Mark Scully- Modest man, long shadow

By Peter Hilty

In the 42 years that I knew Mark Scully, I often tested the dictums of Carlyle and Emerson. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. He was a modest man. He told me during an interview that it was his good fortune to come along when the college needed to grow and would have prospered under the direction of others. Perhaps.

Scully had a great love for his own origins and spoke often of Byrd's Mill, the school where he began teaching. He arranged to have a program of hot lunches, heating chickens on the furnace in the center of the building. The cotton-pickers vacation each fall allowed him to go to Peabody to earn extra credits.

He was lucky in every way, he recalled. A Saturday library job allowed him to earn money while the shouts of the Peabody boys playing touch football and wasting their time came to him through the open windows. I was fortunate. Somewhat hesitantly, I came to Southeast knowing it was a school of education. But I at once realized that President Scully respected the integrity of each department and preserved strict liberal-arts requirements. This was his creed, his own personal interest.

All of us noticed that he and his wife attended all concerts and plays.

His tastes were not always admired by some professionals. He loved to recall the production of "Song of Norway" in which Florence Henderson starred. I liked it too. He once showed me a letter he had written to a musical quartet which had just performed. "I don't care for string quartets," he had written. "It seemed to me they spent most of the evening trying to tune instruments, and never quite got them in tune." I too become restless during an entire evening of string quartets. But I am not as forthright.

A newcomer to our department told me that Scully had scolded him for borrowing money from a small savings and loan when he could have obtained it for less from a conventional bank.

When my wife and I lingered at the funeral home when Scully's wife died, I asked Scully how he and Pearl had met.

"Come here," he said, and led us to the bier. He touched her hand and fondled it. "I was at Peabody, and I had a roommate who became ill and went to the hospital. He was about 10 years younger than I. When he recovered and came back to our quarters, he was enthusiastic about his nurse. 'But she is too old for me. I'll introduce you to her.'" That was the Pearl who lay in the bier before us.

Peter Hilty of Cape Girardeau is a retired Southeast Missouri State University professor.