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hat’s tough is calling Sam

Scott to see how he feels

about lunch on Friday and

then remembering that, along with

Sam, the number is out of service. It

would be good if a friend could just die

all at once, but with close friends, it

takes a while. It will soon be a year

since Sam died, and I’m only now be-

ginning to believe it.

We were friends for 55 years—

since we were History majors at Mill-

saps College and took our oral compre-

hensive exams together. Sam said that

they gave orals to pairs in case one

student passed out from fright.

After graduation, Sam went to law

school at Ole Miss and got married,

and I became a Navy officer and did-

n’t. Sam embarked on a distinguished

legal career and I got under way with

a resume that epitomized Attention

Deficit Disorder.

Time passed. I married. Sam and

I decided to form a sports car racing

team and call it Bolus & Snopes. We

later both divorced and ultimately re-

married.

Sam practiced law for more than a

half-century. He was my attorney, my

brother’s attorney, and my late

mother’s attorney. He was the attor-

ney for a number of my business un-

dertakings and was the embodiment

of intelligence and calm when I often

wasn’t.

After Hurricane Katrina, I moved

to Jackson, Mississippi, where Sam

was the in-house counsel for Southern

Farm Bureau Insurance. In close prox-

imity with each other for the first time

since our racing days, we often

lunched at Ruth’s Chris’ Steak House

on Fridays.

Sam’s drink was a vodka martini

on the rocks, Grey Goose with three

olives. Mine was Acrobat, a California

sauvignon blanc. Shrimp etouffe was

the favored entree. Our lunches were

golden times, hours that allowed Sam

to display his superb talents as a sto-

ryteller and his equally superlative

skills as an observer and interpreter

of human nature.

Sam grew up on a farm in what we

Mississippians call the Delta. Cotton

country. His dad was in the insurance

business but also farmed. Outlanders

would call him a planter. Sam liked

nothing better than telling stories

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Fall 2016 46

– William Jeanes

W

Bolus & Snopes rogues’ gallery [

left to right

]: William Jeanes, Bob Boileau, Sam Scott

and driver Bob Mitchell. The car was a GT350 Hertz, 6S1828.

1937-2015