The Davis legacy

Sometimes they knew, and sometimes they didn't, these people Walter Royal Davis treated to everything from ice cream to college educations. He was a big man who liked to live big, to give big.

One fellow trustee from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- Davis served on the board for 16 years -- recalled a day in 1999 when trustees heard an appeal to help victims of Hurricane Floyd. Davis, who didn't see well, asked this board member to write his check for a donation. "Make it for a hundred," Davis said. "A hundred dollars?" the trustee asked. "No," Davis said. "A hundred thousand."

Davis died Monday in Chapel Hill at the age of 88 after what it would be an understatement to call a long and productive and generous life.

He was the son of a Pasquotank County farmer and never went to college but saw to it that thousands of others could go. That was thanks to the fortune Davis made in the oil business in Texas, where he moved after driving trucks and clerking at a store. Davis borrowed money to buy five tanker trucks in the early 1950s, eventually merged what was by then a huge company with Occidental Petroleum, and found success again with a new company.

UNC-Chapel Hill, and other higher-education institutions as well, were recipients of Davis' generosity. The main library at UNC-CH is named for him. Davis also supported the political careers of Tar Heel politicians. He gave generously, and did not hesitate to voice his opinions to university leaders and to governors and senators and presidents.

He knew many such people, of course. But Davis also never forgot his humble beginnings on a potato farm, and he was known to leave outsize tips in restaurants and to help many who might have crossed his path. Actor Andy Griffith, a friend of Davis, put it this way, "He gave to people that nobody even knows about." (Griffith, of Manteo, knew about Davis giving fifth-graders there an ice cream endowment.) That's perhaps the best kind of giving, and Davis did a lot of it.

Davis' story is one of a fellow from rural North Carolina who tugged on his own bootstraps, achieved success known to few and then shared his good fortune helping to improve the fortunes of others. It is a worthy and inspiring story, indeed.