 He was husband of Mary Scales, the first black faculty member at Middle Tennessee State University and similarly pioneering member of the City Council and City School Board of Murfreesboro, and father of Madelyn Scales Harris, who was elected to the same City Council in 2010.Robert Winston Scales was born to Henry Preston and Willie Burkeen Scales on June 22, 1926.The couple owned and managed the Scales & Son Funeral Home; founded by Preston Scales in 1916, the business was the first black-owned funeral home in Murfreesboro and in Rutherford County, Tennessee.