Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,004

This is the grave of Dwight Davis.

Born in 1879 in St. Louis, Davis grew up rich. His grandfather had been mayor back in the 1850s and the family remained local elites. Davis was super into tennis. He became a local champion at the time that the game was really starting to pop in the United States. He went to Harvard for college and won the college title in 1899. He reached the finals of the U.S. Open in 1898 and won the doubles at the Open in 1899, 1900, and 1901. Of course at this time, it was legitimately an open and so it wasn’t hard to qualify or anything. His doubles partner was Holcombe Ward and they went to Wimbledon in 1901 and were runners-up, which was probably more impressive than winning the U.S. Open three times in this era.

Now, the first thing that Davis is known for is what is today called the Davis Cup. This is the international tennis competition that was an attempt by Americans to try and match up with the British and see if they were as good. This developed into a long-time international competition, which started in 1900. Davis wasn’t the only person involved in this, but he was the passionate force behind it. At the time, it was called the International Lawn Tennis Challenge. I’m not precisely sure when it became known as the Davis Cup but it was in Davis’ lifetime.

Now, you might think, OK, guy who created the Davis Cup, worth an OK grave post. And sure, I’ve profiled people with less interesting accomplishments. But in fact that’s not why we are discussing Davis today. In fact, I only knew this about him when I started writing this post. No, it’s because he then went into politics. He went back to Missouri and became an active Republican. He started in kind of a normal post for an athlete–he became public parks commissioner in St. Louis, where he put a lot of tennis courts in parks. Not a big deal. But in 1920, with Senate elections now actual democratic elections, Davis decided to run for the Senate. He didn’t win the primary, but he did quite respectably and got the attention of national Republicans.

Some of that is that Davis had left his parks job in 1915 to push for preparedness as the nation slowly moved toward entering World War I, which seemed pretty far off in that year. Because of his fame, he was useful to those who wanted to move toward war. He toured Europe in 1916 as part of the Rockefeller War Relief Board, again pushing for closer ties between the U.S. and the Allies. When the nation entered the war, Davis enlisted as a private in the Missouri National Guard. He was almost immediately commissioned as an officer and then got an immediate promotion to major when he was sent to France and eventually got to lieutenant colonel. He was legitimately fighting, involved with the infantry. He won a Distinguished Service Cross too.

After the war, he started rising again due to his close association with Europe. He was named in 1921 to the War Finance Corporation. So in 1923, Calvin Coolidge tapped this well-known if relatively inexperienced Republican to be Assistant Secretary of War. Then in 1925, with his own full term starting, he promoted Davis to Secretary of War. What is super fascinating is that information on Davis as Secretary of War is legitimately almost impossible to find without going real deep into scholarly sources. And let’s face it, the War Department during the years of isolation was a pretty boring place. It took going pretty deep into the literature to find much of use at all. Davis was involved as assistant Secretary of War in establishing officer training schools, but it seems there was a lot of infighting in the department over this. The most significant part of this was the Army Industrial College, which was about officers learning to procure supplies. That’s important, although exceptionally boring. The Air Corps Act was passed around this time and Davis had some involvement in figuring out just what that meant and establishing administrators for it. Promotion of new technology in the military was an interest of his. But it wasn’t exactly an active War Department in the Coolidge years or in the isolationist years of the 20s and early 30s generally. So there’s just not that much to say.

After Hoover took over, Davis took the position of governor-general of the Philippines and thus got some fun colonization time. He stayed in that role until 1932. His wife was aging and unhealthy and they wanted to return to the U.S. He was on the board of trustees of the Brookings Institute beginning in 1935 and chaired it in 1937. Although he was a deeply committed Republican and liked almost nothing about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the U.S. entered the war, he agreed to do his part. FDR named him to head the Army Specialist Corps in 1942, which found ways to relieve officers on active duty with specialists who could handle some of these duties.

Davis died in 1945 after a lengthy illness.

Dwight Davis is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

Davis was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1956. If you would like this this series to visit other inductees from that year’s class, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Bill Clothier is in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania and William Larned is in Brooklyn. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.