Roger Scoles of Bella Vista has an interesting history that includes playing professional baseball.
He was born in a small town in Iowa and graduated from high school in 1949. He had played baseball in high school, and a friend in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who was a sports announcer for WMT radio and a sportswriter for the Cedar Rapids Gazette told him there were a new team and a class C professional baseball league. His friend said if Scoles wanted to try out, he could stay with him. Scoles got on a train and went to Cedar Rapids and tried out for the team. They offered him a contract.
"I was in seventh heaven over that," he said.
The first night he sat on the bench, and a brawl broke out during the game.
"That was my introduction to professional baseball," he said.
In his first year at Cedar Rapids, he was named MVP. He played three years in the minor leagues and then was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. He was in Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo., and soldiers went to the penitentiary to play baseball with the prisoners. He also played baseball at Camp Atterbury, Ind., for the Fifth Army Baseball Tournament. He played in the final game of the tournament in 1953. He said the 101st Airborne Division was on maneuvers at Camp Atterbury and had its band there, and the band was at the game wearing Confederate uniforms and playing "Dixie" over and over.
"They couldn't do that today," he observed.
While in the Army, he was trained as a combat engineer. He thought surely he would be sent to Korea but, instead, he was assigned to a school in Missouri where he taught junior high math and blueprint reading.
After he got out of the Army, he played baseball for one year in Duluth, Minn., in a northern league.
Following that, he needed a job because he was married and the couple was expecting its first child. His father talked him into going to barber school, and he cut hair for 14 years. Then he went to night school and took some computer science courses around 1967 or 1968. He got a job in a bank in Sioux City, Iowa, as a programmer, and worked there for six years. He did well at writing software for IBM mainframes.
Next, he was hired by Fleming Company, a food wholesaler. He traveled a lot to distribution centers that each had an IBM mainframe. He also traveled to Japan, Seoul in South Korea, and Jamaica. He worked for that company for 20 years, retiring in 1993, and moved to Bella Vista. He had purchased a lot here in 1985.
He plays golf three to four times a week.
"I've been fortunate," he said. "I'm 89 years old and still able to play golf reasonably well. I've not shot over my age for a long time."
He said he had a 68 on the Kingswood course and had a 70 on the Highlands course last year.
Scoles once played at a pro-am golf event in Kansas City, and he played with famous pro golfer Billy Casper, he said. He shot 73, and Casper shot 74, he said. A few years ago, he and three others played in the American Legion golf tournament and won. Their average age was 79, he said.
He is a lifetime member of the Association of Professional Ball Players of America.
He served as a volunteer at Crystal Bridges for nine years. He has stopped because of the covid-19 pandemic, but he hopes to return after receiving the vaccine.
He has served as chairman of the POA nominating committee and served on the election committee two years ago.