The Shadow
Randolph “Randy” Scott was the principal of Alleghany County High School in 1983 when Clifton Forge City Schools consolidated with Alleghany County Public Schools.
Scott recalled, “George Goode was the Mayor of Clifton Forge, and his daughter, Dana, was like a shining star the year consolidation took place.”
He recalled that prior to the merging of Alleghany County High School with Clifton Forge High School, there had been worries that the two student bodies would not get along and that fights might break out between the students.
“Dana helped bond the two groups together, and the student body elected her as the AHS Homecoming Queen,” Scott remembered.
He continued, “We were fortunate to have Dr. Pace as Superintendent, and he had a plan to merge the schools.”
The Clifton Forge High School Mountaineers left behind the school’s green and gold colors, and Alleghany County High School dropped its Colts mascot to adopt the Mountaineers as Alleghany High School’s mascot.
Scott reminisced, “Everybody went about it methodically, and everything worked out because of the way we went about it.”
He had replaced Charlie Walker as principal of ACHS during the summer of 1980 following Walker’s resignation to take a job with Westvaco.
The ACHS Colts’ basketball team won the first Blue Ridge District Tournament in the school’s 18-year-history in 1981, and Scott, an aficionado of basketball, got off to a good start during his first year.
Scott graduated from Fieldale Collinsville High School in 1970, attended Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville where he earned his associate degree in business and graduated from William & Mary College in 1976 where he earned a bachelor’s of arts degree in business.
Before being hired as principal of ACHS, he taught math at Laurel Park High School for two years and served as an assistant principal at Hayden Junior High School in Franklin City, Va. for a year before moving to Radford to serve as an assistant principal at Radford High School from 1978-1980.
After consolidation took place in 1983, Scott continued to serve as principal of Alleghany High School till 1991 when he left to become principal of Stuarts Draft High School.
He recalled, “After serving as principal at Stuarts Draft High School from 1991 till 1993, I decided to leave the field of education and go into business.”
“I began a design and new landscaping business at Smith Mountain Lake in 1993,” he noted.
He named his company TLC Farms, Inc., and his business was located on a farm.
Scott said, “I took real estate courses toward completing the requirements for a real estate broker’s license, and I transitioned into real estate in 2000.”
He continues as a realtor, and Smith Mountain Realty, LLC is his company’s name.
“I’ve been in real estate since 2000, but I took the opportunity during the recession in 2009 to be the primary caregiver to my mother,” Scott related.
He lived with his mother in Martinsville till she passed away in 2013, and a year later, he and Janice Lackey, one of his high school classmates who had retired as an elementary school educator, were married on July 8, 2014.
Ironically, during their high school years, the couple never dated and were not even friends.”
Janice Lackey Scott and Randy attended a surprise retirement party in Covington for Jimmy Smith who had served as varsity basketball coach following the 1981 championship season at ACHS.
Much to Randy’s pleasure while serving at AHS, Smith brought home several basketball championship trophies after consolidation in 1983 and led the AHS Mountaineers to its first state tournament appearance before he retired.
In 2017, Scott bought his first investment house in the Martinsville area, and he stripped the inside, doing all of the work himself. Then he hired a contractor to come in and refurbish the entire house.
He revealed, “I do all of the manual labor in stripping houses, and then I hire contractors to come in and put it back.”
He has been “flipping houses” since 2017, and he has completed four. Also, he owns two beach houses in Myrtle Beach that he rents by the week.
Both of his beach houses are equipped with smart cameras, thermostats and locks, ones he has electronic control of to remotely change the combinations.
One of his beach houses has six bedrooms and three baths, and the other one has two bedrooms and two baths.
Randy said that it makes him feel good to restore a house to provide for a family, and he believes that there is a correlation between providing guidance for students and providing dwellings for families.
He rents his beach houses via VRBO on a weekly basis, and he noted that he has avoided the problem of having to deal with squatters or delinquent renters due to his security devices and weekly rental practice he has maintained rather than renting by the month.
As for his pursuit of recreation, Randy rides his bicycle which he admits is more for physical conditioning than for pleasure, and he is teaching himself to play golf.
