Scott Carpenter's Family History

Malcolm Scott Carpenter is a fifth-generation Coloradan born in Boulder on May 1, 1925. He is the only child of Florence Kelso Noxon (b. Idaho Springs, Colo., September 9, 1900) and Marion Scott Carpenter (b. Denver, Colo., June 23, 1901). He is the father of eight children, of which seven survive.

Education

Scott was a four-year-old nicknamed “Buddy” when he joined Miss Curtin’s Kindergarten school, where he spent two years before entering the Boulder public schools as a six-year-old, first at University Hill School (grades 1–9), (click here to see a photograph of Scott in the second-grade production of “The Good Citizens’ Ship.”) and then at Boulder High School, graduating with the class of 1943. He was a popular student who excelled at athletics, carried a B average, and developed an early, intense interest in aviation, click here to see Carpenter’s “Aviation” school paper.

A Wartime College Education, the U.S. Navy, and a Postwar University of Colorado

As a 17-year-old senior, Scott applied at the Twelfth Naval District Headquarters in San Francisco to join the Navy’s aviation cadet program (V-12a) (click here for Carpenter’s navy career); he was admitted on April 11, 1943.

At the age of 20, Scott returned home to Boulder and entered Colorado University on the G.I. Bill for the 1946 spring semester. C.U. did not then offer a degree in aeronautical engineering, so Scott’s degree program was in mechanical engineering with an aeronautical option. A near-fatal car accident disrupted his studies in September 1946; Scott re-enrolled in the spring of 1947.

The spring of his senior year, the 24-year-old navy veteran, now married with a first child on the way, was recruited for a second time by the U.S. Navy in the runup to the Korean war. (<a href=“career_navy.html.”>Click here</a> to read about Carpenter’s naval career.) He had missed his final exam in heat transfer, a required course for the engineering degree.

In commencement exercises for the class of 1962, C.U. granted Scott his degree, citing with some understatement the Mercury astronaut’s “unique experience with heat transfer during his reentry” Click here to see a 1962 newsreel. (There is much more on Scott’s childhood, education, and early aviation career in For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut.)

Scott’s Parents

Scott’s mother and father met in 1918 while undergraduates at the University of Colorado. His mother, Toye, received her B.A. in 1922 and his father earned three degrees (B.S. ’22, M.S., ’24, and Ph.D. ’25). Dr. M. S. Carpenter was granted a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University (1925–1927). In 1929 he found work as research chemist and then as director of research at Givaudan-Delawanna, in a Swiss-based perfume and pharmaceutical firm with laboratories in New Jersey.

Scott Sr. and Toye were divorced in 1945 after a separation of eighteen years. Toye died on Nov. 2, 1962. Scott Sr. passed away in 1973.

On November 21, 1998, Scott married Patty Snyder. Patty is pictured below (standing) with Scott and his Aunt T'gee (Margueritte Carpenter), Big Elk Meadow, Colo., 2001.

Scott’s Children

Scott is the father, with Rene, of Marc Scott, b. Boulder, Colo., Nov. 29, 1949; Timothy Kit, b. Pensacola, Fla., Dec. 23, 1950 (d. June 1951); Robyn Jay, b. Honolulu, March 4, 1952; Kristen Elaine, b. Lexington Park, Md., June 26, 1955; and Candace Noxon, b. Lexington Park, Md., Oct. 8, 1956.
Scott and Maria are the parents of Matthew Scott, b. Jan. 8, 1978, and Nicholas André, b. Nov. 1, 1979, both of Los Angeles, Calif.
Barbara Curtin and Scott have a son, Zachary Scott, b. Nov. 20, 1989, El Paso County, Colo.

Candy Carpenter, 1961, Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Marc Scott Carpenter, June 1970, Molokai

Kris Stoever, October 2007, Denver, Colorado