Faculty & Staff
Eulogy for Lowery Davis
Posted October 24, 2008 by admin
Lowery H. Davis, former dean of the New Mexico State University College of Human and Community Services, now the College of Health and Social Services, passed away in Las Cruces October 4th at the age of 87. According to many NMSU Alamogordo Faculty & Staff, Lowery was a consistent and effective supporter of NMSU-A during his tenure. For a NMSU Communications Release on Dean Davis, please see: NMSU remembers first dean of College of Human and Community Services.
Dr. David Townsend presented a eulogy for Lowery Davis on October 9th. Here it is in full:
EULOGY for LOWERY DAVIS
Delivered by David Townsend
October 9, 2008
Several years ago, Lowery called me in Alamogordo and, serious, as only Lowery could be, asked if I would do a eulogy at his funeral. Equally seriously, I told him I had a very crowded calendar and what date did he have in mind? Lowery, very serious by this time, told me I would never amount to anything because I could not get serious. I agreed to do the eulogy because there is no graceful way to decline. Besides, I loved Lowery Davis and was honored by the request, hoping this day would never come, but it has.
The thing is: I feel generally unworthy of doing the eulogy that Lowery wanted done and deserved. The problem is well summed up in the thought that comes readiest to mind. A quotation from Shakespeare: almost the last lines in Julius Caesar:
His life was gentle and the elements
So mixed in him that nature might stand up
And say to all the world “This was a man.”
Lowery Davis was a man. He was a gentleman in the best sense of that oft-misused word: a gentle man.
But the elements did mix in him and there is the rub. I recognized certain elements in him that you might not recognize. Lowery was a man of simple values but very complex human relations. I invite you to tune me out and write your own eulogy of Lowery, one that defines him for you and for your recognition of certain elements that go unmentioned by me. Please don’t think I am quitting speaking at this point. I will continue, but you do not have to agree or even listen.
I think most of us would agree that Lowery was a man of simple values in many senses of the oft-misused phrase today. Lowery’s solid anchor was his family. Doris, kids, he loved you so deeply that it entered into just about every conversation I ever had with Lowery. During the last few years when things got really tough for him, I think he loved you even more. Doris, I have never seen a loving-care as encompassing as was yours. He told me that regularly.
Lowery loved his church and his religion. They were more than incidental to his life. They were a guide for his actions and his dealing with others.
Lowery loved his profession and he loved working for NMSU. He felt Gerald Thomas was the best president possible. He felt surrounded by worthy people who were trying to accomplish something beyond just time-serving.
I suspect all of you in writing your eulogy of Lowery would recognize in some way these simple values. But now comes the hard part: what was so distinct in my relationship—your relationship—with Lowery that we might go our own way in our eulogies.
My Lowery was a man of great good humor. He and I spoke the same language: some patois of English that came of the South. Mine came through with a touch of Texas although my father came from Georgia. Lowery loved the language and he loved to play with it and to tell stories based on some expression that tickled him. He might have told you, as he did me, about the man who used the expression “two-edged sword”—that is two edgid swoord. Or the man who refused to buy into the insurance program at the school until the Superintendent threatened to fire him. He gladly bought in because no one had “’splained” it to him before. Lowery and I had phrases that became the key to conversation for us. I urged him never to ask people of a certain age how they were feeling because it would precipitate a “symptom recital.” He loved that and would not hesitate to ask me for a symptom recital, whereupon I would cover the latest mortality and morbidity report concerning our mutual friends in Alamogordo. One story: I told Lowery about a friend, a lady of retirement years, widely read, retired librarian, named June who uses the same language Lowery and I used. A funeral was being held for a rather beloved individual in our community. Several of us filled the pews, leaving a couple of seats near the front of the church. Our retired librarian came a bit late and occupied one of the seats. As fate would have it, another late comer seated herself in the other. She was a woman rather widely disliked, especially by June, and they bristled a bit. After the service, June said to me, “She just spoiled that funeral for me. I did not enjoy it at all.” Lowery loved the story and asked me not to spoil this funeral for you.
My eulogy for Lowery would also have to call to your attention a little-known or-observed aspect of his career. Lowery came to NMSU in 1970. He came as the Dean of Continuing Education. It fell to his charge to try to do something with the branch campuses. For those of us who had labored in the branches, he was a breath of fresh air. Nobody knew what we were. Nobody knew how we fit into the general scheme of things. The politics of the situation were that, if NMSU did not get this figured out UNM or Eastern or somebody else would. Gerald Thomas believed, and still does, in the concept of the land-grant institution: “that all may learn.” Gerald needed someone who could get these twenty-year old fledgling institutions rounded up and headed out. Lowery was his man. He did the job, but something even more miraculous occurred. Lowery emerged as the leader of vision and courage the branches needed. We found direction and pride and vision that we had never had. We had a voice on campus that we had never had. It was tough at times: we went from a policy of “salutary neglect” to one of “understanding where we are going and getting there, or getting left behind.” Lowery remains as one of the most formative of leaders in the branch campus movement. His courage and devotion made his name famous among the branch colleges today.
My eulogy of Lowery would conclude with a facet of his background that he and I shared in common. We had both been reared in a tradition of memorization common in the churches and schools many years ago. Lowery was Baptist. I had been reared in that tradition until I “fell away”—forgive me—and became Presbyterian. But the Bible drill of the Royal Ambassadors remained. We could recite favorite verses and while away hours as some dull meeting plodded its way toward close. Some verses summed up so much for us. I think both our minds settled on some verses from Micah as a guide to an effective religion.
Micah–Chapter 6—Verses 6-8
6 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
That seemed to get at the essence of religion for both of us, particularly if you leaven it with Galatians.
Galatians—Chapter 5—Verses 22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
We weren’t Biblical scholars enough to explain everything. We knew it would rain on the just and the unjust; we knew that the race was not always to the swiftest; we knew that there was a season for everything under the heavens; we knew that whatever our hand found to do should be done with all our might; and we knew to thank God for the multitude of his tender mercies. That generally was enough, even if we could not explain what the 28th chapter of Job meant when it says that the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Neither of us worshipped a too fearful God.
I shared with him one time my favorite bit of Bible verse. Lowery seemed to resonate with the verses. Doris, kids, I hold it out for you. It’s from the book of Joel. The situation is that a plague of locusts has come upon the land. The crops and the spirit of the people have been devastated. It was, no doubt, a feeling of devastation like you are feeling now. Would happiness ever return? God sent Joel to say to the people:
Joel—Chapter 2—Verses 23-25
23 Be glad then you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for He hath given you the former rain moderately, and He will cause to come down for you the rain the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.
24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25 And I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten….
We did the same thing with bits of verse remembered from earlier days. A bit of a side note, my wife and I were in NY on 9-11. There were six of us in our group, all educated in the tradition of memorized poetry. We spent a week in that distracted city, and poetry became a sort of refuge, a clinging to something more civilized. Lowery and I were more Bible literate than poetry literate. I think I caught his attention with my favorite bit of Whitman
From part six of Song of Myself
From part six of SONG OF MYSELF
By WALT WHITMAN
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon from out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All go onward and outward—and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
But the one thing Lowery insisted on in this, his eulogy was Crossing the Bar.
CROSSING THE BAR
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
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