Lena Davis

Lena Genevieve Johnson Davis was born on March 2, 1931, in Starks, Louisiana. She was the youngest child and only girl in a family that lived and worked in sawmill towns and logging camps in Western Louisiana and East Texas. Her early years were spent in Couples Camp, Louisiana, and she attended grade schools in Starks and Longville. By the early 1940s, the family had crossed the Sabine and settled in Deweyville, Texas. Her mother’s family, the Cavanaughs, had come from County Mayo, Ireland in the early 1800s and settled on a farm with extensive woodlands outside Leesville, Louisiana. Lena loved it there, and when she found home life difficult as a teenager, she went to live for a time with her grandmother, Kate, and her two favorite aunts, Katie and Nina. She often told stories about helping her beloved uncle Hobby work around the farm, and in later years she took her own children to visit the seemingly ancient, unmarried sisters with the army of feral cats that lived around and under the little two-pen house in the woods.

After graduating from high school in Westlake, Louisiana, Lena moved to Orange and worked at the Orange National Bank. She met and married Elvis Davis in 1950, and the newlyweds soon found themselves in El Paso, where Elvis was undergoing basic training before being shipped out to Korea. After the war, Elvis finished his accounting degree at Lamar, and the two spent a year in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he completed his MBA. As it did for so many post-war families, their life together really took shape when they were able to settle down, buy a house, and start a family. In Beaumont, where Elvis took a teaching position at Lamar Tech in the School of Business, they lived on Skipwith and then Sparrow Way before moving to the big house on the corner lot of 22nd and North. It was here they brought up their three children, and here that Lena came into her own as a loving mother, skilled housewife, and all-around caregiver for kids, animals, neighbors, and anyone who might happen to show up at the front door. (This could include neighbors, old friends, local yard men she had befriended and loved to talk to, or random strangers who had driven their cars into her yard by mistake.) 

Lena had an artistic streak. When she was a young mother she took art classes, and the back of her closet was full of paintings she was too embarrassed to show but never got rid of. This creative bent along with her intelligence, love of reading, and her wide curiosity about the world fed into her life as a mother whose attention to detail and desire for perfection could be seen in all that she did. Whether it was sewing, including making dresses for all occasions, assembling an array of pies for Thanksgiving, or doing something as simple as pealing a piece of fruit with a paring knife, she had skillful, knowing hands that continued to work even after arthritis had made that work painful. Most will remember her talent in the kitchen, both in everyday meals prepared faithfully and in the specialties: pound cakes that in their basic goodness and simplicity reminded you of what care and the comfort of home were supposed to be (these she sent out to her children and grandchildren through the mail in an ever-widening geography of connection); fried chicken of course, pecan pies (Elvis’s favorite)—and biscuits. In the very early mornings you would have seen her up before everyone else, moving around the long kitchen in her robe as she made a fresh batch of biscuits the way her mother had taught her, or baked the ones she’d left out the night before to sour. She may have been tired or, in later years, sick, but she would be there, in the kitchen always, and the biscuits would be hot, and they would be good.

Despite many years of fighting Lupus, Lena never lost her spark and her love of those things that were important to her. Her faith was central to her life. She led countless Bible studies over the years, played the piano in church, and sang in the choir when she could. She came to salvation early in life, as young girl in the little backwoods Baptist churches of Louisiana, and her faith sustained her throughout many difficulties and challenges over her 87 years. She loved music—particularly hymns, Handel’s Messiah, and anything by Mozart—the Cowboys (but only until Tom Landry left), watching the Astros with Elvis, and, in later years, cheering almost exclusively for Peyton Manning—or any Manning if Peyton wasn’t available. She could be opinionated, passionate, sharp, and direct, but she was always loving, always aware of her own limitations, intent on doing her best and helping others to do theirs. Her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will miss her care, her playfulness, and her undying affection.

Survivors include her daughters, Liz Cole of Willow Park, Texas and Katy Crawford and her husband, Jay, of Richmond, California; son, Clark Davis and his wife, Hillary, of Denver, Colorado; grandsons, Troy Cole and his wife, Susan, of Aledo, Texas; Matt Cole and his wife, Robin, and Sam Cole, all of Fort Worth, Texas; Will Crawford of Seattle, Washington; Grant Crawford of Tahlequah, Oklahoma; and Senior Airman Ethan Davis and his wife, Miran, of Tokyo, Japan; and four great-grandchildren, Cannon, Caden Brave, Charleston, and Cambria Cole.

She is preceded in death by her husband of sixty-six years, Elvis Clark Davis, Jr.; her parents; and four brothers. 

A gathering of Mrs. Davis’ family and friends will be from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m., Friday, July 27, 2018, at Broussard’s, 1605 North Major Drive, Beaumont. Her funeral service will be at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, July 28, 2018, at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3810 North Major Drive, Beaumont. A graveside service will follow at 12:00 p.m., at Hillcrest Memorial Gardens, 4650 Highway 87, Orange.

Many thanks to her special caregivers, Denesa Sweet, Duchess Gay, Paige Bennett; nurse, Linda Trahan; and to cherished friends, Mariellen Rose and Alicia Harvey.

Memorial contributions may be made to Wesley United Methodist Church, 3810 North Major Drive, Beaumont, Texas 77713; or First Nation Ministries, Inc., P.O. Box 30055, Portland, Oregon 97294 www.firstnationministries.org.