POLITICAL GENEALOGY

One Less Secret for Rick Scott

Megan Smolenyak
4 min readSep 17, 2018

Rick Scott, current Governor and candidate for Senator of Florida, has secrets. Lots of them. But I didn’t appreciate how extensive they were until I read this compelling piece by Lucy Morgan. Curious to learn more, I meandered over to his Wikipedia page which records such details as his early career reviving donut shops, the date of his marriage, and the fact that his mother worked at department chain J.C. Penney. Not mentioned? The name he was born with.

I’m a relative newcomer to Florida, so this surprised me. He’s been Governor since January 2011. How could he be in the public eye for so long without anyone knowing something as fundamental as his original name? I decided to take a closer look and shed a little light on his family history.

  • Rick Scott began life as Richard Lynn Myers.
The Pantagraph, 17 December 1952 (Newspapers.com)
  • Seen here (left to right) are his great-grandfather, grandmother, father, and Rick Scott. His birth father, Gordon William Myers, was raised by his mother and grandparents as his father left when he was very young. I’ll leave it to readers to decide how much of a resemblance there is to these relatives from the paternal side of Scott’s family tree.

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Megan Smolenyak
Megan Smolenyak

Written by Megan Smolenyak

Genealogical adventurer & storyteller who loves solving mysteries! You may not know me, but chances are you’ve seen my work. (www.MeganSmolenyak.com)

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