Perrin Elizabeth Scott died on January 31, 2026. She was 56.

Perrin was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer on October 12, 2024.

Her courage was astounding. In 1991, as a 22 year old single woman, she got on a Greyhound bus, leaving Albany, NY. Sixty-seven dollars gave her six months of unlimited on-off privileges on that bus. She travelled the country on her own, visiting extended family and having adventures. She recounted the trip as formative – wonderful, thrilling, intense, sometimes quite scary and occasionally downright dangerous.

Her intention was to permanently relocate to the West Coast.

She landed in Eugene, Oregon and found a room in a house with three other women. She treasured these women for the safe place to learn lifeskills–directness, honesty, compassion, respect, commitment and consistency. She could make mistakes with them–and they with her–and together they would do the work to recover and learn and “move on to the next mistakes to learn from”. She credits her time on the bus and then with these women with starting her toward becoming the gracious, compassionate communicator so many of us knew and admired.

She had 23 years in Eugene, Oregon.

She worked with adults with disabilities, helping them live in homes in the community and work in supported employment opportunities.

For several years she had a pattern of working for a while, saving and quitting to go have extended travel around the West, most often in her 1974 Toyota Pick-up truck. Hiking and rock climbing in the Oregon Cascades, the Coast Range and the Wind River Range of Wyoming, where she spent weeks on National Outdoor Leadership School trips. Notably, this included living in a snow hut (“quinzee”) in winter, at 8,000+ feet of elevation for a few weeks. When the NOLS instructors had to escort a student off the mountain due to unsafe behavior, she was selected to be a co-leader of the remaining group. She and a new-found friend co-led approximately 20 fellow students miles out of the wilderness- no trails, just topo maps, a compass, limited water and a fairly aggressive black bear.

She built her career in Special Education on this foundation of experience, communication, empathy and unflappable-ness.

Her abilities as a teacher are, with no hint of hyperbole, legendary. Perrin, across all aspects of her life, was a force of nature, but to experience her in a classroom or running a meeting could be astounding. A quote from the Bethel Special Ed Director's letter of reference- “Perrin is in the top 5% of Special Educators that I have known over the past 30 years”. That was in 2013.

Her ability to perceive what students, families and teaching colleagues needed had her husband speculating as to the possibility she was clairvoyant. But really, she was just that smart, articulate, empathetic and perceptive.

Her first job was in a classroom that multiple school districts could use as a placement for their highest needs students. She had eight students and twelve teaching assistants. There were students from 6 different districts. At the end of the year, she had job offers from everyone of those districts.

She landed in Bethel, a Eugene school district, where she reinvented a moderate needs program for students with cognitive and adaptive needs.

When she and Tom decided to start a family, Tom had the incredible good fortune to share not only parenthood, but that teaching job. Starting in 2005, they each taught every other day; one of them would teach, while the other stayed home with sons, David and Sander.

Tom and Perrin shared that schedule for eight years. It was challenging and amazing. They held to what Perrin learned when she first moved to Eugene–the foundation of a strong family and classroom is a safe place to make mistakes. Creating and practicing routines for recovering and learning from mistakes was the most important thing. Of course, mistakes happened– Parenting, teaching, adults, kids- “Show me someone not making some mistakes and I’ll show you someone not making anything at all” was an aphorism mentioned frequently.

They had a place on the banks of the Willamette River and did plenty of swimming and kayaking. There was yearly “wet suit day” for the growing boys. There was a 30 mile bike path just off the driveway. They had 3500 square feet of garden, a sauna, a hot tub, a swing set and a large sandbox. They did live in beauty there.

In 2013, Perrin led her family away from Eugene – to Brattleboro, VT. The goals were a more solid school system and “more singing”. And there was more and deeper beauty to be found.

She taught at Brattleboro Union High School and Twin Valley Elementary, where she continued to grow her professional skills, earning deep respect from colleagues, families and students.

Before arriving here, Perrin didn’t know there would be singing in Brattleboro, but she was wishing for it. She found it. Pub Sing, Women’s Chorus, River Singers, Concert Choir, Hallowell and the Guilford Community Church–including her creation, the Visiting Voices Choir–which was a manifestation of her vision to assemble groups of singers to go to peoples’ homes and sing together.

She got her singing in, and no mistake – much to the delight of all who were lucky enough to have heard and/or harmonized with her.

Perrin had so much fun being a mother! Singing and baking and imaginary play, camping, biking, hours and hours on the beaches of the Oregon Coast, endlessly reading books and travelling and camping for tens of thousands of miles around the West and across the country. Supporting them always – She loved her boys, “to the moon and back”, as she frequently said.

She and Tom had 30 years together. They raised their sons. They traveled and biked and kayaked and sailed and hiked and played cards and juggled and loved their books and shows and movies and stories of all kinds. Perrin tried scuba diving; Tom was never quite so happy as when she announced, after about twenty dives, that she hated it and was never going to do it again. Through Perrin, Tom discovered the joy of “singing on purpose”. They had memorable trips to Mexico, Canada, Thailand and all around the Pacific Northwest, notably to Lopez Island, where there was a juggling festival they attended with dear friends for many years–several years spending as much as 2 months of the year there. They, together, grew into a couple who had the faith and confidence in each other and themselves to love this life and make many of their dreams reality.

She was glorious. Her friends, family, colleagues and the students and families she has nurtured have expressed their gratitude for the time she was here, as well as frustration and sadness that it ended so soon.

She is survived by her husband Tom Yahner and sons David and Sander Scott, as well as what she referred to as her “forest of friends” – the people she loved and that loved her.

Memorial service at West Brattleboro Congregational Church, 2/28/26, 2 pm. Reception to follow at the Guilford Community Church

Perrin would be delighted by donations in her memory to the Guilford Community Church, in Guilford, Vermont.

She was dear to us.