This article was first printed in the Dayton Daily News on October 5th 1998, and appears here with permission. Thanks to the National Corvette Museum for calling this to the yankeelady's attention.
Myron E. "Scottie" Scott, the former Dayton Daily News photographer and artist who founded the All-American Soap Box Derby and gave the Chevrolet Corvette sports car its name, died Sunday in Kettering. He was 91.
For 22 years, Mr. Scott served as an artist, photographer and art director with the Daily News. One day, in June 1933, he photographed six boys racing wooden contraptions down Big Hill Road in Oakwood. He got the idea then for the soap box derby. The first year the event attracted 330 participants and a crowd of 40,000 to Burkhardt Hill.
After the 1934 derby at Burkhardt Hill, Chevrolet decided to sponsor the event nationally and enticed Mr. Scott to be in charge of the race in Akron.
Mr. Scott was first inductee in a Soap Box Derby Hall of Fame in Akron in 1997.
Mr. Scott returned to the newspaper for two years in 1937 as art director, but Chevrolet wooed him away again as an assistant advertising manager.
Early in 1953, he was called into a special meeting of 15 executives. They were to find name for a new Chevrolet sports car then in the developmental stage. The company wanted a name that began with a "C" but wasn't the name of an animal.
Mr. Scott and the other executives reviewed 300 names, but Chevrolet general manager Edward Cole didn't like any of them. That night at home, Mr. Scott perused the C section of the dictionary and stopped at the definition of "corvette": "a speedy pursuit ship in the British navy." Mr. Scott suggested "Corvette" the next day, and Cole loved the name.
Ironically, Mr. Scott never owned a Corvette.
A funeral service was held Wednesday at 11 a.m. at Tobias Funeral Home, 5471 Far Hills Ave.
Copyright 1996 Barbara Spear
