Jimmie Fredrick Davidson passed away on June 22, 2019, at Odessa Medical Center Hospital, at the age of 83 years. He was born on October 24, 1935, in Gladewater (Upshur County), Texas, to Minnie (Durham) and Riley Franklin “Buck” Davidson. During his childhood and adolescence, his family moved back and forth between the family farm in Arkansas, and the oil fields of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico, although Odessa was his primary home.
He attended Odessa High School and graduated in 1954. Jimmie then enlisted in the United States Navy, and served four years aboard the U.S. S. Nicholas, a Fletcher-class destroyer, as a fire control technician. Stationed out of Pearl Harbor, during his service he visited the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, among other ports of call. After receiving an Honorable Discharge in 1958, he returned to Odessa and briefly attended Odessa College on the G.I. Bill. Receiving training on analog computers and solid-state electronics while in the Navy, he soon secured a position emphasizing these skills at an oil field services company, Lane Wells, and continued as a dip-log engineer after they merged with Dresser-Atlas in 1968.
On February 28, 1964, he married Sandra Ann Armstrong, at the Belmont Baptist Church in Odessa. He and his wife had two children: Samantha Ann, born in 1965, and James Michael, born in 1967.
During the oil bust years of the late 1980s, he secured other employment, and took the time to revisit college; in 1994, he received an associate’s degree, in electrical and electronics technology from Odessa College. Throughout his life, he was an outdoorsman, hunter, and rifle and pistol marksman – winning several shooting competitions – as well as gunsmith and expert on the history of small arms. Since his Navy days, Jimmie also used photography to capture the world around him. He employed several 35mm slr and medium format cameras, maintained a darkroom, and would print his own black and white images. He had a fondness for poetry, penning his own verse. His favorite poets were Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson and most especially, Rudyard Kipling. He could recite scores of poems from memory, including verse from Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. He was an avid home gardener, and grew vegetables and flowers for many years. He always had dogs in his life, treating them all as his dearest companions. His love of nature was demonstrated most vividly through his visits to the Guadalupe Mountains, always with his life-long friend, W. L. Sibley.
Of his immediate family, he is preceded in death by his father Riley (1979), mother Minnie (1980), brother Carl T. Davidson (2010), and sister Wanda Davidson (1936). He is survived by his wife Sandra Ann (Armstrong) Davidson, sister Martha “Sis” (Davidson) Boyd, daughter Samantha Ann (Davidson) Robertson and son-in-law John Robertson (Rochester Hills, Michigan), son James Michael Davidson and daughter-in-law Alyson Dew (Hawthorne, Florida), three grandchildren – Ian Michael Robertson and Jacob Riley Robertson (Michigan), and Henry Dew Davidson (Florida) – as well as numerous nephews, nieces, and their children.
In the summing up, he was a little larger than life; a seasoned campaigner, a raconteur of tall tales, an unwavering friend, and beloved of friends and family – we love you, you “grumpy old man.”
No formal funeral services will be held, though a private celebration of his life will occur at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or your local animal shelter, are encouraged.
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