Person Page

     Keith Kingman Davis was born on 3 July 1923 in Berkeley, Alameda County, California.¹ He was the son of Elbert Willard Davis and Alice Marie Kingman. Keith died on 25 July 2007 in St. Anthony's Hospital, Denver, Colorado, at age 84. He died about 12 o'clock Noon after the hospital in Denver had performed CPR on him for 10 minutes or more. His niece Kerry in California, his designated next-of-kin, was called and asked if they could let Keith "go," not an easy answer to give. Cause of death was probably a heart attack (although the death certificate says pneumonia), most likely caused by other conditions as Keith had been in the hospital for a few days -- there was concern that his illness might have been brought about because a doctor had given him medicine in May which appeared to have been poisoning him, he'd been in terrible shape for a couple of months -- by the time he got to the hopital, the poor man had been delusional, incoherent and dehydrated. He had been getting better but his heart must have just given out. It was terribly sad.^2,3 Keith's ashes were interred in the Davis Family Plot on 11 August 2008 at Mt. View Cemetery, 5000 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, Alameda County, California.⁴
     
Keith lived his first twenty-some years at 2908 Russell Street, Berkeley, Alameda County, California, a wonderful old Craftsman style house just down the street from the lovely old Claremont Hotel.²

Kerry Davis, Keith's niece, recalls being told that Keith was a star athlete in track and field while attending UC Berkeley, from which he graduated circa 1940-41. She remembers seeing him practicing pole vaulting and high and broad jumping in her grandparents' backyard in Berkeley when she was a little girl. He also would walk on his hands to entertain us, his young nieces and nephews.

The family has much concrete evidence of Keith's artistic skill in oil painting which he spent much time doing in his younger days. From newsclippings it is shown that in 1948 he had a painting accepted by the San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honor, "Late Afternoon at Diablo," to be shown in a month-long exhibit, and that just prior to that he had a one-man show at the UC Berkeley Campus Book Shop and had also exhibited paintings at the Oakland Art Gallery. His brother and sister-in-law, Kenneth and Margaret Davis, had many fine examples of his art work hanging in their houses over the years. Their daughter Kerry now has a good many of those California landscapes in her own home, plus just recently receiving, on his death, all the artwork Keith had in his cabin in Colorado; her nephew Tyler recently took one of Keith's loveliest paintings of Yosemite Creek in the California mountains (see photo attached). Keith, like his brother Kenneth, his nephew Warren and his great nephews and nieces like Tyler, always had a great affinity for the mountains.^2,5

Keith enlisted in the Army in December 1942 right after Pearl Harbor, and was honorably discharged in November of 1943.

He was diagnosed "schizophrenic" as a young man and spent many years during the 1950s and early 1960s at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland, a "sanatorium for the care of nervous and mental diseases." While there he appears to have taken up his painting again and was a member of The Rockville Art League, showing paintings at their various Art Festivals. A few newsclips and an award show he took first place in "amateur class" for his watercolors and oils. To my somewhat untrained eye, it appears that his work lost some of the style and freedom, a Van Gogh-type quality, it once had had before entering Chestnut Lodge -- but he did keep painting.

After leaving Chestnut Lodge, Keith went on to lead a relatively normal life. In the late 1980s, he retired after 20 years of working for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He was quiet and a real "loner" who found great pleasure in his books, ranging from science fiction to real science, he greatly enjoyed astronomy and mountaineering, and was generally interested in a very wide range of subjects. He was a very generous and constant contributor to a great number of needy causes, and he was a staunch Democrat! Keith enjoyed hiking and running throughout his life and even into his early 80s he continued to participate in local road races in and around where he lived in Grand Lake, Colorado. He left behind a huge collection of awards, plaques and ribbons won in the hundreds of races he participated in during his life. In 2003 there was a picture of him in a local newspaper of which he was quite proud -- it and other exhibits can be seen by clicking the camera icons here.^2,6,7

Since Keith spent most of his life away from and pretty much out of touch with his family, no one had seen him in probably 50-some years. He was in touch with his brother Kenneth, corresponding usually by mail at Christmas, but no one really knew what his life had been like. A few years before he died, his niece Kerry was told by her father Kenneth how to reach Keith and she was in touch with him by mail, e-mail and telephone for those last years of his life.

Kerry got to know a wonderful woman named Jackie McCormick who helped Keith with his correspondence and the e-mails. It turns out that Jackie and her family, who had been neighbors of Keith's in the early 1990s, and stayed in touch with him after they moved, had befriended him and really taken care of him as much as he would allow them to, until the day he died. We helped get Jackie appointed Personal Representative (or Executor) of Keith's estate on his death -- a thankless job which we so appreciated she agreed to take on.

After his death, Jackie wrote a really wonderful letter to me with her thoughts and memories of Keith over the years they had known him. Since he was so alone most of his life and since no one in the family really has any memories of Keith throughout most of his life, I felt it would be nice to include Jackie's letter here which brings him to life and tells what he was like. It meant a lot to me to know more about him and to find that he seemed to have a life he enjoyed. Click here for Jackie's letter.⁸