Buddy Davis, Pulitzer Prize winner, UF professor, dies
By CRAIG BASSE
Published August 18, 2004
Buddy Davis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and celebrated educator at the University of Florida, has died at 80.
Mr. Davis, who retired in 1985 as a distinguished service professor emeritus after 31 years of teaching in the UF College of Journalism and Communications, died Sunday (Aug. 15, 2004) in Gainesville. The cause was a heart attack, the Associated Press said.
He won the Pulitzer in 1971 for a series of editorials he wrote for the Gainesville Sun on desegregating Alachua County schools. His series urged patience and tolerance in dealing with a court order that gave the schools 13 days to integrate through the use of busing.
At the university, the gruff Mr. Davis was known as a colorful and unpredictable teacher of journalism who turned out many graduates who rose to high posts in newspapers around the country.
His behavior in the classroom was almost legendary. He laughed at students when they made careless or foolish errors; he closed his classroom door on them if they were a minute late.
"I want to be tough to get them to strive harder and realize they're not perfect," Mr. Davis once said. "I try to fix it so that the pressures of the newspaper business will seem easy when you get out. It'll be a snap."
He said in one interview:
"I am proudest of students who emerge as societal critics rather than special pleaders. I'm proud of people who kind of bust things open a little bit with sheer knowledge and the rightful exercise of what power they have in the press."
Born Horance Gibbs "Buddy" Davis Jr. to a itinerant poor family of "dirt farmers" in Manchester, Ga., he moved to Florida in 1930 with his mother after his parents divorced. He lived in Raiford and Starke, near Florida's state prison.
"I was raised in a prison context," he told a newspaper reporter in a 1979 interview. "It's absolutely true that I lived within earshot of the death chamber. And the bodies used to come by on the back of the wagon and up over to Boot Hill. The lights dimmed every time there was an execution. And there was one a week."
During World War II, Mr. Davis was a first lieutenant aboard B-29s in the Pacific. The military service interrupted his UF studies for three years. After the war, he returned to Starke and resumed his UF studies in Gainesville.
"I fell under the influence of (UF journalism instructor) Elmer Emig, who was probably the first intellectual I'd encountered," Mr. Davis said. "It struck me that this was a great way to change the world.
"You could come from a nonexclusive background and have an impact. If you don't have any clout economically or industrially, you can use your brains in one of three areas - the ministry, the military or writing."
A critic once observed that Mr. Davis' editorials were "stamped with a signature of style: one that is concise and easy to read, one that retells and gives perspective on the news, a learned style that is always flavored with country wisdom."
Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Marjorie Davis; a daughter, Jennifer Nicole, Gainesville; a son, Gregory Davis, Augusta, Ga.; and a granddaughter, Brittany Nicole.
The family said it plans a memorial service in Gainesville in September.
Information from Times files and the Associated Press was used in this obituary.
