Arlington State College - Reveille Yearbook (Arlington, TX)

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O I CONTENTS ADMINISTRATION ATHLETICS CAMPUS ACTIVITIES AND PERSONALITIES FAVORITES . MILITARY CLASSES STUDENT LIFE ORGANIZATIONS

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On December 13 1950, at the age of 59, Edward Everett Davis, Dean-Emeritus of Arlington State College, and until his retirement in 1945 administrative head of this institution for twenty years, died quietly in his sleep in a Fort Worth hospital. He had come a long way, this great-grandson of Daniel Boone. From a pioneer ranch in W'est Texas in the l88O's, with scarcely enough boys in the county to have a baseball team, he had risen in forty years to be one of the outstanding junior college educators in the nation. In simple justice the story of his achievement at this college should not be soon forgotten. Essentially it is this: he took a small, unknown institution, and in two decades, on the basis of sound scholar- ship and careful scholastic experiment, made it into one of the largest and most modern junior colleges in the nation. The function of educa- tion, he thought, is to fit youth to be intelligent and honorable citi- zens in the modern world. Whatever the past had to teach conducive to this, the dean sought eagerly. Wfhat was mere tradition, superstition, or ignorance he firmly rejected. 'fLook ahead, young man. The great days are yet to be, he said repeatedly. ' It was not his fate to find here many easy, settled years. Depres- sion and war stalked through his decades, but he beat them down, outlasted them and nursed the college through its perilous infancy. Yes, he was a tough and grim old fighter when he had to be, one unafraid of the devil himself. But when you knew him, you found that he was strangely soft if his friends were in trouble, fond and even in- dulgent of the young, and when the storm clouds were down, gay and generous, liking nothing better than to be laughing and joking with his friends. The long-faced and over-solemn he could not abide. When he retired, he thought at last to indulge his whim to grow roses, to fish in many a far-off stream, and to discuss the ideas of men and government with his friends. Unarmed and a little tired, he was surprised by death soon after he finished hoeing his winter garden. The thousands of young men and women nearby who could not have been educated except for presence of this college owe him a salute and a prayer to God in thankfulness of his accomplishments.

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Preston Hall