Joe Don and Elizabeth Odean (Byrd) Scott

Joe Don and Odean Scott were among Plainview’s best-known and most active citizens from the late 1930s through the rest of the century and beyond.

Joe Don Scott was born in 1911 in his parents’ home near the East Texas town of Murchison. After graduating from Athens High School in 1928, he went to work at the Athens National Bank. In 1932 he received a phone call inviting him to join a new bank being organized in the Panhandle. He got on a train and, a few minutes after arriving, was at work as a teller at the Plainview State Bank, which later became the City National Bank. Joe Don was named a director in 1935 and eventually the bank’s president. For more than 50 years, he was at the door to meet every customer of the bank.

Odean Byrd was born in 1911 in Chelsea, Oklahoma to a family in the Cherokee Nation — shortly after Oklahoma became a state, so she was not officially included on the Cherokee tribal rolls. She graduated from Cisco (Texas) High School. In 1936 she moved to Plainview to work as a bookkeeper in her uncle’s local business and met Joe Don. They married in 1937 and eventually had a daughter, a granddaughter, and two great-grandchildren. Friends remember Odean, who died in 2004, as being tiny in stature — not quite five feet tall — but having an enormous heart.

Both of the Scotts were active in the community, supporting the United Way and the Salvation Army, among other causes. Joe Don has been a member of the Lion’s Club since 1933 and has served as secretary, treasurer, and president. He was twice president of the Chamber of Commerce, in 1944 and 1956, and was named Plainview’s Man of the Year in 1981. Both Joe Don and Odean were founding members of the Plainview Country Club.

Both were active members of the First United Methodist Church for over 75 years and helped organize the Hooten-Dean Sunday School class. Joe Don served the church as a steward, on the finance committee and the board, and as its lay treasurer. Odean was a member of the United Methodist Women and was famous in the church bake sale for her “Chocolate Coca-Cola Cake.”

Odean was a Lady Lion, an officer of the Plainview Federated Women’s Club and the Beta Delphian Society, and a member of the Knife and Fork Club and the Turf Turners Garden Club. She helped organize Plainview’s first pancake breakfast at the old City Auditorium, an event that became the annual Lion’s Club pancake breakfast. She was on the Art Selection Committee for Palo Duro Canyon Pioneer Amphitheatre and helped with the local art show at the Ollie Liner Center for many years.

An avid golfer and dedicated outdoorsman, Joe Don won numerous fishing tournaments and trophies, and Odean was one of his best fishing partners. For more than 60 years they entertained the Plainview Bass Club at their house on Possum Kingdom Lake. Joe Don was area chairman of Ducks Unlimited, and he helped make Plainview a hunters’ destination — and restore an important native wildlife population — by founding Pheasants Unlimited in 1976. He was named Texas Sportsman of the Year by the Texas Outdoor Writers Association in 1980 and Wildlife Conservationist of the Year by the Area 1 Soil Conservation District in 1980.