For Mary M. Davis, aging was a blessing

The older I get, the older old becomes.

The thresh-old has been running about 25 years before whatever age I happen to be.

The extraordinary life of Mary McClintock Davis, who died last week at age 103, has me thinking about doubling that estimate.

Mary “retired” as a dean at St. Mary’s Episcopal School in 1979. That was the year I got married.

I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime in that time. I’ve got two kids in their 30s, and none at home. My mortgage is nearly paid off. I’m old enough to join the AARP.

Heck, I’m old enough to remember a time when cells held prisoners, apples grew on trees and computers scribbled f igures on ledgers.

Mary Davis hired a tutor to teach her how to use an iPad when she was 102 years old, after her fingers no longer would type on her computer.

Her first book, a history of St. Mary’s School, was published when she was in her 80s. She wrote her second book, a personal history, when she was 99 years old, even as her sight was failing her.

She enrolled at Memphis Theological Seminary as she was about to turn 100.

She delivered MIFA Meals on Wheels to “seniors” who were decades younger than she was.

A few years ago, when she could still walk, Mary and her friend, Carmine Vaughan, took a meal to a sketchy apartment complex. On their way inside, they passed young men milling around outside the doorways and inside the hallways.

“I said, ‘Mary, I don’t know if we should be in this place,’” said Carmine, a former St. Mary’s teacher.

“She said, ‘Carmine, I’m 98 years old. I’ve never Mary M. Davis

been frightened in my life and I don’t intend to start now.’ She had such faith.”

Faith. Spirit. Moxie. Spunk. Pluck. Mary was blessed with so much of it she gave it away.

Mary played field hockey and basketball in college in the same decade the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.

She was a widow for 67 years. Her husband, David Davis, died while trying to save others after a vacation boating accident in Florida in 1947.

After the accident, Mary moved her three daughters, ages 1- 8, from the Chicago suburbs to Laurel, Miss., where her father was a Presbyterian pastor.

Realizing she needed more income and better educational opportunities for herself and her girls, Mary moved to Memphis in 1954.

“She always told us that women must question the established order and be leaders for change,” said her friend, Anne Fisher, a former St. Mary’s teacher and dean. “Mary did that all of her life.”

Mary worked as a secretary and then a business manager for Hutchison School while she earned a master’s degree at Memphis State.

In 1964, she ran into the headmaster of St. Mary’s School, who offered her the position of Dean of Girls.

“He wrote a salary figure down on a piece of paper and gave it to her,” Vaughan said. “She looked at it for a moment, then gave it back to him and said, ‘No, I’m worth more than that.’ Can you imagine?”

Mary got the job and a higher salary.

She was dean for 15 years. She served as the school’s acting head twice, once after she retired. She also was the school’s alumnae director and development officer after retirement.

She helped r un Trezevant Manor’s student scholarship committee, even after she moved into assisted living.

In her 80s and 90s, she was a regular volunteer for MIFA, the Church Health Center, Calvary Street Ministry and More Than a Meal at Idlewild Presbyterian Church, where she was an elder in every sense of the word.

“The day before she died, she told me, ‘ Life boils down to two things: loving and giving,’” said Dr. Steve Montgomery, Idlewild’s senior pastor. “I can honestly say that I have never met anyone who touched more lives than Mary.”

Mary was born in China, the daughter of missionaries who started a school there. Her first language was Chinese.

She rarely spoke about her faith. She carried it with her in her heart.

She often gave people a copy of her favorite quote, from “Walking on Water” by Madeleine L’Engle:

“We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

No one doubted the source of Mary’s light and longevity.

“Mary aged, but she never got old,” Vaughan said. “Even as she was dying, she kept saying, ‘I am so blessed.’”

The older we get, the more blessed we become. Contact David Waters at 901529-2377 or waters@commercialappeal.com or follow him on Twitter at @DavidWatersCA.