On the day that UNC-Chapel Hill plays Duke in basketball I though it was appropriate to remember Burke Davis, a Carolina grad who pulled for Duke. This appreciation was written when I found out about his death.
Recently, my old friend Stephen G. Willis, who now lives south of Richmond with his wife Susan and two children, emailed me with the news that Burke Davis had died. Steve wanted to know if I had read the biography of Marine Chesty Puller, one of the forty-seven books written by Davis, and if not Steve, the former U. S. Army tank driver, would send it to me. Steve felt that since my new son in law Casey Wilson had served in the Marine Corps that I should read it. Steve loves to tell people that as kids he read J. E. B. Stuart, The Last Cavalier by Burke Davis before the “Founder” of the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace. Steve was also the first person to give money to save Laurel Hill, Stuart’s Birthplace in Ararat, Virginia. What many people might not know is for many years Davis and his wife lived in Meadows of Dan overlooking the Rock Castle Gorge across the gorge from the pull off along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Patrick County, Virginia, where J. E. B. Stuart was born.
The obituary read simply “Walter Burke Davis, Jr., age 93, writer and historian, died August 18, 2006 in Greensboro, North Carolina.” W. Burke Davis meant more to me than I could ever put in words. He was the person that brought James Ewell Brown Stuart to life for me and many others in his 1957 book J. E. B. Stuart, The Last Cavalier, but he was more than simply the author of the book. In 1990, Judge Peter Hairston took me with him to Chapel Hill to the North Carolinian Society meeting where Burke Davis received an award. The excitement I felt on meeting Davis was akin to my daughter Ashley being turned loose in a shopping mall with her father’s money. I explained to Burke Davis my plans to preserve Stuart’s Birthplace in Ararat and he heartily endorsed our efforts.
Over the next few years Burke and his lovely wife Judy showed up at events in support of the preservation of Stuart’s Birthplace. At the first encampment, Burke Davis was seen with a grandchild along the Ararat River explaining who Stuart was to his offspring without ever telling us he was there. During talks such as when James I. Robertson, Jr. spoke at the Reynolds Homestead for the Birthplace, there in the audience quietly taking it all in were Burke and Judy. During the first two years of fund raising for the Birthplace, a royalty check from his publisher for his part of the proceeds for his book on Stuart would arrive signed over the Birthplace. Finally, one of the proudest documents I possess is a letter from Burke to J. E. B. Stuart IV expressing confidence in me and the effort to preserve Laurel Hill.
Walter Burke Davis, Jr. came into the world in Durham, North Carolina as the son of to W. B. and Harriet Jackson Davis. The family moved to Greensboro in 1919 and he was educated in the city’s public schools and later attended Duke University and Guilford College. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1937 with a degree in journalism. Burke Davis was that rarest of men, a UNC grad that pulled for the Duke Blue Devils. I use to say tongue in cheek that he overcame his education.
He worked for twenty-seven years as a newspaper man was on the Charlotte News, the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Greensboro Daily News. Davis also served as a special writer for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and wrote a history of the Southern Railway for the railroad. Davis was a co-founder of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens of Duke University and a board member of the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. Horticulture, the care of ornamental and vegetable gardens, was among his chief interests. He served as a Juror for Biography for the Pulitzer Prizes in the 1980s. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Guilford College and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Greensboro College.
He was preceded in death by three sisters, Marjorie Hulton, Virginia King and Marian D. Plummer. He is survived by the former Juliet Halliburton Burnett; his wife of 24 years, which time he referred to as “My halcyon days.” Additional survivors are two children of a previous marriage, Angela Davis-Gardner of Raleigh, North Carolina, and Walter Burke Davis, III and his wife, Kelly Cherry of Halifax, Virginia. Davis leaves four grandchildren: Sarah D. (Mrs. Jason) Long and Kathryn D. (Mrs. Matthew) Brigger, both of Clarksburg, Maryland, D. Williams of Broad Run, VA, and Heath Gardner of Raleigh, North Carolina. There are two great-grandchildren. Other survivors who have welcomed him into their lives are his stepson, Timothy B. Burnett and wife, Jane of Greensboro, and their daughters, Allison (Mrs. Brenton L.) Smith and her husband of New York, Catherine Burnett of Chapel Hill and Elizabeth Burnett of New York, Also especially close in his affection are the children of his step-daughter, Miranda B. Miles, Brian Miles and his wife, Clara of Niceville, Florida and Hallie Miles Bouchard and her husband, Marcian of Durham. There are also four great-grandchildren. The last time I saw Burke Davis and his wife Judy was at a performance of Frank Levering’s play The Last Cavalier based on Burke’s book now nearly fifty years old. It was appropriate that the last time I saw him was at this wonderful production based on his writings about Patrick County’s most famous son because without him many of us would not know “Jeb” Stuart. One line from Frank’s play came to mind as I thought about our recently departed friend and wrote this appreciation. When Stuart describes his tall Prussian Heros Von Borcke being wounded, “a giant has fallen.” Burke Davis was the author of 47 books, chiefly military history and biography, but also wrote historical and natural history works for young readers. Davis is best known for his books on the Civil War, all of which remain in print after fifty years. Davis won the Mayflower Award in 1959 for his book, To Appomattox: Six April Days as the best non-fiction work by a North Carolina writer. He is the only person ever named to the North Carolina Hall of Fame in both literature and journalism. He was named Distinguished Alumnus of Guilford College and received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Greensboro College. A number of his books were presented to the White House Library by the American Library Association. For many years his titles were among the Fifty Notable Books as listed annually by The New York Times. Burke Davis rests today in Greensboro’s Forest Lawn Cemetery next door to the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield he wrote about and the place J. E. B. Stuart’s great-grandfather Major Alexander Stuart was captured by Banastre Tarleton during the 1781 battle. At his request there was no memorial service. If you knew Burke Davis you would understand why. I never met anyone with so many reasons not to be humble that was. Once I asked him to come speak for the Birthplace and he declined saying with a wink and a big smile that he had “lost his marbles.” He commented that no one would be interested in hearing him speak. He could not have been more incorrect about anything in his life. When Ken Burns was looking around for a Southerner to be a “talking head” for his monumental PBS series called The Civil War, Burke Davis was going to do it if Shelby Foote declined. The mere fact that his books are still in print speaks to his talents as a writer and a historian. His book on Stuart holds up nearly fifty years after publication as the most readable and one of the best researched of the five soon to be six biographies (Jeffrey Wert is writing a new one) of the man from Patrick County. W. Burke Davis was proud he chose “The Free State of Patrick” as home and we should be too. I will miss him, but we still have him in nearly fifty readable books. If you could look up what a “Southern” gentleman and a scholar should be, you would find Burke Davis.
For more information about Burke Davis and his writings visit the following website. http://www.ncwriters.org/services/lhof/inductees/bdavis.htm
Steve’s mother the lovely Carol Young Willis Clement gave me the book on Chesty Puller this week, which got me thinking about Burke.
