Mrs Anne R Davis

January 17, 1927 - March 19, 2016

Anne R. Davis obituary Anne R. Davis, late of Copake, N.Y., Boston, and since 2002, Oak Bluffs in Martha’s Vineyard, died in her sleep at her home on Saturday, March 19, 2016. She was 89 years old. Anne grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., the daughter of Ralph and Anne Gage. During World War II, while she was in high school, she was an aircraft spotter at the Westchester Airport on weekends. When VE Day arrived, her father, Ralph Gage, took her to Times Square to celebrate, and she was honored that she marched in the Scarsdale victory parade with the other war workers. Anne received a B.A. from Smith College, and attended the Radcliffe Publishing Seminar after college. In 1947, she moved to Paris for a few years, working for Stars and Stripes. It was there that she tried her French in a butcher’s shop, ordering half a rabbit, “un demi-lapin,” which she indicated with hand signals showing a cut across her waist. After each of the employees had been called over to enjoy this, she was sent home with her meat and many fond wishes. Back in the U.S., she worked in several publishing ventures, Esso News (a travel reporter), True Confessions (an assembler of truly horrendous stories readers sent in; each published story included at least three of the readers’ submissions), and others. She lived in the Village in New York, where she met her husband, Halsey Davis, a poet, when they shared the same bathroom in the hall, and she asked if he would mind if she put up some art in it. They were married at the Brick Church on East 92nd Street by a Scottish Presbyterian minister who looked at them firmly at the end of the service: “When I marry people, they stay married!” (This turned out to be accurate.) Halsey and Anne had two children, Barbara in 1958 and Curran in 1960. Also in 1960, Anne went to work for Time magazine, where she stayed until her retirement. She began as a two-day-a week proofreader, then became the head of proofreaders, then the copy chief of Time, and when she retired, was the deputy operations director of the magazine. At a time when fathers were breadwinners, we had the only working mother we knew, and we were all very proud of her. In 1980 Halsey and Anne moved to a wonderful apartment in Boston overlooking the Common. They moved in on July 3, and on July 4, discovered that their balcony gave them a perfect view of the Fourth of July fireworks. The apartment became a great base for friends and family to enjoy all of Boston — not least because it was within three minutes’ walk of Filene’s Basement. Anne enjoyed all that the city had to offer with Halsey, and after his death, with friends and family, and also all by herself. She was a founding season ticketholder of the Boston Breakers, the WUSA women’s soccer league team. In 2002 she decided that she needed to move somewhere where she would not need a car, and in three weeks, she had bought a cottage in the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association in Oak Bluffs. She loved it from the first night she stayed there, and lived there year-round. Anne traveled with family, and with her dear friend Ricki Tarlow and other great Time Inc.ers, taking cruises, attending the U.S. Figure Skating Nationals, doing the London theatre whirl, and anything else that sounded fun. She is survived by her daughter Barbara of Oak Bluffs, and by her son Curran, daughter-in-law Rosemary, and extremely beloved grandchildren Quinn and Elizabeth and granddog Ringo, all of Laconia, N.H. On Tuesday, Elizabeth was at her grandmother’s house helping when she received a phone call to let her know that she’d gotten into her first choice for college, Lesley University; Anne would have been so very happy. Services will be at the Roche Funeral Home in Lenox, Mass., at 2 pm on Saturday, March 26. A reception will follow at the Red Lion Inn.