Centenarian Once Fought Harry S., and Gave ‘im Hell

Ira Scott says he has been around the world three times, has had his horse shot out from under him and hopes to live to be 112 and be shot by a jealous husband.

But conversations with Scott, who celebrated his 100th birthday Saturday, inevitably turn to the day that he says he gave a president-to-be, Harry S. Truman, a swift kick on a Joplin, Mo., street.

“It was right at the start of the war--World War I,” Scott said after his birthday party at Valley View Retirement Hotel in Garden Grove. “He (Truman) was a soldier in the militia. A fire had broken out in a restaurant. He pushed my girl down. He just got in my way.

“I took a whomp at him and kicked him under the chin,” he said. Some decades later, Scott said he “didn’t vote for him.”

The birthday congratulations that Scott received included a letter from another president, Ronald Reagan. Gov. George Deukmejian and Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates also sent congratulations, and a host of friends turned out in Scott’s honor.

Besides traveling the globe when he worked for an Oakland steamship company, Scott said, he has worked as a zinc and lead miner in Joplin and on the dry docks in Oakland.

When he was about 30, Scott served two terms as a county sheriff in Texas.

“I didn’t particularly like it,” he said. “There was too much trouble on the border at that time.”

“I was going after a guy,” Scott recalled, “and he shot me through the foot and killed my horse.” Scott said he “got another horse” and captured the fugitive.