DAVIS, HOMER

DAVIS, HOMER

HOMER WOODHULL DAVIS

President of Athens College

Hellenic Times

September 7, 1984

Homer Woodhull Davis, for 30 years President of Athens College in. Greece, died August 27, 1984 at age 88 on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He was born in Suffolk County, New York of early Long Island settlers. He was a graduate of Hamilton College, from which he later received an honorary Doctorate. He began his lifetime career in American sponsored overseas education, at Robert College of Istanbul in 1920, where he met and in married 'Marjorie Weston Cook, who was to be his inseparable companion for 56 years until her death in 1977. After brief service as a teacher, Homer Davis was appointed Principal in 1927 and President of Athens College in Greece in 1930.

At the outbreak of the Second World War the Davises returned to the U.S.A. From September 1941 to May 1942, Homer Davis was chief of project licensing division of the Board of Economic Warfare. The next nine months were spent as executive vice president of the Greek War Relief. At the beginning of 1943 he joined the State Department as special assistant, to the Foreign Service Auxiliary and was assigned to the American Consulate General in Istanbul, In 1944 he, returned to Athens as Public Relations Officer with UNRRA. In 1946 Homer. And Marjorie Davis returned to Athens College where they remained, until their retirement to Cape Cod in 1976.

The following is an excerpt, of a resolution by the Trustees on the occasion of Homer Davis' retirement in June of 1960:

"The debt of Athens College to

Homer Davis lies warm in the

Hearts of its graduates; it lives in the

sap of the trees he has nourished and

In the beauty of, the campus He has

created.

Dr. Davis is survived by his brother Charles J. R., Davis of Trumbull, Connecticut, and several nephews. A private

burial was held in a Long Island family plot in Coram, New York.