A man with purpose

Twenty to 30 years ago, you couldn't take a daytime stroll along the heart-of-downtown stretch of Fourth Street without passing by the stationary Brad Scott.

The same is true today. There can't be another human being who has spent more time with his soles seemingly stuck in place on the sidewalks of Santa Rosa's retail core.

Scott, 56, does sit sometimes. Downtown regulars are accustomed to seeing him and his tall, lean greyhound, Ian, chilling out at a table outside of Peet's or at the Starbucks at Barnes & Noble.

Scott could make the Guinness record book for all the hours that he's stood before storefront windows on Fourth and also on D and Santa Rosa Avenue and other downtown streets. Though he's standing still, the 1972 Piner High grad is not doing nothing.

Mostly he does one of two things. Since he first began appearing downtown on a regular basis in 1978, he's committed a huge chunk of his life to standing and holding the Awake! and Watchtower magazines of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

"My highest month down here was 320 hours," he said. That worked out to standing with magazines more than 10 hours a day, every day of the month.

He set that record decades ago when, as a younger man, he could donate his days to spreading the Word because he lived with his parents. They supported him and his ministry and in return he cared for them as they grew old.

Scott remains an ardent though non-pushy Jehovah's Witness and he plans to soon resume his sidewalk preaching. But he's living on his own now. His father died three years ago, his mother is with another son in Redding and he needs to earn some money.

These days he's not standing with his back to merchants' windows and inviting questions from passersby about what he believes is the approaching Armageddon. Now he's facing the windows and practicing a self-taught marketable skill.

Scott has become essential to shopowners eager to repair windows that have been scratched by graffiti taggers. With great patience, he stands at vandalized windows and polishes away deep, intentional scratches with an orbital grinder and a succession of progressively finer sandpaper.

When he walks into a shop to offer his services in the removal of etched graffiti, he has the advantage of being a familiar face.

"I came down here with the ministry," he said. "That's how everybody knows me. So when I needed to start a business to support myself, where would I go? Downtown."

Though Scott is perfectly content with the twin roles that make him a fixture on city-center sidewalks, there was a time when he was happiest racing around a track. Though much of his teens he built and drove go-carts that would hit 90 or 100 mph.

"That's all I wanted to do, to be a race-car driver," he said. That passion screeched to a halt when Scott, then just 17, visited a local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses with a friend and learned he could help spread the news on how believers can live to see paradise on Earth.

"Something clicked," he said. He told his mother, who'd supported his racing as a constructive teen-age activity, that he'd become a Jehovah's Witness and "I would probably not race again."

"She thought I was mad," he said.

But both she and Scott's late father came to support their son's conversion. For the better part of 30 years, beginning in 1978, they provided him room and board as he stood ready downtown to answer questions about the Bible and the end of the world as we know it.

Scott has spent less time preaching in recent years because his folks grew old and needed him at home. He has earned some income through various pursuits - for a time he worked to help owners of thoroughbred racehorses improve the animals' health and performance through better nutrition.

But not long ago he lost his folks' home to foreclosure. It was a shock to be put out of the house he'd lived in for most of his life, but for someone who believes time is running out before Armageddon, the loss wasn't the end of the world.

Scott lives in an apartment now and supports himself with the window-repair business. He said that as soon as he can, he'll resume his sidewalk preaching.

"That's my real passion," he said. "The glass work is just supports me to do that."

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.