Leslie Richelle Scott, a Jill-of-all-trades who had a Ph.D. in philosophy and a sense of humor that saw her through the many twists of her life, died last month at her home in Inverness. She was 71 years old.
During her nearly two decades in West Marin, Leslie worked as a school bus driver, a sign maker and a handywoman. She also transitioned from male to female, a difficult but rewarding culmination to a life she described in her 2016 book, “Outside-In, Inside Out: A Transgender Journey.”
As a child, Leslie had grown up feeling out of place and unsupported, but she created a new family in West Marin. Nancy Hemmingway, who works part-time at the Inverness Library, said that not long ago, Leslie asked if she and another librarian would be her sisters—part of her chosen family.
Leslie was “always all in with the community, regardless of what was going on around her,” said Nickla Beemsterboer Witte, who knew Leslie from weekly coffee klatches they attended at the library. “She felt at home here. I think she made a connection with people she really loved and who loved her without judgment.”
Leslie was born Richard Scott Pflug in 1949. Her mother, Alma Scott, and father, Raymond Pflug, met as high schoolers in Berkeley, Mich. Her mother worked as a reporter for two local papers before marrying Leslie’s father, who joined the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. They would go on to have three children: Leslie and her two brothers, John and Charles.
Leslie grew up in Woodside, Calif., and as a young child preferred spending time with girls. She was fascinated by dolls and the allure of dress-up, but her parents did not approve of such play. Within the confines of her childhood home, Leslie felt there was no safe space to explore her interest in femininity.
Leslie attended what was then San Francisco State College, where she wrote that her life devolved into a “half-hearted and hapless quest for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” She left after a year and a half due to poor academic performance.
Finding herself at loose ends, Leslie began to draw. She “was a real artist, and she knew a lot about color and form—she had a lot of skills,” said her friend Margo Wing, an Inverness resident whom Leslie often chauffeured.
In 1971, Leslie came out with her own comic book, “Funnybook.” A blog praised the book’s successful female characters and commented that it was a pity the author had stopped publishing, writing, “America can always use another voice challenging the status quo of mainstream society.”
Leslie had a sharp eye for words as well as visual style; after moving to West Marin, she occasionally wrote letters and fiction for the Light and sent emails with eagle-eyed corrections.
Leslie joined the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in 1976, traveling up and down the length of California. She stayed with the faire for four years, taking on every role from security guard to outhouse cleaner, and edited her crew’s bi-annual satirical magazine, The Buck & Mug.
Later, after a brief fling with a nurse, she was inspired to sign up for an E.M.T. course and became an ambulance driver.
But the E.M.T. course also inspired her to take more classes, and after a burst of academic success Leslie decided at age 31 to return to school. Back at S.F.S.U., she made the Dean’s list. She eventually finished her bachelor’s degree at California State University, Fresno, where she met a woman named Deborah in a German class to whom she would be married for nine years.
Feeling she still had more to learn, Leslie went on to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Riverside. But after a brief teaching stint out East, she decided that academia was not for her. She divorced and moved to Portland and Seattle before settling in West Marin, where she opened a sign-making business.
By the time she arrived in West Marin, Leslie had changed her name from Richard Scott Pflug to Scott Leslie, a Scottish clan name she inherited from her maternal grandfather, Charles Leslie Scott. The change was a tribute to her love of the Scottish Highlands, a passion that re-emerged in West Marin, where she played bagpipes dressed in full plaid regalia in the Western Weekend Parade and at fundraisers.
In 2005, a girlfriend’s landlord happened to ask Leslie if she liked kids, and driving, and whether she was interested in becoming a school bus driver. Leslie told him she didn’t particularly like either, but a month later, her sign business faltering, she decided to apply.
She soon realized that she liked both driving and children—not, she wrote, “that there weren’t times when I wanted to leave someone’s little carcass out for the coyotes to pick over.”
Leslie “loved the children,” Ms. Wing said, even though “[she] started out gruff so there’d be no trouble.” She recounted how Leslie collected stuffed animals to keep atop the dashboard in case a student felt scared or lonely and needed something to hug.
Though she left her job in 2014, Leslie continued to be interested in school politics. Last fall, she ran for a seat on the Shoreline Unified School District board, advocating for transparency from the board and better support for the district’s classified employees. Although she failed to win a seat, her slogan, “Openness, transparency and trust…for a change,” was quickly echoed by the other candidates.
Leslie had begun her gender transition in 2010, while still a bus driver. She was 61 at the time, and she described the process as “the most difficult, scariest, most painful, and thus most rewarding adventure of my life.” She wrote that she was often afraid and made “courage” her watchword: she would repeat it to herself throughout the day in the voice of the cowardly lion.
In 2012, Leslie took part in San Francisco’s Trans March for the first time. Meeting other trans women helped her become more comfortable with the woman she wanted to be. “The pain of denying what was wrong overcame my reluctance to recognize it,” she wrote of the decision to confront her long-suppressed feelings about her gender identity.
She came out as transgender to the secretaries at West Marin School in 2012 and, shortly afterwards she changed her name to Leslie Richelle Scott.
Although the community at large accepted Leslie, Ms. Wing said, “it was very hard for the old-timers, the grandpas” in the school community. “They just couldn’t go there.” Others remember parent complaints. “But the kids slipped right into it,” Ms. Wing said. “They noticed she started wearing nail polish and smelled good and were like okay, this is today.” Because she drove a generation of West Marin youth, Leslie had fans around town—Ms. Wing remembered driving with her to the bank and being happily received by the tellers.
After she stopped bus driving, Leslie opened a business as a handywoman. She touted herself as “skilled senior ready to give impeccable service to other seniors.” She also volunteered at the Dance Palace, helping build set designs for theater productions, and worked for a short time as a substitute librarian in Point Reyes Station. She helped out with library book sales during the Inverness Fair and made all the interior signage for the Inverness Library.
After forgoing gluten a few years ago, Leslie would come to coffee klatches with a plate of gluten-free treats. Gail Greenlees, a Point Reyes Station resident, said Leslie offered food for both body and mind with her pithy comments and toothsome brownies.
Last year, Leslie began playing softball with a group of baby boomers in what Inverness resident Scoby Zook calls a “geezer league.” “She was the only woman on the team,” he said. “We’ve invited women; no woman has dared come. But Leslie jumped right in. She was brave enough to show up, and taller than everyone, too.” Mr. Zook said Leslie’s strong pitching arm was a particularly welcome addition: “It was great to have her [pitch], because normally we just throw it up and hit it, and you can’t swing very hard when you do that.”
Leslie’s death, of natural causes, came as a surprise to many, though Ms. Wing remembered that she had heart troubles about a year ago. She left a lasting impression on those who knew and loved her. For Ms. Beemsterboer Wittee, Leslie’s “greatest attribute was her humor.” When Leslie was convalescing from reconstructive surgery, she remembered her quipping, “Well, I’ll never do that again.”
Throughout the many wends in her life, Leslie retained that sense of humor—and her sense of who she wanted to be. Despite the conservative mores of her childhood, she refused to be cowed. “I consider it something of a miracle,” Leslie wrote, “that I’ve been able, even late in life, to break free of these influences and live as the person I’ve always, deep down, known I was.”