Doyle J. Scroggins

Scotland senior leads center and horseback rides

Doyle J. Scroggins, who will be 87 on Monday, is director of the Scotland Senior Community Center. After a tornado in April 2010 destroyed the original center, he and Judy Simmons spearheaded a renovation project of the former Scotland Elementary School as a place for senior citizens. Scroggins, who owns two horses, also leads trail rides during the annual National Championship Chuckwagon Races in Clinton.
Doyle J. Scroggins, who will be 87 on Monday, is director of the Scotland Senior Community Center. After a tornado in April 2010 destroyed the original center, he and Judy Simmons spearheaded a renovation project of the former Scotland Elementary School as a place for senior citizens. Scroggins, who owns two horses, also leads trail rides during the annual National Championship Chuckwagon Races in Clinton.

Doyle J. Scroggins attended the Scotland Senior Community Center, but when a tornado in 2010 destroyed it, he knew it was time to get more involved.

Scroggins, who will be 87 on Monday, is the energetic director of the center.

The center is in the former Scotland Elementary School, which was remodeled to serve seniors. He and a friend, Judy Simmons, spearheaded the project after the tornado.

“I remember I heard the roar. I was peeping out the back window, the porch, so we (he and his wife, Mary) took shelter, and it did not harm our place at all,” Scroggins said, “but it did lots of damage in our community. It completely demolished the senior center.”

One person was killed in the tiny Van Buren County community, and several homes were destroyed.

“The morning after the tornado hit, I went down to the building site. Judy Simmons and her husband (Doyle Blaylock) … were picking through the building seeing what they could salvage. I joined in. That’s when I got interested in being more active in the program instead of just a passive attendee.”

Judy Simmons said she, her husband, who has since died, and Scroggins worked to clean up the site.

“I remember we spent many hours down there trying to salvage whatever we could for the center and hauling it up to a storage area,” she said.

Scroggins said then-Van Buren County Judge Bogie Bramlett and other officials suggested that the seniors renovate the Scotland Elementary School, which had been empty since the district merged with Clinton in 2004.

“Judy [and I] led the project to convert Scotland Elementary School into the

senior-center building,” Scroggins said. “She [played] a large part in helping get that organized. She did all the paperwork, and I did the following the contractors around. Between the two of us, we made a pretty good team.”

It took several months for the project.

“We had to remove the classroom walls and made a nice large dining area,” Scroggins said. “We had to put in proper restrooms and take out the school restrooms. … We just completely remodeled the interior of the building.

“We spent like $215,000.”

The center was built with insurance money from the disaster, a United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development grant and donations from two natural-gas companies.

A grand opening for the Scotland Senior Community Center took place in December 2010. The nonprofit organization is Scot-Van Inc., which started in the 1970s, Simmons said, and included a community center and preschool, which is long gone.

Simmons, who was president of the nonprofit board for years and served as interim senior-center director, said Scroggins is a worthy leader.

“He is just very, very enthusiastic about the whole program,” she said.

Scroggins is also a past president of the Van Buren County Aging Program, where he served for about 12 years, he said.

The senior center has 52 members, with an average daily attendance of 20 to 30 seniors, Scroggins said.

“Other than the churches, it’s the life center of our area,” he said.

The center has a dining room, two big-screen televisions in separate rooms, exercise equipment, an arts and crafts room, and two pool tables, which are popular.

“It’s a real attractive thing for the men, and occasionally, a lady,” Scroggins said. “They do tournaments. Once a quarter, we have a game day for all ages, and we have bingo with prizes, a pool tournament with prizes and additional activities.”

He likes to play pool, but he described himself as “fair, not the best.”

The center also hosts monthly jam sessions, where people can bring instruments and play together.

Scroggins is adamant that seniors need to stay active.

“The medical profession recommends that old folks keep active and busy — mentally, physically and the works,” he said. “I believe in keeping things going.”

Scroggins’ favorite hobby is riding horses, and he has two Missouri Fox Trotters.

He’s led the trail ride at the annual National Championship Chuckwagon Races in Clinton over Labor Day for the past 23 years.

“I’m the trail-ride master for that group. The organization has trail rides for the people who come to the races. I organize and lead those trail rides …,” Scroggins said.

“Right now, the city of Clinton puts on a complimentary catfish supper on a Tuesday night of that week for the visitors who come in,” he said.

“I led a trail ride out of the hayfields from the Bar of Ranch into the Clinton City Park once during that event. Last year, we had 518 people follow me in on their horses,” Scroggins said. “Sometimes you’ve almost got a rodeo going when you’ve got that many horses — that’s horses and wagons. When you look back, you’ve got nothing but a wall of horses and wagons.”

He also leads three 6-mile trail rides during the week as entertainment, and each one takes about three hours, he said.

“People are amazed. I’m in real good health and active, and I do it on purpose,” he said. “I believe that’s the secret to staying in good health in old age.”

Scroggins, who grew up in Scotland, is accustomed to hard work. For decades, he was a cattle rancher.

“Like most everybody, you had to leave for a number of years to have a good job, for work,” he said.

Scroggins first attended Arkansas State Teachers College, now the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

“It was a good life,” he said. “I was studying office administrative work.”

However, he volunteered for the military and spent four years in the Navy during the Korean War.

“Really, I just wanted to go help with whatever I could do. It was kind of the patriotic thing to do,” he said.

Scroggins was a personnel officer and spent three years at the naval station in Jacksonville, Florida, and a year on the USS Deuel.

“As it turned out, when I checked in, the senior personnel guy checked out,” Scroggins said. “I ended up being in charge of the personnel office on that ship. I was just busy, busy; it was quite a challenge to take care of all that paperwork.”

While he was in the Navy, he married Mary Jones, who also grew up in Scotland.

“We had a brand-new baby at the end of my four-year tour. I had a good career going, and we were trying to decide whether to continue on and make a career out of the military or not. We decided we might be stationed way off somewhere, and our teenage girl might get a boyfriend and get married and stay there, so we came back to Arkansas, and we’re glad we did.”

Their daughter, Sherry Tanner, is retired from teaching seventh-grade math in Russellville.

“We came back home, and I went into the ranching business for the rest of my life. At times, I had 300 head of cattle,” he said. “It was a cow-calf operation, raising momma cows and selling the offspring.”

He started with registered polled Herefords, but he talked to a manager at the Winthrop Rockefeller farm on Petit Jean Mountain.

“They had started raising Salers cattle. After I talked to him, I switched over to Salers bulls with polled Hereford. … The offspring was a real fast-growing calf,” he said.

“It was almost constant [work], seems like. It’s a rewarding career, but you’ve got to like it,” he said of ranching.

Mary Scroggins worked as a secretary for the Farm Bureau in Clinton. The couple will celebrate their 67th anniversary on June 17.

“We’re about to set the record around here. We got married when I was 20; Mary was 19,” he said. “We’re still just as happy as we can be.

“We traveled a whole lot. My wife and I, for a number of years, almost every year or every two years, would make a trip out west — the Colorado, Wyoming, Montana tour. When I had registered polled Hereford cattle, we would meet people in meetings all over the country. Sometimes I’d visit those places. I got to know some of the people, so I’d drop by.”

Scroggins said he knows people in Scotland who stay home, “widows and others who are not getting out and socializing like I think would be good for them.”

He would be more than happy to show them the way to the community center.

“I think it’s good for us senior folks,” he said.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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