Mrs. Lucille Scott

1913 - 2012

It's as if it was a single word, and saying it brought an explosion of memories; clinking glasses, the low hum of conversation - and those pies. Those pies.

Lucille and Otley's. For a half century, going back before the interstate and the malls and the explosion of fast food joints, everyone went to the family restaurant with powder blue walls.

In 1998, after 63 years in business, the family shut the place down. The building lives on as the city's senior center.

Marie Lucille Tuck Scott died Tuesday at 98 at Bethesda Memorial Hospital. She'd survived her husband, Otley Webb Scott, by a decade.

Born in 1913 in Loganville, Ga., near Atlanta, she'd moved to Boynton Beach her senior year of high school and met Otley, who'd come earlier from North Florida.

The couple started their first place, a pie shop, right next to Briny Breezes in 1936.

Customer demand led them to begin serving meals. In a year the five-seat restaurant had moved next door to a place with 50.
World War II briefly shut them down, but they reopened in 1945 as "the Snack Shack."

It later moved to the Boynton Beach Casino, a resort in Ocean Ridge where Oceanfront Park now stands.

Lucille and Otley's, at 1021 Federal Highway, opened in 1948.

"It was a big place. Four hundred seats," daughter Julie Kemp said Wednesday. "People came from Jupiter and Miami. They came from far and wide. The lines would wrap around the restaurant."

A favorite was "chicken shortcake," creamed chicken and gravy over a homemade biscuit. And cinnamon rolls to die for.
And the pies. Lemon was tops, with its "mile-high" meringue. Coconut. Apple. Pecan. Chocolate. Strawberry shortcake.

Otley worked the kitchen. Lucille baked pies and worked the dining room.

The Scotts retired in 1978, handing over the operation to son Jerry. He retired two years later and went on an around-the-world sailing trip, but later vanished at sea.

His son Steve ran the restaurant briefly, but couldn't keep up with the big chains.

Lucille and Otley's served its last lemon meringue pie June 14, 1998.

"`You'd think somebody had died, people are so sad,' Lucille said that night.

Two months later, the city voted to buy the 10,000-square-foot building with a $569,000 federal grant and renovate it. It now hosts scores of seniors every day.

"They were very happy to work with the city in making the building available," city recreation and parks director Wally Majors said Wednesday.

"It was not enough money," Julie Kemp said. "It was a steal for the city."

In recent years, even as Lucille's health failed, she could be seen at city commission meetings with her caregiver, Carole Volkman, who railed at commissioners considering cutting hours at the senior center. That building still was part of her.

Carole had come down in the winter of 1968 from chilly Canada and dropped into the place. She asked if Lucille was hiring.

"She didn't take a reference or anything. She said, 'Grab a uniform. You start at 3:30.' All I could think was I hadn't been to the beach yet. We never knew that we would end up together like we have."

Carole took other jobs after the restaurant closed. After Otley died in 2002 of natural causes at age 89, his daughter asked Carole to work with Lucille.

Attorney and author Harvey Oyer, past president of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County and son of Boynton Beach pioneer Harvey Oyer, Jr., recalls growing up with Lucille and Otley's. He remembers a little thing that spoke volumes.

"There were fresh cut roses on the table every day. They lived across the street from the restaurant and Lucille had a beautiful rose garden. She grew those roses with care."

Marie Lucille Scott is survived by daughters Julie Kemp of Boynton Beach and Celia Weatherhead of Moreland Hills, Ohio; two grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. A "celebration of life" will be held at the Ocean Club of Florida in Ocean Ridge; the date is pending.