Jean M. Davis

Jean Marriott Davis, was born in Oneco, Connecticut, the daughter of Mary Helen (Flinn) and John Edward Marriott. Oneco is a small village bordering Rhode Island with a rich history in agriculture and quarrying. The surrounding Nicholas Farm Management Area helps preserve the pitch pine and deciduous forests, wetlands and fields, and provides a wonderful opportunity for recreation, canoeing, fishing, and birds and wildlife viewing.

Jean had a close family with her brother John and sisters Mary, Margaret, and Ethel. Ethel died as an infant in a house fire. The family later moved to Westerly, R. I., where quarrying Westerly granite and textile manufacturing were famous and summer tourism important -- with Weekapaug, Watch Hill, and other beaches and beautiful parks (i.e. Wilcox Park), and numerous historic districts and sites well worth visiting.

In 1928, she accompanied her mother by ship to Scotland to provide extended care for her grandmother, doing her schooling away from the classroom. A generation later, travel by ships would begin to be replaced by air planes.

At Westerly, she won first prize from the Industrial Trust Company and Washington Trust Company for the best essays by school children on "Why I Should Trade in Westerly on Westerly Day." Her articulate essay rings true today.

“I, as a resident of Westerly, feel that it is my duty to spend as much money as I possibly can in our local stores on "Westerly Day." The Westerly stores need my support, as well as that of every other citizen, if they are to meet with any success in these trying times. By trading in Westerly I will not only help these merchants, but assist in giving employment to many of our fellow citizens. By spending our money in the local stores, the merchants are enabled to give financial aid to charitable movements. It is in Westerly that the majority of our families earn their, and also our living, therefore, it is only fair that we should endeavor to keep our earnings in our own town, by spending it in our local stores. The merchandise in the Westerly stores is very attractively displayed thereby enticing our patronage. By trading in Westerly we also benefit ourselves, as our local stores offer goods of equal, if not better quality, at reasonable prices, as any of the stores in the nearby towns.

It is more economical and convenient for us to do our shopping in the local stores as it eliminates the expense of transportation. By trading in Westerly we also show our interest in the activities and welfare of the community.

I think all people living in Westerly should patronage our local stores on "Westerly Day," as they are getting goods of excellent quality in return for their money.”

Jean Marriott graduated from Westerly High School in 1938 with the highest honors and as class valedictorian. After graduation she worked at the Westerly Library and had vivid memories of the powerful 1938 Hurricane which forced them to remain in the library on Sunday, Sept. 21, 1938. Thousands of homes were destroyed and several hundred people killed, most of them in Rhode Island. The storm caught everyone by surprise, as shortly before 4 PM, Westerly was hit by the storm surge coinciding with a very high tide, resulting in 100 deaths there alone and many homes and beach communities obliterated. This was truly the darkest day in Rhode Island history. Inside the library they watched large trees outside sway back and forth until both the winds and saturated ground took away their rooting support, and they fell to the ground.

After high school she enrolled at Bryant College of Business Administration, in Providence, Rhode Island. She was in the executive secretarial course of the college, and received the degree of bachelor of secretarial science. She, along with Skeet Rodger, commuted from Westerly by train to classes in Providence. In 1987, Earl Tupper (alumnus and inventor of Tupperware) donated his estate for the new campus in Southfield, R. I. which opened in 1971. In 2004 the college became Bryant University.

During her college studies she worked at the Westerly Sun, which can boast with pride that it was the first publication to report the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. On that Sunday, she assisted the sports editor with type and block setting to get the headline and story out in the afternoon edition.

During World War II she worked for John Hancock Company in Boston. She would occasionally take in Red Sox games in the bleachers at Fenway Park. She met Philip Davis and they were married on June 8, 1943 at the Calvary Baptist Church in Westerly, Rhode Island. After his honorable discharge from the Navy in 1945, they moved to Durham, N.H. to work and raise a family, with a university available.

Durham was founded in 1635, at the falls of the Oyster River, as a part of Dover. It was destroyed by a French-American Indian force, and was rebuilt, becoming the separate parish, Durham, in 1716. Durham grew dramatically after World War II. Thom was born in 1949 and Scott in 1952. They had a dog, Jasper, who would get bored and run off to the university horticultural farms and music classes when they went indoors for naps. They had to find Jasper another home on a farm, but Jean continued her affection for pets, including two cats. She was also an avid reader and a supporter of nature and wilderness, which became a focus of many of her travels in later years.

In Durham, she worked at Craig Supply, a dry cleaning supply company, next to the old Boston & Maine railroad station in Durham, now the site of a restaurant-depot and a parking and transportation hub for the university. She later was the administrative assistant for the Oyster River elementary school and then for George Sawyer (in Durham, the president of Larchfield Corporation, a holding company with interests in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles). After George’s retirement, she worked at the Durham Bank, and Old Porte Bank in Portsmouth, N.H. Until 1973 she also was the bookkeeper for the Davis Court Apartments, as well as an apartment in their Durham house, meeting many people affiliated with the university.

A wonderful garden of vegetables, fruits, and flowers occupied much of the back space to the home in Durham. Despite the hard work weeding, tilling and swatting pesky flies, there were often enough strawberries and vegetables to be sold locally or to the neighborhood. Both Jean and Phil shared gardening advice with neighbors, Ed and Florence Rasmussen. Jean and their daughter, Mary Rasmussen, taught Thom and Scott tennis, swimming and skiing. Jean would drive both sons and friends to the mountains for skiing until they were licensed to drive themselves.

She was a dedicated caregiver for Philip who became very ill in the fall of 1967, passing in the spring of 1968. In 1973 she visited England for the first time since she was eight years old, enjoying socializing with cousins and others. She was able to take what she had read and heard about to understand and experience world history and cultures from her travels. Later, the Active Retirement Association (ARA) and travel companions helped inspire her to absorb many more trips throughout North America and overseas.

Highlights of some of her trips included several more visits to cousins and friends in England and Scotland in 1977, when she also traveled to Norway. She went back to England in 1981 (where she saw the wedding of Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral), and in 1983 and 1985 for cousins Don and Mabel’s 5oth wedding anniversary. She returned for Don’s 80th birthday and other visits in the 1990’s. The visits to England always involved nice walks in the countryside, rain or shine.

Through ARA she met Muriel Knecht and others, forging friendships, and going to Ireland in 1981, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy in 1982, and Russia and Eastern Europe in 1989. Shorter cultural trips included Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, Boston, and Portland, Maine--most all with combined musical and cultural venues.

She frequently visited and traveled with her sons -- Colorado and Arizona in 1975, Oregon, Washington, and California in 1980, British Columbia and Alberta (with Muriel) in 1985, Alaska in 1990, Canyon lands of Colorado, Utah and Arizona in 1994, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in 1997, Southeastern United States in 2001, and the Canadian Maritimes in 2002.

She also treasured trips throughout New England with her sisters Mary Toland and Alice Marriott, nieces Mary Karoll and Jean Marriott, cousins, friends, and especially annual visits to her nieces and family at Thanksgiving (Connecticut) and in the winter to Florida. The Tanglewood music festival, home to the Boston Symphony in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts was a favorite destination, as well as New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington, North Conway, Franconia Notch and the Old Man (which fell in 2003), and Acadia National Park in Maine. Jean also attended UNH college hockey games with Priscilla Phoenix and her sons when they visited Durham.

Jean was a member of the Community of Durham, the choir of that church, Seacoast Singers, Active Retirement Association, Mount Washington Observatory, and N.H. Council of World Affairs. Her travels had also had a focus on cultures, history, and nature.

After living 55 years in Durham and Dover, she moved in 2003 with Scott to Lakewood, Colorado where she was cared for in assisted living and in a small nursing home until her death on February 23, 2011.

Some of her best friends and correspondents were Skeet Rodger of Weekapaug, R. I., Betsy Saunders of Barrington, N.H., both with whom she visited regularly in New England. Also, her niece Mary Karoll, and Tom and Mary Madson of Concord, N.H., in addition to Skeet and Betsy, sent many cards and pictures of support to Jean, throughout her stay in Colorado.

She is dearly missed by many friends and family, especially by sons P. Thompson Davis, Professor of Geology at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Scott E. Davis, scientist for the Dept. of Interior, Bureau of Land Management in Lakewood, Colorado, as well as numerous nephews and nieces and their families in the New England area. A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, May 21, 2:30 P.M., at the Community Church, Durham. Memorial donations may be made to the Mount Washington Observatory, P.O. Box 2310, North Conway, NH 03860, the Alzheimer's Association, NH Chapter, 5 Bedford Farms Drive, Suite 201, Bedford, NH 03110-6524, or Cocheco Valley Humane Society, 262 County Farm Road, Dover, NH 03820.

Some of her favorite scriptures and verses:

Daily Prayer

I want to thank you, Lord, for being close to me so far

this day. With your help I haven’t been impatient, lost

my temper, been grumpy, judgmental, or envious of

anyone. But, I will be getting out of bed in a

minute and I think I will really need your help then.

Amen.

Unison Confession (A Prayer of St. Francis)

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine One, grant that we may not so much seek to be

Consoled as to console, to be understood as to

Understand, to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that

We are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to

Eternal life. Amen.

Rabindranath Tagore:

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield but to my own strength.

Let me not cave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone;

But let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.

Psalm 100

Sing for joy to the Lord, all the world!

Worship the Lord gladly, and come before him with joyful songs!

Never forget that the Lord is God! He made us, and we belong to him;

we are his people, we are his flock. Enter this temple with thanksgiving,

go into his sanctuary with praise! Give thanks to him and praise him!

The Lord is good; his love lasts forever, and his faithfulness for all time.

Psalm 150

Praise the lord! Praise God in his temple!

Praise his strength in heaven! Praise him for the mighty things he has done!

Praise his supreme greatness! Praise him with trumpets!

Praise him with harps and lyres! Praise him with drums and dancing!

Praise him with harps and flutes! Praise him with Cymbals!

Praise him with loud cymbals! Praise the Lord, all living creatures!

Praise the Lord! I am always here to understand you

I am always here to laugh with you I am always here

to cry with you I am always here to talk with you

I am always here to think with you I am always here to plan with you

Even though we might not always be together please know that

I am always here to love you

Matterhorn

--Paul E. Ertel

To every man there is a Matterhorn,

An alpine world of granite fears and forms

That gouges deep into the mystic sky

Where distant views contend with raging storms.

Each day he dares to struggle inch by inch

Against shear walls of doubt with every breath,

And when he beds down in the dark to rest,

His gnawing hunger speaks to him of death.

The rising sun, though, shows him toiling on,

Until at last he stands, a man reborn

Atop the mountain he has won; and lo,

He sees that he himself is Matterhorn.

On the quiet summits, like a painter, one can view events in true perspective. The only things that matter are immediate: the next foot- or fingerhold, the drifting mist or snow, the darkening sky. Life is challenging and, with no pretenses, life is good. With climbing comes an uplift not only of the body but of the spirit and the mind. There is no competition with one’s fellows, no silly jealousies of the man in the higher salary scale; one’s hopes are simple and decent. There is no worshipping of false idols but, instead, a deep awareness of a Creator.

To Ponder in the New Year

On the wall of an old inn in Lancaster, England

Give us, Lord, a bit o’ sun,

A bit o’ work and a bit o’ fun;

Give us all in the struggle and sputter

Our daily bread and a bit o’ butter;

Give us health; our keep to make,

An’ a bit to spare for others’ sake;

Give us sense, for we’re some of us duffers,

An’ a heart to feel for all that suffers;

Give us, too, a bit of a song

And a tale, and a book to help us along.

An’ give us our share o’ sorrow’s lesson

That we may prove how grief’s a blessin’.

Give us Lord, a chance to be

Our goodly best, brave, wise, and free,

Our goodly best for ourselves and others,

Till all men learn to live as brothers.