b. February 12, 1930

by Page H. Onorato, Grace Episcopal Church, Lexington, NC, 2016

Mary Dauch Davis came to Lexington, North Carolina, as a bride in 1956. Raised in Ohio, she met her future husband, Gray Davis, in Denver where she was teaching kindergarten after graduating from Oberlin College. She agreed to teach the young man how to play bridge.

Mary wasn’t impressed with Gray’s charms, especially when he flicked cigarette ashes on her newly vacuumed carpet. But he soon won her heart, and the attractive, well-educated Yankee girl found herself living in a small, racially segregated southern town, where furniture and textile industries had made a few residents very wealthy and provided many jobs.

The move was a culture shock for Mary; her husband was a member of a socially prominent family and she was invited to join the society of the community. Mary found herself at a loss in a region where blacks were treated as second-class citizens. As a child in Sandusky, Mary was outraged when her grammar school class was taken to a nearby pool to learn swimming and her classmate, Louise Alexander, an African-American, was not allowed in the pool.

On her first visit to a local movie theater, she pointedly drank from a water fountain marked “Colored.” She resigned from a prestigious charitable women’s organization because it had an all-white membership. She applied her skills and energy to working for causes to aid the underprivileged. Early in the 1960’s, she wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper protesting the closing of a furniture plant’s employees’ swimming pool to avoid integrating the facility. She and her family received severe criticism, including death threats, from members of the community.

Mary was instrumental in founding Contact, an organization which offered a telephone Hot Line for people in crisis situations. Under her direction, this endeavor evolved into the Domestic Violence Agency, providing guidance and a haven for those in emergency situations.

Early in the 1980s Mary was instrumental in establishing a Hospice program in Davidson County. After serving as volunteer director and after earning a master’s degree from UNC-Greensboro, she worked as head bereavement counselor for many years.

In the late 1980s, Mary and two concerned citizens decided to address the dire need in Lexington for low-cost home ownership. The dream of owning a home was just unattainable for many. Armed with a strong will, these three champions began meeting at Grace Episcopal Church and in 1988 formed what is now Habitat for Humanity of Lexington, NC.

Mary and Gray were active members of Grace Episcopal Church, acting as leaders of the Episcopal Youth program, on the Social Concerns Commission and the Refugee Resettlement Program; serving on the Vestry where Mary was among the first female vestry members. She was instrumental in the church’s accepting girls as acolytes.

Her many accomplishments in the areas of equal rights, public assistance for the needy, palliative and bereavement issues and other social concerns have made her an invaluable asset to the community.