Sixty years ago, when Autrilla Scott, then a resident of Hope, Arkansas, agreed to babysit a four-year-old boy named Billy, she had no idea the young toddler would grow up to become the 42nd president of the United States. “He was a cute little boy. I let him do whatever he wanted to,” recalls Scott, who moved to Long Beach with her husband, Olen, in 1955.
On Feb. 24, 1996, as President Clinton arrived at Long Beach’s Jackie Robinson Academy to support LBUSD’s newly-introduced school-uniform policy, Scott reconnected with “Billy.” “I didn’t know what to say to him. I almost fainted,” says Scott. (She did remind Clinton that his stepdad never paid her for her childcare services, however.)
Scott and her husband raised two children in Long Beach, where she worked as a rehabilitation nurse at the VA Hospital. Her 30 years at the hospital remain significant to her. “I got to help all kinds of people, from veterans that were mute to a hit man on the run from the law,” she recalls.
A tour of Scott’s home in the 6th District reveals wall after wall filled with awards, certificates, plaques and photos of family members and personal heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. A longtime city activist, Scott recognizes that we are still far from reconciling our nation’s challenges with poverty and racial injustice: “We need to learn to share and be fair.” // SCOTT JONES
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