Oral History: Scotty Loucks — April, 2006

Summary:

Scotty Loucks was interviewed by Julie Sullivan in April, 2006. Scotty was a trail breaker in her role as an independent insurance broker–she was both the first woman in the Lafayette area to own her own agency and also the first to be president of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce. She came to the area after finishing high school in Chowchilla in 1936, then she began selling insurance in 1948. In 1974 she opened her own agency. She was an active member of the business community for over 60 years.

Oral History:

The first woman in the Lafayette area to open her own independent insurance business, first woman president of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, charter member of the women’s insurance association, the Contra Costa Grandmother’s Club, and a member of Soroptomists, Scotty Loucks has never fit a traditional mold.

“My father was very independent,” she remembers. “My sister and I were just as equal as the boys. We were never made to feel we weren’t just as good.” Her father, a surveyor, built the town of Chowchilla. “It dates officially from 1912,” she explains. “They have a museum there with my family things. My mother opened a restaurant there.”

Born Adeline McIsaac, she got the nickname Scotty in high school. “I kept the name because it made people think I was a man. A couple of times people didn’t want to do business with me, because I was a woman. In the 1950’s it was rough for women in the insurance business. My voice has always been low, so even when they were talking to me on the phone, they weren’t sure if I was a man or a woman.”

In high school Scotty was valedictorian and class president. After graduation, she came to Berkeley to attend Armstrong Business College. “Back in those years there weren’t too many openings for women, but I knew I wasn’t going to be a clerk,” she says. “In 1936 I graduated from high school, started college and got married the first time.” Her son, Bob Nielson, was born in 1938.

“My first job in the insurance field was with Travelers Insurance in San Francisco. I was a secretary to two brokers. Back in those days you didn’t even get a job if you were married, let alone going to have a baby. I worked until two weeks before my son was born. My sister showed up in my place and said I’d had a nervous breakdown. That was acceptable. I got a very nice letter of recommendation.”

Scotty relates an anecdote that sums up her attitude. “My husband was a golfer. During World War II we were living in Wisconsin, where he belonged to a country club, but he didn’t believe women should golf. I took the clubs and told the pro to teach me. He said, ‘I can’t do that. Your husband will kill me.’ I said, ‘He’s not my husband any more, I’m a member and you’re going to teach me.’ I took ten lessons and started playing. Women weren’t allowed on the course a lot of the time, but with my first name I could call in and get a tee time. I’d get there, and they’d say I couldn’t play. I told them I might not beat the men, but I wouldn’t hold them up. Most times I ended up on the course.”

Scotty and her husband were divorced, and she returned to the Bay Area. She married Dick Pencovic in 1947, and the couple moved to Lafayette in 1949. She was pregnant with their daughter, and they had bought a lot where they planned to build. They also bought a house they intended to turn into a rental. Her husband died of a heart attack at age 36, and their daughter Terri was born. Scotty sold the lot and moved into the rental, where she has lived ever since.

“I had gone to work for an insurance broker in Montclair and got my license in 1948,” she remembers. “I sold everything except life insurance. In 1952, I went to work for Westlund Insurance Brokerage in Lafayette, and that’s how I got involved in the Chamber of Commerce. It had just organized in 1947, and Art Westlund was one of the charter members. There weren’t very many women in the Chamber back then. I did a lot of their letters for them. They used to meet at Jim Boyd’s Dunkin’ Donuts and bring me their notes written on napkins.”

When Art retired from the insurance business, Scotty intended to work for another broker. “I rented an office near where Jack In the Box is today. I paid the deposit, then he decided not to go into business. That was 1974. I asked a woman who had retired from Westlund to come to work for me. I didn’t buy an existing agency out; I opened on my own. I figured we’d work for three years, and if it wasn’t successful give it up. I knew most of the companies from being in the business since 1948, and I knew a lot of the people at Royal Insurance. They were in favor of my doing this, and said they’d help me.

“Royal made me an agent, and I got several other big companies including Hartford and Aetna. I was in business until I sold in 1992. I stayed on afterwards until around 1996. I usually worked from eight in the morning till eight at night, weekends, too. I helped a couple of women agents get their own offices started. I belonged to the Contra Costa County Independent Insurance Agents’ Association. I used to be the only woman at our golf tournaments, but there are a lot of women now.

“Way back in the 50’s I went to Sacramento when Edmund Brown was governor to fight for the Equal Pay Equal Rights Bill,” she adds. Scotty was active in Soroptomists and helped charter a women’s insurance association in 1961. “I also helped charter the Contra Costa Grandmothers’ Club,” she adds proudly. She has two grandsons and four great grandchildren.

“I liked the insurance business, and I still enjoy it. I like helping people. I don’t solicit business now, but I help take care of customers who have a problem. I work for a young broker who wanted to get started.”

Scotty married James Loucks in 1961. He passed away in 1994 at age 72. “I was part of the Chamber when Lafayette became a city,” she remembers. “John Kennedy of Kennedy and Westlund Brokers worked very hard for that. I thought Lafayette was a good, growing town. They wanted to keep it suburban with no high rises like Walnut Creek. The telephone number for the new city was 1968, the year we became a city. Lafayette was smaller then. Mt. Diablo Boulevard was so full of gaudy signs it detracted from our boulevard. Dr. Clifford Feiler worked hard to get rid of them. Then for a while we were overrun with service stations and banks. It seemed like that was all we had. We have more variety of businesses now.

“I remember the old El Nido Rancho restaurant and old Petar’s. When I first moved here, they called that section of Mt. Diablo ‘The Strip.’ We had a heliport here then. There was a restaurant called the Whirlybird Inn on the hill near the heliport, where the Hillside Motel is now. They had a tree called the ‘hanging tree,’ where you turned to go up the hill. (Legend hinted the tree was used for hangings in the early days, but it was actually planted in 1920 by Milton Shreve, son of merchant Benjamin Shreve. The new Veterans Hall occupies the spot where it used to stand.)

“When we first got a traffic light at the corner of Pleasant Hill Road and Mt. Diablo, where Rick’s Drive-In used to be, one of my neighbors and I kidded that we were really growing. I said, ‘Someday we’re going to have a motel there, too.’ (current site of the Park Hotel)

“My daughter has worked in government for nearly thirty years. She says she takes after me. Her field, wildlife biology and animal nutrition, used to be practically all men, but today there are a lot more women involved.

“My husband’s great grandfather, George D. Loucks, donated land in 1903 for the Pacheco Cemetery. His family owned the biggest share of Pacheco. My husband, James, his sister, her husband, and I have a marker there. My daughter says she wants her marker next to mine. She says she wants them to put ‘Scotty’s Daughter’ on hers, so people will know who she was.”

Excerpted from “Voices of Lafayette” by Julie Sullivan. This book is available for purchase in the History Room.