Marian Larson Davis

is honored with a Brick from Carl Davis, Martha Davis, Janet Davis Donaghue, and Alison Davis Jack.

Marian Larson Davis was born in Northville, Michigan, near Detroit, in 1930. Her mother was a member of a pioneer Michigan family; her father the son of Swedish immigrants. Marian has the ox-yoke used by her ancestors in the 1820s on the slow overland route from New York to Michigan territory. Her parents were both teachers, but her father became a stockbroker in later years.

Marian loved learning. She was valedictorian of her high school class and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English, one of ten members of the graduating class in the senior English honors seminar. A resident of the Martha Cook Building, she was on the Board of the Michigan League and was named to the honorary Senior Society.

After graduation, she taught for three years at Rowland Hall School for Girls in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a young teacher, she spent six weeks in Europe reading and discussing Great Books with a group led by the President of St. John's College in Maryland.

It was in Salt Lake City that she met Robert L. Davis, a recent K.U. Law School graduate, working for Gulf Oil. After their marriage in 1955, Bob, a Wichita native, joined his father's law practice and they established their home in Wichita.

The four Davis children were born during the next 12 years and Marian was active at home, in PTAs and children's activities, and in many community groups. Robert Davis served two terms on the Wichita School Board, as well as nine years as President of the Friends University Board, and school issues dominated the dinner table conversations.

Marian earned a master's degree in gifted education and a K-12 teaching certificate from K-Sate in 1975 before joining Sedgwick County Educational Cooperative to plan, develop, and establish the mandated gifted programs in Maize, Goddard, Clearwater, Renwick, Valley Center, and four other districts. She later became Director of the Instructional Materials Center for the Co-op, retiring after 15 years.

Marian and Bob lived in the Riverside neighborhood in Wichita for 20 years. For the past 25 years, they have lived on their farm near Goddard, where Marian enjoys weaving, reading and writing, AAUW, an investment club, and a Great Books discussion group.

The memories of trips to all parts of the United States, Great Britain, China, Sweden, Italy, Germany, etc. remain vivid. Every summer for 40 years the family has spent time at their cabin in the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado. Marian is active in the Religious Society of Friends, locally and nationally. Most recently, she was a delegate to a Friends World Committee Conference in Birmingham, England, in 1997.

Marian's four children, who share the family love of learning, unite in honoring their mother. Martha, Legal Director of NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in NYC and adjunct professor at NYU Law School, graduated from Harvard, Oxford, and University of Chicago Law School. Alison Davis Jack, a teacher and librarian, has degrees from WSU and OU. She and her husband Ken, a patent attorney with Davis and Jack, are the parents of Samuel, Sarah, and Mariah, Marian's grandchildren. Carl, a partner in Davis and Jack, graduated from K-State and KU Law. He and wife Kristine, a recruiter for Braum's, expect their first child in September 1998. Janet Davis Donaghue, a Derby teacher, has degrees from KU and WSU. Her husband Doug is a CPA with Ernest and Young.

September 11, 1998