I can still hear Grandpa Joe (as I called him) playing his bass guitar, and from the other room Vertie calling out, “Joe, put it up!” We’d all be at the table laughing as he did just that. The dining room table was always long – so long it filled the room – because Joe and Vertie’s hearts made room for everyone. Their home welcomed young people from foster care, direct family and generations before and after mine. The Scotts’ house was, and will always be, a home.
Joe loved to joke about the motor home he bought, or the Lincoln he bought Vertie at a price he “couldn’t pass up.” But everything he did was about the household – making sure we had, as he’d say, “all the things we need and just some of the things we would want.” I remember earning the grades and courage to ask to play my Super Nintendo. He kept his word. We had what we needed, and sometimes what we wanted – and we had fun.
Even long after I was grown, Joe and Vertie never stopped being parents to so many. Those memories will never leave us.
Shawn Gregory is a 2003 graduate of Lanphier High School and serves as the Ward 2 alderman on the Springfield City Council. He was one of many foster kids who lived with Joe and Vertie Scott over the years and he now has four children of his own, three daughters and a son.
This article appears in January 1-7, 2026.
