- Alumni
- Arts + Music
“A real-life Indiana Jones.” Someone who “devoured life.” A stunning student who stayed for a post-grad year, not to better his grades, but to “experience everything McCallie had to offer academically.”
These were some of the observations voiced inside McCallie’s intimate Black Box Theater on Saturday morning, March 7, during a soaring celebration of life for Robert Scott Langley, Jr. ‘68, who passed away on January 12, 2026 at age 75 following a battle with cancer.
“He never stopped being curious about the world around him,” said McCallie Chaplain Josh Deitrick to a well-dressed gathering that included former heads of school Spencer McCallie III '55 and Kirk Walker '69 and current Chief of Staff Thomas Hayes '88. Current head of school Lee Burns '87 had a prior commitment in Texas.
“It was clear he had a remarkable mind and he never quit sharing it with the world, especially McCallie students and faculty, his family and friends.”
That remarkable mind first surfaced when Langley was but four years old in his hometown of Kinston, North Carolina. He began reading the newspaper to his mother Roberta. While others his age sang nursery rhymes, he listened to Madame Butterfly and Aida. Though he deemed himself a “naturally ungifted athlete,” by the time he graduated from McCallie his fellow swimmers labeled him “The Machine” for the passion he brought to workouts.
“After swimming the 400 he would throw up on the pool apron,” recalled former McCallie faculty member Tom Makepeace, who was a freshman boarding student when Langley was a senior. “He’d say, ‘If I’m not puking after the 400, I’m not swimming hard enough.”
But that drive didn’t only exist in the pool. Having earned a Morehead Scholarship to North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Langley majored in Latin. In a rare nod to his considerable intellect, when a cousin proudly told him she’d read the Iliad and the Odyssey, he replied, “You haven’t really read the Iliad and the Odyssey until you’ve read it in Latin.”
In that same vein, Spencer III recalled teaching Langley in English, then said of the experience, “Scott was very bright. But if he learned anything from me, he never mentioned it.”
Yet Langley’s generosity to share all he knew was legendary. Again, Spencer III: “He took Sara and me to Morocco. He loved Morocco and Egypt. When you were with him, you felt like you were the only ones he took on these vacations. Amazing sites, amazing meals, all of it would be perfect. Then you’d find out he was doing the same thing for 50 other people. He was just a remarkable individual.”
Despite his first love possibly being cinema, he earned a masters degree in cinematography from New York University, he eventually chose the more profitable path of tax law, graduating from New York Law School in 1981 before earning an LL.M. in taxation from NYU a year later.
And until he retired to Chattanooga in 2021, he never left “the city that never sleeps,” becoming a whirling dervish of cultural largesse, spending most every night soaking up the Big Apple’s myriad offerings of fine dining, theater, art museums, opera and beyond.
No wonder at the close of Saturday’s celebration, the Frank Sinatra anthem “New York, New York” blared from the Black Box sound system. If anyone ever made it anywhere, it was Scott Langley, who was named McCallie’s Distinguished Alumnus in 2010.
As a nephew who occasionally visited him in New York said Saturday, “He had a relentless appetite for all things cultural.”
Thankfully, for the McCallie community and beyond, he also had a relentless appetite for sharing that curiosity and knowledge until his final days.
A McCallie day student, Ricky Causo ‘04, later moved to New York City, where Langley would occasionally invite him to dinner.
“He might call at 5, 6 p.m. from his office at 30 Rock,” Causo recalled. “Can you meet for dinner at 7? We never ate at the same place twice. We once ate an entire pig’s head. We ate at famous restaurants and places no one knew about. There were dinners, and then there were Scott Langley dinners.”
His sister Lee said Langley loved Chattanooga’s fine dining spots such as Public House, Easy Bistro and St. John’s, but also embraced iconic blue-collar staples such as Merv’s and Bea’s.
In his final weeks, according to Lee, when asked where he’d like to eat, he chose, “Outback, for a steak and a Bloomin’ Onion.”
A Twilight Zone moment: Causo’s birthday is March 18. For every year he can remember, he has chosen to dine at a hibachi restaurant for his birthday. But when he was asked this year about his birthday dinner, he said, out of the blue, “I’d like to go to Outback and have a steak and Bloomin’ Onion.”
Said Lee, “You were channeling Scott.”
Not that his appetite for fine wines and cuisine ended with restaurants. His sister Martha said a visit from Scott would involve a small duffle bag and a very large suitcase that was too heavy to carry, needing wheels to be transported.
“The duffle bag would contain a couple of pairs of khakis and a couple of blue oxford cloth button-downs,” she said. “The suitcase would contain numerous bottles of fine wine he expected to pair well with the dinners we would prepare. He embraced life with such gusto, both the arcane and the mundane. He was our family’s personal guide to culture, at least his version of culture.”
It wasn’t just his biological family. Stories of him treating McCallie faculty and staff to soup-to-nuts dinners at St. John’s are legendary, as were his impeccable wine choices. But he also supplied symphony tickets for McCallie students, donated hundreds of books and films to McCallie and took in musical and theater performances at the school whenever possible.
“He would tell you what he thought, too,” said theater director Chelsea Padro. “If he thought a particular performance was weak, he’d let you know.”
Just this past December, as the cancer was taking its toll, Langley wanted to see Candlelight. He got to the Chapel an hour early so he could get the best seat in the house.
Kim Love, the school’s advancement communications coordinator, used to take Langley’s book donations. “He’d bring in a stack of books he’d read that week,” she said. “They might be on Russian theater, Italian theater, Spanish theater. They could be about anything. And he’d read every one of them. He was the most fascinating man.”
His lust for life carried far beyond books and film and fine wines.Over his lifetime, he walked almost all of the Appalachian Trail, from north Georgia to New Hampshire, stopping a few miles short of his goal because, in his family’s words, “He decided he had already broken too many bones to continue.”
He was also an expert, if initially reluctant, scuba diver, embracing both the Cayman Islands and the Red Sea. His sister Lee, hopeful he would enjoy the activity enough after an introductory plunge in the Caymans to take on the Red Sea, was not immediately encouraged by his initial reaction, which seemed subdued at best. Nervously asking him to rate his first dive, he said, “Oh, it was wonderful.” To the Red Sea they soon went.
It was, in every way, a wonderful life, for both Langley and all those he touched. Or as his sister Martha said Saturday, “He made everyone he came in contact with more amazing.”
In his final days, during a conversation with Deitrick, Langley said, “I’ve had a great life, but I’m ready to go.”
For all those gathered in the Black Box on Saturday, for those he lunched with every day at Alexian Village on Signal Mountain in his final years, a table that often included Spencer III and his brother Franklin, his going is tough–a void nearly impossible to fill.
But Langley’s life, his forever love, always circled back to McCallie.
“People have asked me if Scott had a life partner,” said his sister Martha. “He did. His life partner was McCallie.”
To revisit the celebration of life for Scott Langley '68, the recording of the memorial service is available for viewing here.