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Dr. John Edward Davis, Jr
(November 18,
1922 - February 4, 2006)
Dr. John Edward Davis, Jr., Professor of Biology, Emeritus, died
February 4, 2006, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He was born November 18,
1922, in Welch, West Virginia, the son of Dr. John E. Davis and Irene
Cline Davis.
He attended public
schools in Welch and graduated from the Kentucky Military Institute
in 1939. At the age of 16, he entered Randolph-Macon College where he
was a pre-medical student and member of Kappa Alpha Order. After
three and one-half years, he entered the University of Maryland
School of Medicine. He enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1943 and served
as a surgical technician with the 167th General Hospital in Normandy
during World War II.
After the war, Dr.
Davis attended the University of Virginia, earning the degrees of
Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. Between
studies for his degrees, he taught mathematics at Gary High School in
Gary, West Virginia, and biology at Washington and Lee University. He
was elected to Sigma Xi, the national scientific research honor
society in 1954.
In 1949, he married
Katherine Vivian Smith of Charlotte, North Carolina. They had one
child, John Edward Davis, III, born in 1951.
In 1956, he and his
family moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he had been
appointed to the faculty of the Department of Biology at Wake Forest
College.
During his tenure at
Wake Forest, he taught embryology and histology to undergraduate and
graduate students at the college and to nursing students at Bowman
Gray School of Medicine.
He conducted
research on the prolonged effects of low-level radiation on the
developing coronary vessels of chick embryos, the results of which
were published in the Anatomical Record in 1966. He also researched
the mean weights of chick embryos correlated with the stages of
Hamburger and Hamilton, published in the Journal of Morphology in
1968.
In 1967, Dr. Davis
conceived the creation of the University Mace. He oversaw its design
and fabrication, and carried it in its inaugural ceremony in his role
as Faculty Marshal.
He came to
Harrisonburg, Virginia in 1968, upon his appointment as Chairman of
the Department of Biology at Madison College. He was subsequently
named Provost of the college, responsible for the development of all
instructional programs, curricula and courses of study. He later
returned to full-time teaching, before retiring as Professor Emeritus
from James Madison University in 1986.
Fluent in French,
Dr. Davis and his wife traveled extensively throughout Europe. In
2004, they celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. He was avidly
interested in the history of World War II, and amassed an extensive
library on the subject. He was particularly proud of his familial
roots in colonial Tidewater Virginia, which extended to England and
France and directly to William the Conqueror and Charlemagne.
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