Doris Jean Adams Scott, 72, worked in accounting for an electronics firm
She had a passion for learning and took college courses.
DORIS JEAN ADAMS Scott loved learning.
Beyond her high school diploma, she never earned another scholastic degree, but the information she accumulated by taking college courses and doing her own extensive research gave her the learning a doctoral candidate might envy.
A slight exaggeration perhaps, but Doris had an insatiable need to learn all she could about a vast variety of subjects. And she was always willing to share her knowledge.
If you ever wondered about a piece of local history or genealogy or whatever happened to so-and-so, Doris would be ready. "Let me look it up," she would say.
She would head for the library or City Hall to prowl among the records and documents. With the advent of computers, she would use the Internet. She invariably turned up the information she was looking for, and often committed it to writing.
"She was always writing," said her daughter, Valerie N. Bass. "She was a scholar."
Doris left her family with a formidable cache of writings when she died Aug. 26 at the age of 72. In addition to what any college would call research papers, there was fiction, including novels and stories.
They were written in longhand with blue pens. The fiction, she would show to family members to get some feedback.
"We weren't editors, but we would sometimes suggest plot changes or changes in characters," her daughter said. "She never tried to get anything published."
The other papers were mostly in response to people seeking information for scholarly reports or personal uses, and Doris wasn't interested in getting any credit for her assistance.
The topics she researched ranged from the history and status of Native Americans in her native Florida to the gentrification of Philadelphia neighborhoods and many other subjects that piqued her interest.
Doris Scott, who worked in accounting for the James G. Biddle Co., distributors of electronic components, died after a battle with breast cancer. She lived in North Philadelphia.
While working full-time, Doris took courses in accounting at La Salle University, and engineering and electronics at Drexel University, her curiosity in those fields piqued by the work her company was doing.
She also found time to be the lead volunteer for the Friends of the Free Library at the Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Regional Library, coordinating book donations and weekly book sales.
Doris not only enjoyed providing free information to those who needed it, she was always ready to use her knowledge of how society works to help people who needed to know how to use the system for personal problems.
She would also use her experience as a practical nurse in her youth to give advice on medical problems.
"She loved helping people," Valerie said. "After she died, we got so many messages saying, 'Your mother did this for me, or your mother did that for me.' "
Doris was popular in her neighborhood, especially among the children. She would take them to museums, Super Sunday, Penn's Landing and other fun places. The children clamored to go because they knew Miss Doris would show them a good educational time.
She was also popular because she freely shared plants and plant cuttings from her own well-kept garden.
Doris was born in Tallahassee, Fla., one of the 10 children of Allie Mae and Peter Mann. Always precocious, she learned to read at the age of 3. She graduated from Lincoln High School in Tallahassee before migrating to Philadelphia with her mother; brother, John Lee; and sister, Dorothy Mae.
She married Fred R. Scott, a construction worker, on her birthday, June 10, 1970.
"She was very outgoing and talkative, and her husband was just the opposite," her daughter said.
Besides her husband and daughter, Doris is survived by a son, Stefan A. Mann; two other daughters, Felicia Adams and Candace Adams; a brother, Antonio Mann; and three grandchildren.
Services: Memorial service was held Monday at the Ivy Hill Cemetery Chapel.