At countless charity events, Beverly Scarborough is omnipresent.
You spot her chatting with a corporate captain in the lobby. Or sharing a table with a family of generous benefactors in the banquet hall. Or behind the scenes, directing media or coordinating helpers.
“It’s just what we do,” she says. “I think it makes the community better and it makes your life better. I’ve gotten as much out of volunteering as I’ve put into it.”
Scarborough, 63, is rarely the flashiest dresser in the room. Nor the most at ease in a big crowd.
Yet her asymmetrical smile is genuine and something about her unfussy features says she’s not just giving lip service to the causes she supports so fervently.
Born in Cincinnati, she grew up in the socially active Strittmatter family — big on liberal, artistic and environmental causes. They moved around Arkansas and Missouri — her father was a veterinarian — but eventually landed in Houston, where Scarborough graduated from Lee High School.
An awkward child by her own admission, she took school seriously and read a lot, favoring books about crusading women. In 1968, she moved to Austin to study journalism at the University of Texas.
She wrote for the radical Rag, a potent underground newspaper and breeding ground for future activists.
“We had a reunion a few years ago,” she says. “I was pretty alternative for a long time.”
When Scarborough turned 18, she also embraced her inherited but hitherto ignored Jewish faith. She is now active in the Beth Israel congregation and the Jewish Film Festival.
As a less radical wife and mother — she has been married three times and raised three children — Scarborough wrote the Neighbor column for the American-Statesman for some time. She’s keenly sensitized to Austin’s micro-cultures, having lived in French Place on the east side for 23 years and Northwest Hills in the other direction for 15 years.
Her three children reflect different aspects of Scarborough’s past and personality. Megan Scarborough, married with two children, conducts research for the UT School of Social Research. David Glahn teaches neuro-psychology at Yale University. Ada Scarborough now works in the film industry after attending beauty school.
Software engineer Dan Yahiel is “my current and hopefully last husband,” Scarborough says.
One of Scarborough’s most visible volunteer projects is a series of short, biographical films made with Ingrid Weigand. These powerful little narratives that deftly employ family photos, gentle humor and a battery of witnesses lionize Austin’s civic high-fliers.
The Girl Scouts’ Women of Distinction honors and the Austin Community Foundation awards, for instance, would be pretty plain without them. These eloquent personal histories have planted the seeds for many an Out & About column.
Along the way, Scarborough has backed Ballet Austin, Planned Parenthood and Zach Theatre. She’s often surprised by how much more sophisticated Austin has become, especially in the area of charitable giving. Just 30 years ago, a check for $1,000 would have overwhelmed a fundraiser with joy. While still welcome, those three zeros are dwarfed by the more than $1 billion raised in the past 15 years just for local causes.
“I grew up with the town,” Scarborough says of Austin. “It’s a lot better. Even though we complain — all of us kvetch about the traffic and the crowds. But there is so much more. I can remember when there was one Chinese restaurant in town. It was out on South Congress and it was awful. Outside of the university, there was very little cultural life. Very little diversity. It’s always been a pretty town. What’s going on now is mind-boggling. There are 10 big events every night of the week.”
The rainmaker for New Milestones, which holds its signature event on Monday, would be remiss if she didn’t mention her core cause these days.
“There’s mental illness in every family,” she says without drama. “When you expand that to alcoholism and depression it touches everybody. I can talk to any person in any room and I’d hear about a cousin with depression or an aunt who died by suicide or their child that has autism The good news: There is treatment.”