- May 28, 2026
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If there was a cause or an organization that would make the Sarasota community better, Isabel Scott Norton was part of it. Or, if she saw a need, she would create it.
A founding member of SCOPE (Sarasota County Openly Plans for Excellence). President of the Ringling College Library Association and chair of its Town Hall Speaker Series. Board member of Suncoast Workforce Board. President of the Library Foundation for Sarasota County. An honored member of Leadership Florida. A decorated board member and volunteer with the Girl Scout Council of Gulf Coast Florida.
It's difficult enough to list Norton’s many acts of service over more than 50 years of giving back to Sarasota as a business owner, philanthropist and community builder. But it’s even harder to convey the grace, intelligence and strength she exhibited while doing them.
Norton died May 22. According to her daughter, Leslie Drinkwater, she died peacefully within 24 hours of the first time she had ever stayed in bed past 8 a.m. She was 86.
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Norton’s family moved to Gainesville when she was 3. She married her high school sweetheart, Randy Norton, in 1957 and they headed to the University of Florida together. Norton was a part-time student in 1958-59, majoring in English and working in the university library to help Randy obtain his degree in journalism in 1962.
Norton supported Randy in his many successes with the Lehigh Cement Co., including helping pour the rocket launch pad for Cape Canaveral.
After the death of their second daughter, the couple moved to Sarasota so Randy could work in Norton’s family business, what became Scott Sign Systems, a sign manufacturing company. Although he was eventually named president of the business, the couple worked side by side throughout the years, inseparable partners in the company and in life.
But family and community were the focus of Norton’s work through the years.
When one of her daughters was diagnosed with an eye disease she was told would leave her blind, Norton not only learned braille, but she became a certified literary braille transcriber so she could reproduce books into braille for her daughter.
When the Americans with Disabilities Act was adopted in 1990, this knowledge helped Scott Sign Systems become the pre-eminent sign manufacturer in the country for ADA-compliant signage. That success continued until Randy and Norton sold the business in 1998. At the time, it had grown to more than 300 employees in Florida, Virginia and Utah.
That cause also became another passion of Norton’s, as she served in leadership for years with Prevent Blindness Florida and Prevent Blindness America.
Shortly after arriving in Sarasota, Norton became a troop leader for her daughters’ Girl Scout troop. But, of course, learning more about the needs of the organization, Norton turned into a lifelong champion of the Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida, said CEO Mary Anne Servian.
That included everything from serving on the board to helping raise $7.5 million for the Girl Scouts’ building.
“She was a true Girl Scout,” said Servian, discussing outings to Myakka State Park and beyond. “There was nothing she wouldn’t do.”
Drinkwater, said her mother prided herself on this fact, and instilled both toughness and decorum in her family life in equal measure. “Everyone in the family knows that she wanted all of us to be able to go camping or dine with the queen,” she said in an email.
Never one to shy away from a challenge or let a need go unmet, Norton stepped forward at times when the community needed leadership most.
Seeing the public school system struggling at the time, Norton chaired the Sarasota County School Board Advisory Committee from 1981-1983.
When decorum in public meetings was reaching a new low, she served on a committee of community leaders who drafted the Pledge of Public Conduct that is still in use to guide public comment at government boards nearly 30 years later.
Norton’s company made signs with the pledge on it for every chamber, and she and a fellow committee member, Dan Bailey, introduced them at all four municipalities and Sarasota County, where they still hang today, Bailey said.
“She personified civility,” Bailey said. “She had courage and she had energy … she touched a lot of worlds.”
She often rose to leadership positions when an organization was undergoing transformation, helping usher in an era of new growth.
At the Library Foundation for Sarasota County, she became president in 2018 and led the way to hiring the organization’s first executive director.
Libraries were a lifelong passion for Norton, who often recalled the story of being transfixed after walking into her local library and discovering a two-story room filled floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves. “I was filled with an unforgettable awe,” she wrote in a 2020 editorial. “The books I read were a window to the world and helped me form a blueprint for my own life.”
One of Norton’s most notable accomplishments was co-chairing a capital campaign with longtime friend Carolyn Johnson to raise $16.9 million to build Ringling College of Art and Design’s Alfred R. Goldstein Library. The pair raised the amount a year ahead of schedule.
Although diminutive in stature, Norton was a formidable fundraiser, friends say, not because she was tough, but quite the opposite. Despite leading efforts that raised more than $30 million in the community, Norton didn’t call it fundraising — she called it “friend raising.”
The consummate hostess, Norton never hesitated to host events at her home. Friends say she was gentle, not pushy. Inviting, not assuming. She figured if people liked you and understood the importance of the cause, they’d be more likely to help.
“She was small, not a big person,” said Charlie Huisking, who served on the Library Foundation for Sarasota County board with Norton for three years. “And she had a Southern genteel way about her, but also a spine of steel. If there was something she wanted to do, she knew how to do it — and she would.”
This gentility didn’t come from a place of privilege, Huisking noted, who said Norton told him stories of a hard-scrabble childhood.
Drinkwater shared a family story in which Norton made a dress for herself to attend one of Randy’s first big company functions with Lehigh Cement. When she arrived at the party, she was horrified to discover that the fabric of her dress matched the hostess’s drapes.
But, Drinkwater said, Norton’s mom always told her: “If you are feeling lonely in a room full of people, find someone to introduce yourself to and you’ll have a lifelong friend.”
Although she received “tons” of professional help from Norton, her friendship is what Servian said she values most.
“She was just always there and always generous for whatever you needed,” Servian said. “Everyone should have an Isabel in their life.”
She led in a quiet, unobtrusive way, but also had a sense of when to step forward and show the way with firmness. And, she never forgot the power of a sense of humor, with a well-aimed “Bless their heart,” to communicate the unsaid.
Despite her many esteemed accomplishments and awards, there was one thing that eluded Norton: a college diploma.
As a person who spent her life championing education and libraries, Norton was only able to attend classes at the University of Florida for a couple semesters before family life took priority, something UF recognized at the time as a P.H.T. — “Putting Husbands Through” degree.
In 2020, Drinkwater led an effort to get her mom the degree she coveted, from the place she was proud to support as a lifelong gator: UF.
In 2020, the University of Florida awarded Norton its Stephen C. O’Connell Distinguished Service Award. She was only the fifth person to receive the award in UF’s history, and she went to UF’s December 2021 commencement to receive it. It was one of her proudest moments, Drinkwater said.
Throughout her life, Norton faced unimaginable tragedies, including surviving four of her five children and her beloved husband, but Drinkwater said she always responded with a reflection of gratitude and forward momentum.
“She was always very grateful and felt very lucky for the life she lived (less the tragedies),” Drinkwater said in an email. “And with those tragedies she avoided asking ‘Why me?’ and used a ‘Why not me?’ attitude.”
This positive energy was contagious.
“Every time I left an interaction with her, I felt better about the world,” Huisking said.
According to Drinkwater, Norton wanted her tombstone to read: “she did the best she could.”
Drinkwater said: “And, I would add, ‘And her best was about as good as it gets.’”
The author is president of the Library Foundation for Sarasota County.
