Two weeks ago, I received the following message from Preston Woolfolk, co-president of DOCUmation in San Antonio, Texas.
“With a heavy heart, we share the passing of our grandmother, Nancy Scantland. For those newer to DOCUmation in the last few years, Nancy and Lou are our grandparents and the founders of the company. Prior to the COVID era, you would frequently see Nancy around the Lockhill office chatting with our team members or hanging her artwork along the hallways. After an extremely tough five-year battle with cancer, Nancy passed peacefully on Tuesday, October 31st.
Although the family is saddened by her passing, we are thankful for the amazing legacy she has left behind. She is no longer suffering and is now at peace with her Heavenly Father. As you walk around our Lockhill office, our hope is that her artwork will spark the memory of her lively, generous spirit and her tenderness toward each one of our DOCUmation family.”
Carol and I have been privileged to know Nancy for many years. I first met her husband Lou, founder of DOCUmation in the 1982-1984 NOMDA (National Office Machine Dealer) era and for several years we would meet in Hannover Germany at the Hannover Fair. It is now called CEBIT. Lou has an amazing story. He has been a CDA member for at least four decades. Carol has come to know many of the wives of CDA members. She first met Nancy at a CDA meeting in Puerto Rico. In our personal experience, she was an amazing, bright, fun-loving person whose smile said everything. We will never forget her.
Who was Nancy Carol Scantland? She was a loving wife for 66 years. She brought two sons into this life and was a grandmother of seven and a great-grandmother of eleven.
Nancy was born on July 8, 1938, in Mayfield, Kentucky, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where she met the love of her life Louis L. Scantland. They on August 2, 1955. They lived the last 33 years in San Antonio, Texas, with all their immediate family nearby. Over a period of years, we learned that Nancy had a deep and abiding faith. It was consistent and supportive of what Lou liked to do in the way of charity. It was obvious Nancy was especially supportive regarding Scantland’s charity.
In 2009, Lou approached us about providing an endowment in the name of Chester Carlson, the inventor of the first plain-paper copier, the Xerox 914. Xerox was celebrating the 50th Anniversary of his invention. Lou thought our industry should honor Carlson because his invention made many dealers wealthy. He reached out to us because he was unaware of what was involved in creating an endowment for an individual at a university. In this case, it was Cal Tech. We made the arrangements and raised $150,000 at our 24th Annual Awards & Charities Dinner to provide a scholarship anyone in the copier industry could apply for.
It was easy to discern that Nancy was very much in touch with a charity that honored an individual who made a significant contribution to our industry while helping a young person from our industry get a scholarship to a first-class university.
That was an event that we will long remember, and we are so very grateful to the Scantlands for their great sense of charitable giving. May God bless Nancy and welcome her home.
We are not done here, so stay tuned. We will have much more to say next year about Nancy Scantland.
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