Isabel Gehman Davis died at the age of 93 on May 23, 2018, at The Fairfax in Ft. Belvoir, VA. Born on Nov. 3, 1924, in Ephrata, PA, to Paul K. and E. Irene Gehman, she grew up an accomplished musician – pianist, cellist and vocalist – and earned her B.S. in Business Education at what was then Bloomsburg State Teachers College. There she met her future husband, William Joseph Davis, late in WWII when his Navy V-12 unit studied there. The couple eloped on July 15, 1946, in Brooklyn, NY. After teaching high school, while her husband completed his bachelor’s degree and joined the USMC as a 2nd Lt., Mrs. Davis became a loving mother; Navy League, hospital and school library volunteer and, later, a librarian, while either following her husband on tours of duty across the USA and in Naples, Italy, or awaiting his return from war or unaccompanied tours of duty in Asia. When her husband retired after more than 30 years on active duty, the couple settled in San Diego, CA, where Mrs. Davis specialized in trusts as a legal assistant in a small law firm for more than a decade. She was a survivor of breast cancer and also of a southern California wild fire that burned their house to the ground in fall, 2007. Mrs. Davis returned to the Washington, DC, area early in 2010 to be nearer her daughter following her husband’s death.
Mrs. Davis is survived by her beloved daughter, Karen; son-in-law, Clark Madigan and granddaughter Caithlin. She is also survived by step-granddaughters, Lisa Madigan-Carey (Tony) and Leslie Keldsen (Kyle) and her two children. Her sister, Sara Elizabeth Freidinger, pre-deceased her.
Friends and family are invited to Mrs. Davis’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA, at 1pm on July 18, 2018. (Guests are asked to gather in the cemetery’s Administration Building 30-45 minutes before the start of the funeral.)
In lieu of flowers, please make donations in memory of Mrs. Davis and in honor of her granddaughter, Caithlin Madigan, to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Capitol Chapter, 1400 K St., NW, #725, Washington, DC 20005.
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