Scott Joseph Garvey

1969 - 2025

Scott Joseph Garvey, born August 21, 1969, in Westfield, Massachusetts, died on July 7, 2025, in his apartment in Putney, Vermont, after being shot multiple times by the Vermont State Police during a mental health crisis in which he reached out repeatedly for help. He was unarmed, alone, and had recently undergone major surgery.

Scott was an inspired musician, an exceptional poet, a voracious reader, a traveller and a dreamer. He was impossibly kind, quick to laugh, and slow to judge. He loved people with deep loyalty and quiet fierceness, and he lived as though beauty and art and music and human connection were all that mattered. He left behind songs and prayers, scribbled notebooks and poems on napkins, his beloved drums from around the world, and a notable generosity that was second to none. He also left behind those of us who loved him-and will never stop loving him.

Scott was full of questions. He questioned authority, yes, but also systems, stories, and how we came to believe what we believe. He was intensely curious and had outright disdain for the mundane. If you knew him, you likely had a conversation with him that made you stop and think-about art, about God, about loss, about music, about meaning. He had a way of asking you something that would stay with you long after he left the room.

Scott was a devoted son, a loyal brother, and a treasured uncle to his nieces and nephews. He lived with and cared for his mother Judy for much of his life, needing her assistance at times in negotiating the complexities of our modern, highly impersonal world that generally has little time for those living with mental health challenges. He was someone who never fully fit into this world, but never stopped trying to soften it anyway. Scott knew suffering, his own and others', and he carried it with the strange grace of someone who saw the cracks in everything and still believed there might be light.

Scott lived, loved and played music in Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Austin, New Orleans, and Memphis. He played drums in many bands, spanning all musical styles, always seeking musical authenticity: Rated X, Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags, Flea Circus, Aunt Beanie's First Prize Beets, and many others. He co-starred in the underground cult film "I was a Teenage Serial Killer," and he wrote dozens upon dozens of songs and poems exploring existential angst, unrequited love, and ultimately, his relationship with his own mental health. A friend noted that Scott was "a musician's musician. He was the real thing."

Always surrounded by music and misfits, by found family and vinyl records and bad coffee and his American Spirit cigarettes. He burned bright. He always gave more than he had, preferring to spend most of his meager monthly Social Security disability checks on socks and sleeping bags and gloves for the homeless. His last request when he left Memphis in June, 2025--barely able to walk, suffering from debilitating anxiety--was for his sister to buy packages of clean socks to distribute at the local homeless shelter, which she promptly did.

In 2024, Scott wrote and composed "Still Waters," expressing his yearning to never return to the Lakeside Psychiatric Hospital, where he was horribly abused and molested after seeking mental health help:

"I'd rather stay home

than go to the Lakeside

I prefer oceans and rivers instead

The still waters remind me of

unfulfilled potential

unlike

the running and vastness of my dreams."

The circumstances of Scott's death were not inevitable. They were a failure of those to whom he reached out for help to follow the policies meant to safeguard those suffering a mental health crisis, and a failure of the medical establishment to take the time to listen to patients who are suffering mental health pain, and of our collective lack of will to protect our most vulnerable community members from neglect and outright abuse in an absolutely and completely failed national mental health system.

Scott is survived by his mother Judy; sister Kara and husband Brian; brother Shawn and wife Kimberly; and beloved nieces and nephews: Skyler, Evan, Emma and Zeb; his aunt and uncle Sherrie and Bill Sperry, who brought him to a deep belief in the love of Jesus; his rescue dog Vinnie; and his many friends and chosen family around the country.

Scott's large group of family and friends gathered for a powerful, loving, and heartfelt celebration of his songs, poetry, and wisdom at Pine Hill Cemetery in Westfield, Massachusetts, on July 21, 2025. He is buried next to his beloved grandfather, Metlei Korostynski and beloved uncle, Glenn Korostynski; and with the remains of his faithful dogs Mari and Lulu.

Though his family is wrecked by grief, we will not let Scott be reduced to the worst day of his life. Like all of those suffering from mental health challenges, he was infinitely more than his diagnosis. He was a whole person whose life and spirit will be honored.

Scott's family asks that contributions be made to a GoFundMe that will help defray the unexpected costs of his cremation, burial, cleanup of the horrifying scene left behind by Vermont State Troopers, and the family's ongoing efforts to reform the state's mental health and victim assistance programs: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-mama-garvey-after-tragedy.

As Scott himself would end every one of the thousands of postcards, letters, and thoughtful gifts he sent to friends and family all over the country:

"Be Well.

Dream Harder.

I love you."