Before he died last week from cancer at the age of 82, Frank Davis made his mark in different towns, in different ways.
He went to high school in Pittsfield, furthered his education in Keene and Durham, made sports history and taught driver’s education and social studies at Merrimack Valley High School, and served in the state Legislature while living in Pembroke, switching his allegiance from Republican to Democrat.
“He spread his interests out evenly,” his widow, Pat Davis, said Tuesday by phone. “He was busy all the time with one thing or another, as well as being a good husband and a good father.”
Frank and Pat met while both were social studies teachers at Merrimack Valley High School. They were married for 32 years.
Before that partnership, Frank had already done and seen plenty after graduating from Pittsfield Middle High School.
He earned his undergraduate degree from Keene State College and his Master’s degree from the University of New Hampshire. From there, his educational background only grew in stature, as he was awarded National Defense Education grants to study world history at UNH, Middle East government at Rutgers University and social studies curriculum at Carnegie-Mellon.
And, before embarking on his teaching career, Frank was awarded a Joint Bankers Scholarship to study economics at the University of Connecticut.
Next came his first teaching job, as a social studies teacher and department head, at Pembroke Academy in 1959. Eight years later, in 1967, he joined the staff at the new school in Penacook, Merrimack Valley High School.
That’s where he met Pat. Frank had six children by then, while Pat had three. They had much in common.
“We both liked going to historic places and forts and museums and Civil War battlefields,” Pat told me. “We really enjoyed doing that together.”
They began dating and coordinated a class trip to Australia, where they brought students to the east coast of the country before heading north to the Great Barrier Reef. They went back the following year as a married couple, bringing along more students. They toured national parks west of the Mississippi River.
“We loved to travel,” Pat said.
Frank made his mark before having a classroom of his own. He ran cross country at Pittsfield and played baseball, basketball and soccer there as well. He was co-captain of the Keene State soccer team.
Later, as a coach, he made history at Merrimack Valley High School, leading the school’s spring track team to the state championship in 1974, the first state title in any sport for the fledgling school. He was honored for his coaching career in 2014, when he was inducted into the New Hampshire Coaches Hall of Fame.
Dave Anderson, one of the most recognizable coaching names connected to Merrimack Valley sports, had been the school’s cross country coach before he was deployed to Vietnam. When he returned, Anderson gladly changed roles, a reflection of the close bond he had with Davis.
“I would always kid Frank that I got the first cross country win in school history,” Anderson said. “When I came back (from Vietnam) he had taken over and I was a volunteer assistant for the next seven years. I drove kids to meets and I was his unofficial assistant coach.”
That was the start of a 50-year friendship that saw Anderson speak to Davis’s students about his experiences in Vietnam. Anderson said Davis was always well prepared, inside the classroom and out.
“Very thorough and a great attention to details as a coach, just like he was in class,” Anderson said. “He was very organized.”
Elsewhere, Davis was a volunteer firefighter in Pembroke, played trombone in an orchestra and helped oversee the building of the Merrimack Country Nursing Home in Boscawen.
“He was on that committee,” Pat said. “And he was very proud of that.”
During his older years, from 2006 to 2010, Davis served in the House of Representatives and was also a member of the Pembroke Historical Society. Once a Republican, he changed his political stripes when he won his first election.
He was passionate about keeping guns off college campuses, did not support a Constitutional ban on income tax, nor an amendment giving the Legislature full authority over education, and, in his own words, was “opposed to a back-door voucher plan that would divert public funds to private schools.”
But while these issues were near and dear to him, Davis always kept his voice under control.
“He wasn’t a big, showy person,” Pat said. “He did not brag about himself, and others recognized all of his abilities.”
Added Anderson, “He was very low key, very humble, a caring individual.”
Anderson and Davis remained close right up until the end. Davis had been diagnosed with cancer in the winter of 2018. Chemotherapy and radiation shrunk the cancerous tumor, but it returned recently, convincing Davis to seek home hospice care.
A runner through his life, Davis’s healthy habits “allowed him to last longer in his fight against cancer,” Pat said. “He had a good, strong heart.”
“Lots of family and friends were over the last few months,” Pat continued. “Almost every day, we had someone here.”
Anderson visited their house in Pembroke earlier this month, just days before Davis died. Before hospice, Davis continued attending the traditional Saturday morning breakfasts with friends at the Windmill Restaurant, just like he had for two decades.
“I don’t know how much he ate, but people would drive him there,” Anderson said. “You could tell he was suffering a little bit, but he never let on. We just joked and talked about old times.”