Rick Scott

The couple is blessed with two daughters, Jordan and Allison and four grandsons, Eli, Sebastian, Quinton and Auguste.

The couple is also the founder-members of the Naples Community Church that was set up in 2006.

He was born on December 1, 1952, in Bloomington, Illinois as the second child among five children of a lower middle-class family. His parents divorced and later in 1954 his mother, Esther J. (née Fry), a clerk at J.C. Penney, married Orba Scott, Jr. who was in the 82nd Airborne during the ‘Second World War’ and post war became a city bus driver and later a truck driver. After Orba adopted him, Rick used Scott as his surname.

He attended ‘North Kansas City High School’ and completed graduation in 1970. He also attended one year in community college.

In 1970 he was enlisted in the United States Navy where he served for 29 months as a radar technician on the USS Glover (AGDE 1).

Post war he joined college on the ‘GI Bill’. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from University of Missouri–Kansas City and a law degree from ‘Dedman School of Law' of the ‘Southern Methodist University’.

While studying in college and law school he worked at a local grocery store and along with his wife Ann, he ventured into business by buying and reviving two doughnut shops in Kansas City and gave management responsibility of the shops to his mother.

He stayed back in Dallas, Texas and began working at ‘Johnson & Swanson’, the largest law firm in Dallas. There he mostly represented the health care companies as also industries like communication, oil and gas.

While practicing law in April 1987 he made an unsuccessful bid to purchase ‘Hospital Corporation of America’ (HCA).

In 1988 Scott and his wife put up their entire savings of $125,000 for ‘Columbia Hospital Corporation’ that Scott set up with two other business partners. Financier Richard Rainwater from Fort Worth also contributed $125,000 in the working capital of the company.

‘Columbia Hospital Corporation’ gradually started purchasing other hospitals and with time emerged as one of the largest health care companies worldwide with over 340 hospitals, 550 home health locations and 135 surgery centres. Meanwhile in 1989 it also merged with ‘Hospital Corporation of America’ to become ‘Columbia/HCA’.

However on March 19, 1997, ‘Columbia/HCA’ came under scrutiny of ‘Department of Health and Human Services’, ‘Internal Revenue Service’ and ‘FBI’ who issued search warrants at the El Paso facility of the company. Raids were conducted. In the middle of such fraud investigations, Scott was pressurised by Board of Directors of the company to resign as CEO and Chairman. He resigned that year.