Contributed by Ginni Davis
After graduating from Washington State University in Spokane, I planned to travel to New York to begin working on a Master’s degree at Columbia University. Shortly before I was to leave my home town of Olympia, a work colleague mentioned that she knew a young man that had left to get his Master’s degree at Columbia. When I arrived, I met another WSU grad and she mentioned that there was another WSU graduate, Woody Davis, who had recently enrolled in school too.
That evening there was a Valentine’s Day social in the lobby of my dorm. I was standing next to the refreshment table when a handsome young man walked up to me and said, “Those things aren’t good for you, they’ll make you fat. Come on, let’s dance.”
His pick-up line wasn’t so great but he was a good dancer with a strong lead that was easy to follow. As we danced, I introduced myself. When he said, “I’m Woody,” my mouth must have dropped open in surprise, and I said, “Woody? Woody Davis from Olympia, Washington?”
It turned out that he had graduated from WSU in the spring of 1960 and moved to Olympia to begin his career as a teacher at the same time that I had left Olympia to attended WSU. My younger brother had been in a class that he taught and my mother had sat in his classroom at a parent back-to-school night. Fate had brought us together at Columbia University on Valentine’s Day and after a whirlwind romance, we were married four months later on June 14.
