, Rubber World. In the course of his assignments, he interviewed Paul Blazer, the chairman of Ashland Oil, in Ashland, Kentucky, and was invited to write the history of the company. "He changed my life because he gave me a new trade," Scott says of the company chairman. "I didn't know I could write a book." From this beginning he worked on books in his later years detailing the corporate histories of Raytheon, Black & Decker and Arch Mineral Corporation.
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