This Stewart County gentleman was born March 12, 1916 in
Chester
County Tennessee; he was the youngest of three children and was
named
for his mother’s two favorite brothers. He grew up in the small
town
of Middleton in western Tennessee and was twenty-five years old
when
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
It was a quiet Sunday morning and no one expected such a tragedy
was
going to occur; he was residing at Union University in Jackson,
Tennessee where he studied a quarter and then worked a quarter to
pay
his expenses. He believed that he was probably too old to be
inducted
and even though he was a pre-Med student, he was indeed drafted
into
the United States Army.
He met the love of his life and future wife during the summer of
1942
while he was a soldier in training at Ft. Benning. They began
to
court and kept the romance alive through letters that they
exchanged
during the entire campaign known as World War II.
They became a beloved couple at First Baptist Church in Richland
but
before I divulge his identity, let me tell you a few more facts
about
his background. During the war he served as a drill sergeant and
was
subsequently assigned overseas to a bread baking unit. Because
needed
supplies were blocked for months, the soldiers became wasted away
and
malnourished. Finally, when the Allies overcame, and World War
II
came to an end, he and his fellow soldiers were at long last
brought
home from the South Pacific.
The following spring he traveled to the Kappa Delta house at
the
University of Georgia and proposed marriage to the girl that he
had
loved since the day they met. They were married in July of 1946
in
Edison, Georgia, and according to one of their daughters, they
did
their part to start the “baby boom”. They spent their honeymoon
at
the Windsor Hotel in Americus where years later, they celebrated
their
golden wedding anniversary.
He never became a doctor, he thought he was too old to spend that
many
more years in college but he did complete his master’s degree
in
agriculture at the University of Mississippi and worked as a
teacher
and with a county farm agency until his wife requested to live
closer
to her mother. They moved onto a farm near Richland where he
managed
the local Purina feed store and raised 50,000 chicken biddies
to
adulthood in nine week intervals.
When the poultry market took a downturn, he then became
Richland’s one
and only mailman. Earl Davis and Gwen Merritt Davis were the
proud
parents of six daughters and raised their girls while teaching
Sunday
school and Earl proudly serving as a deacon. He cared for his
parents
as they suffered through dementia and was holding Gwen’s hand
when she
passed away nine years before he died.
Earl passed away from a stroke on his 91st birthday; their
surviving
daughters are Tere, Polly, Judy, Amy, Merritt and Melanie.