Frederick Scott Gilbert

Frederick Scott Gilbert, 49, of Louisville, KY, died January 11, 2023 at Baptist Health Louisville.

Survivors include his mother, Patty (Perryman) Gilbert of Marion, KY; brothers, Don Gilbert of Eddyville, KY and Chris (Helga) Gilbert of Louisville, KY; sister, Wendy Gilbert of Louisville, KY; aunt, Judy McDowell of Evansville, IN; nieces and nephews Anna, Isabel, Nick, and Luke; extended family in Marion, KY, Evansville, IN, and St. Louis, MO; and his close friends Ray and Alicia Ewing, and their children, Aiden, Riley, and Logan Ewing of Shepherdsville, KY. He was preceded in death by his father, Barry Gilbert.

Memorial services are scheduled for 2 PM Saturday January 14, 2023 at Gilbert Funeral Home in Marion, KY with interment in Mapleview Cemetery. The family will receive visitors from 10 AM until service time Saturday at the funeral home.

Fred was a licensed journeyman electrician, most recently with Beacon Electric Service. Over his career, he worked on many commercial and industrial projects in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Minnesota. He earned a degree in Applied Sciences while with the electrical union. Many members of Fred’s work family praised his skill, humor, and mentorship.
Fred was always willing to help out friends and family with electrical and automotive problems of any kind. He served as a one-man Pit Crew for Ray Ewing’s A & R Racing, and spent many weekends at racing circuits across Kentucky and southern Indiana. Additionally, is “Uncle Freddie” sponsorship logo graced the Aiden Ewing racing cart.
Over his young life, he worked as a bouncer, a DJ, a cook, a theatre attendant, and an upholstery shop assistant. He lived in Lone Oak, Louisville, Paducah, Russellville, Murray, Waddy, and Shepherdsville.
Fred was the youngest child, and took full advantage of his status as the baby of the family. He loved taking apart bicycles and cars more than he liked putting them back together. He was an excellent baseball player, was a switch hitter, and played with an ease and a grace that quickly propelled him past his older siblings. He loved fishing, UK basketball, working on cars, and video games. He played tuba, baritone, and the sousaphone. According to Fred, he invented the art of beat-boxing and a number of hip-hop’s signature dance moves.
And while most people knew him as Fred, over his life he went by many names: Scott, Scottie, Rick, Mr. Gilbert, The Gift, Dice, The Diceman, Freddie, and Chaka Fred.
If ever you thought Fred was the strong silent type, it was because he was mentally working on his sharp wit, sarcasm, and quick comebacks. His comic impressions of his friends and family were crushingly accurate. He loved telling hilariously embarrassing stories about his co-workers, friends, and family. He could be a customer service nightmare. He was so good at the Circle Game that his sister Wendy had to declare a 30-year immunity period to allow her arms to fully recover.

Fred could be hard-headed. Fred could be soft-hearted. Sometimes, he could be both. Fred was always unapologetically Fred. Fred was always going to Fred.

We wanted to share a story about Fred that summarized the essence of Fred, but we realized that Fred was the one who always told the best stories about us. His versions of our family stories were always the ones that made us laugh the hardest.

But perhaps Fred’s greatest legacy was his decision as a youth to stand front and center at our extended family’s first every professional photoshoot—a rare event in the early 1980’s for the Gilbert family that our grandmother Anna organized only once in her life. As the camera clicked, Fred crossed his eyes and contorted his face. In that moment, the photographer captured the first known recorded sighting of “the Fred Face.” A month later, grandmother Anna received the famed photo in the mail, wept openly at the sight of Fred, and grudgingly placed the photo on top of the television. From that esteemed location, “the Fred Face” gazed down on all future family gatherings, and became the inspiration for thousands of subsequent photographs of “the Fred Face.”

Over the ensuing decades, people wondered why our family has so many photos, and so many extra photos of ourselves. Thanks to “the Fred Face”, we all quickly learned that that we had to take three, five, sometimes 12 shots of any group photo, to get the one good shot of Fred. Over the decades, Fred continued to refine “the Fred Face”, photobombing his way through the photo albums and, eventually, the cell phones of the people who knew him. Future generations will not know which face of Fred was the true face of Fred.

In so many ways, Fred was at the center of what our family did, and shaped how we spent our time together. We are heartbroken at his loss. We are lucky to have had the time with Fred that we did.

Fred loved dogs, wildlife, and riding around the farm on the four-wheeler. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Mary Ruddiman-Hall Animal Shelter in Marion, Kentucky.