Tailored for success

KEN RUDOLPH SCOTT is a battle-scarred master of life’s obstacle course. At age four, Scott was permanently injured after being hurled down a flight of 42 stairs by an angry classmate. Today, 54 years later, he stands tall, dedicating his life to learning and teaching others how to successfully ascend to the top of their life’s 42-step staircase. Scott lost his mother at age two. He and his brother were forced to call the orphanage home, the place to which Scott credits his eventual success. According to one of the children who witnessed the staircase incident at the Belmont orphanage, the four-year-old Scott tumbled down the stairs, instantly got up, began to recite Psalm 23 and then spoke in “tongues” before collapsing. “The next thing I knew is that I was in the children’s ward of the Port-of-Spain General Hospital,” said the permanently jovial Scott.

Scott spent three years of his life on that hospital ward after having suffered a badly broken hip bone which left him with a right leg which was eight inches shorter than the other. He went on to recount the excruciating pain which he experienced while walking very short distances. “I would walk a few feet and when I tell you pain! I used to fall down all the time.” Following successful surgery to reduce the disparity in his legs, from eight inches to three, Scott was discharged. The reception at the orphanage was not pleasant. “Boy! The children used to laugh at me and tap me up. They called me ‘Broko’. At times I sat and asked God why me, why did this have to happen to me,” lamented Scott. After being ranked third in his examinations he was asked if he wished to attend Belmont Intermediate Boys Secondary. He decided not to attend, opting to learn a trade instead. Scott’s decision was greeted with ridicule. “People laughed, they tried to discourage me, ‘boy Broko, how you go sew, how you go reach the peddle’. People try to break you down but you must always stay strong!”

According to the well-known tailor, the orphanage taught him the discipline needed to stay focussed on learning his trade. Scott worked for two years, earning a wage of $2 a week. After getting a job which paid a bit more Scott decided to live on his own and began paying a rent of $5 a week for a room at a house on the Eastern Main Road, Laventille. He established his own tailoring business in 1975 and has been making a living with this skill ever since. “When I got a little money in my hand, I became a party man, making a new pants and shirts for every party, dancing to James Brown,” declared Scott whose distinct limp seemed to disappear as he showed that age did not deplete his dancing skill. One night, while on his way from a party, a policeman along with a woman who was bleeding from her leg approached Scott. According to Scott, “the policeman pointed and said, ‘look the man! He have on the same clothes’!” A man wearing similar clothing had raped the woman; the attribute which distinguished Scott from the rapist was his limp. The limp which had caused him pain, the limp which caused him to be ridiculed as a child, the limp which he wished he could have removed had rescued him from the hands of the law. Scott recalls, “I went home and fell on the floor thanking God and asking for forgiveness. Partying done, I never went to a party since. Everything I do now is for God.”