James Wheeler Davidson – a man of Character (Part 1)
It is a privilege to introduce you to James Wheeler Davidson (JWD) in this premier edition of the Davidson chartered clubs newsletter, and the world-wide audience it will reach.
It also presents a problem. Any well intended story of JWD does not fit neatly into a few short pages, so I trust there will be other opportunities to add to this two part precis that looks at his character and personality from the viewpoint of those who knew JWD and wife Lillian. Had the ever modest JWD had the opportunity, he would have edited out almost every comment about him and turned the topic toward how much more important the audience was.
The most concise description of JWD was written by his Rotary mentor, Dr. Crawford McCullough the second Canadian president of Rotary, in 1921/2. Authored a few weeks after the Davidsons’ returned from their 30 month circumnavigation of the world in March 1931, forming 23 clubs in 12 different countries from 1928-1931 – filling Rotary’s remaining gap of clubs around the world. Now, 90 years later, those words still ring with the pride McCullough felt for his colleague.
“There are no other fellows that I know of just like Jim Davidson; his personality is distinctly and entire his own, and it is an odd conglomerate – seer, politician, showman, adventurer, writer, philosopher, incorrigible youth and modern go-getter. And it took his whole repertoire to succeed; Indeed I believe he succeeded where no one else could have.”
From a more personal perspective, his daughter Marjory, whom the Davidson’s took out of school at age 15 to join them on this chartering trip, spoke of her memories of him in 1980. She described her father as a lover of travel and adventure; as fearless yet resourceful, and as adaptable to any circumstance. He could eat and sleep with Eskimos in their igloos while hunting for meat for their dogs. He could visit head-hunters in Taiwan to whom he was a brother, recognized by a tiny tatoo on his hand. As a father he could always see the humor in any situation, especially when it brought out his youthful side – a love of youngsters and circuses. He would take Marjory and her friend Marmie Hess to Rotary conventions for a fathers and daughters week, and introduce them to the excitement of travel. Ever tolerant of different cultures, respectful of religious differences, and the need to bridge them, she felt his personality made him the ideal person to portray those same principles as a Rotarian leader.
JWD’s grandson Don Abramson never knew him but learned about him through his grandmother. “There was no such word as ‘cannot’ in his vocabulary.” Travel impediments were just obstacles to be circumvented, whether on CPR steamships, pigboats, camels or elephants. He would travel 150,000 miles on the Asian trip alone, and circle the globe over three times. He was always looking ahead with vision and passion, determined to make things happen. He was proud of his contribution to Rotary and more mindful that Rotarians still honored him. In his tribute to his grandfather, Don predicted, “you too will share in the same experiences, as the Davidson story unfolds.”
Charles Smith, the editor of the Calgary Herald evesdropped on his wife Lillian in 1923, when JWD was off leading a motoring party down the Sunshine Trail (a group he chaired) creating a road from Calgary to Yellowstone Park in the USA, noting “his loves extended beyond travel and people – to things, animals, music…His genuine interest in others and things that are worthwhile, made others interested in him. He drew men to him in strong friendships that never ceased.” Davidson’s cousin Major E.B. Pond recognized his talents before he was 20, when he hired JWD to host speaking tours for Sir Henry Stanley of Livingston fame, North Pole explorer Admiral Peary and others. “His sunny nature and boundless capacity for friendship, his freshness of outlook, zest for life and irrepressible and delightful youthfulness, never abated.”
James Wheeler Davidson – a Character sketch (Part 2)
(Continuing our sketch of James Wheeler Davidson (JWD)), Sydney Pascal, the 1931/32 RI President and the first from Europe, backtracked the clubs JWD had chartered, and then visited him in Vancouver shortly before the 1932 convention. He wrote of how,
“he had almost become a tradition. No name in the Orient is known better and honored more…The energy of that human dynamo; who swept all who talked Rotary with him even those hostile, into his net; answered their arguments; met their objections; removed their doubts; called them to a meeting. Before we knew we were duly installed Rotarians. Rotary will never have a finer, a more tireless, and more persuasive missionary”
Dr. Allen Albert, another RI past president gave the JWD eulogy at the RI convention in Detroit in 1934, reminding the capacity audience of how Rotary, ”gathered to itself generous men” and how Davidson,
“gave his richest years to Rotary, and through Rotary to mankind…that he gave and gave abundantly…in measures too deep for any but great hearts to fill…Obstruction, caste, societal heirarchys, aloofness, all melted in his presence; his dynamic personality does not wholly describe him. Everything about him was big – body, head, brain, voice, laugh, straight look of the eyes, heart, purpose, ideal, love of Rotary. His faith was vast,” convincing almost all of the 2200 prospective Rotarians he interviewed to join Rotary. “He was a torch bearer, shedding the light of sympathetic understanding upon peoples of the earth newly entered into the fellowship of Rotary. We think of him not as one who has gone from us, but as one who remains with us through that which he gave along with his work… for wherever there has been glowing generosity, radiant sympathy, a giving of self through work…those qualities shine on as the stars shine in the Canadian night”
Professor W. A. Osbourne of the Professional Board of the University of Melbourne, and the first president of its Rotary club added at the time of his passing,
“Time in its course is taking from us one by one those who were privileged to enter into the circle of Davidson’s friendship and to come under the spell of his enthusiasm, but the movement he started goes on in ever increasing volume, range and energy, and his dynamic personality survives in what the future will reverence as a fitting memorial to a man guided by a great ideal.”
McCullough remembered him too.
“In the context of time, I know of no Rotarian who has had a greater influence on the extension and adaption of Rotary to the rest of the world. The unknown was for him a constant challenge to action and discovery. Strange people were only strange because he had not yet met them or lived in their environment. Strange places were to be explored and known and understood; so while courage was one of his outstanding traits, he was unconscious of it. To explore was to dare. He was a figure of a man who would be singled out of any group anywhere with the question ‘who is the big man’ Once started towards an objective he never quit. He made friends and cherished them and they him. His chief bequest was his idealism and his intense humanness.”
Hundred’s of others sent letters and telegrams to Lillian when he died in 1933, enough to fill the first book on him by N. P. Joseph of the Rotary club of Cochin, India, in 1987. Many contemporaries viewed JWD as the finest example of Rotary’s 4th objective, “will it build goodwill and better friendships.”
As Shakespeare observed, he is successful if his reputation lasts more than three months. Or as Lillian, in emulating Kipling at the Seattle convention, closed her speech with, “while East is east and West is west, the twain did meet for Rotary, when Davidson encountered strong men from the others ends of the earth, face to face, and in so doing helped diminish the differences of ‘border, breed and birth’.”
Robert Lampard, MD
All the quotes are taken from James and Lillian Davidson in Rotary International, by R. Lampard and published by the Rotary Club of Red Deer as a Centennial project in 2006.
