Barbara Scott admits she is an eccentric thinker.
“Great, Mom, we’ll make millions,” was her son Jerry’s response to one of her latest ideas, she said.
While it probably won’t garner millions, Barbara and her new daughter-in-law, Rocksann, hope it will help raise at least $4,000.
They also hope it will honor Jerry’s memory, keep others warm and strengthen their mother/daughter-in-law bond.
Just three short months after Rocksann and Jerry R. Scott II were married, Jerry, 42, died.
He had melanoma and lived out his final days at Burke Hospice and Palliative Care Inc. in Valdese before his death on Nov. 28.
While Jerry was in and out of hospitals and hospice, Barbara saw a need that cancer patients have — keeping warm — and realized her daughter Robin McCree’s newfound hobby — knitting — could help.
“Robin had started knitting to help reduce the stress in her life,” Barbara said, “and she had all of these leftover Christmas gifts. I’m always having these crazy ideas. So we started Jerry’s Caps for Cancer.”
Before Jerry’s death, Barbara and Rocksann ran with Barbara’s idea and enlisted the help of volunteer knitters to make caps, scarves and gloves and give them to cancer patients plus make them available to sell.
Hospice House nursing assistant Sherry Story helped the Scotts design a logo and make labels for the knitted items.
Barbara and Rocksann are using the money from selling the knitted products to buy a blanket warmer and donate it to Burke Hospice and Palliative Care.
“Jerry touched so many lives at hospice,” Barbara said, “even on his last day.”
Jerry was a business partner in The Wheelchair Place and the company is helping order the blanket warmer at cost, which will be around $4,000.
“He was such a giver and always helping other people,” Barbara said. “We didn’t want him to just leave this earth and us grieve and people forget about him.”
Jerry became ill in the spring of 2011 after having a seizure.
Doctors found a mass on his brain and gave him a year to live.
He only lived seven months after the diagnosis.
While Jerry and Rocksann had been friends for 10 years and dated off and on eight of those 10 years before his death, with Barbara living in Florida, Barbara and Rocksann didn’t know each other that well.
That changed as they spent days and nights together by Jerry’s bedside.
“We found out a lot about each other,” Rocksann said, adding she got to hear lots of stories about Jerry’s childhood.
In fact it was Barbara who suggested they find the hospital chaplain to marry them in Jerry’s room on Aug. 24.
Jerry and Rocksann had plans to marry, she had the dress and they had taken care of getting the marriage license and rings, but the downturn in Jerry’s health changed their plans.
Barbara said the wedding was one of the sweetest she has witnessed.
Friends and hospital staff found a bouquet for Rocksann and she wore sweats instead of a dress.
Jerry was feeling and looking so bad he didn’t want any pictures taken that day, though.
Rocksann has since had professional pictures of her made in her dress. The photographer is taking an old picture of Jerry in a tux and fusing the two together.
In addition to his mother and wife, Jerry is survived by his father, Jerry R. Scott of Morganton, sisters Robin McCree and Kimberly Elmore and their husbands, half sisters Amanda Scott and Ashley Scott, two step sons and several nieces and nephews.
Children’s knitted caps are available for $5 and adult caps are $10 and scarves are $15.
Email sunnystateofmine@gmail.com to place an order.
Wells Fargo in downtown Morganton also is accepting donations to Jerry’s Caps for Cancer.
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