Shirley Jean Scott Roth , nee Myers, 98, of Traverse City, peacefully passed from this life to the next on June 19, 2024 at Orchard Creek Assisted Living. Her daughters, Dona Scott Laskey and Claudia Scott Pavloff were privileged to be at her bedside.
Born on August 3, 1925 in Utica, Missouri to the late Hiram Keith Myers and Helena May (Sherman) Myers Shirley and her family moved to Detroit when she was five where her father could take advantage of the opportunities in the automobile industry.
She had a remarkable mezzo soprano voice which was trained at the Detroit Conservatory of Music. The Director, Vernelle Rohrer Peppard, remarked that Shirley had the purest High C and the greatest vocal range of any mezzo soprano she had ever taught. Although she was able to use her vocal talents in summer stock theater and in New York it was the era of World War II so she married her high school sweetheart, Donald Hill Scott (Topper), before he was shipped out to the South Pacific. As part of the Greatest Generation during the war Shirley went to work at the Chrysler plant in Highland Park where they were making tanks for the war effort.
