Obit of Davis, Auda - Grady County, Oklahoma Transcribed by: Gene Phillips 21 Jan 2007 Return to Grady County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/grady/grady.html ===================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ===================================================================== ::Shiloh Cemetery--Windsor CA Santa Rosa Press Democrat Published on December 12, 2002 Auda Bell Davis, a 54-year Sonoma County resident who worked her way up from sharecropping in Healdsburg orchards to being a nurse's aide in its hospitals, died Dec. 4 of a heart attack at a retirement home in Windsor. She was 88. Known for her determination and big heart, Davis worked as a certified nurse's aide for more than 20 years at Healdsburg General Hospital and the former Santa Rosa Community Hospital. "She wasn't a spiritual lady, but she felt that as long as she was doing good she was doing her share," said her daughter, Carolyn Ferrari of Healdsburg. "No one ever left my mother's house that she didn't hug them and kiss them and tell them she loved them." Davis was a hard worker and devoted caretaker who was so popular among her patients they often invited her to visit them, Ferrari said. Davis, after retiring in 1976, bought a van and took many of them them up on their offers, visiting former patients on a cross-country road trip. "If they gave her the address, she went to see them," Ferrari said. That life of freedom was hard-earned. Davis was a middle child among 12 brothers and sisters on a small family farm in Rush Springs, Okla. At 15 she married Hercell H. Davis in 1929 and started a family. In 1948, they moved to Geyserville and the whole family worked in the prune orchards and vineyards. A divorce followed shortly, and Davis moved to Healdsburg where she found work cleaning the houses of some of Healdsburg's well-to-do families and took out a loan to purchase her own home. "She was determined to raise her children on her own and have a home," Ferrari said. Davis worked swing and graveyard shifts to spend time with her four children, working nights as a cleaning lady at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. It was there she decided to become a nurse's aide. She enrolled in a correspondence course with the Texas School of Practical Nursing in Dallas in 1953, earning her certificate two years later. Davis, who had an eighth-grade education, had earned her GED by taking night classes at Santa Rosa Junior College. She was almost 40 at the time. After retiring, Davis moved to Windsor where she shared a mobile home with her older daughter, Evelyn, and enjoyed quilting and spending time at Bodega Head. She also is survived by two sisters, Georgia Griswall of Lawton, Okla. and Pearl Aaron of Oklahoma City; two brothers, Arthur D. Bess of Dennison, Texas and Gene Bess of Rush Springs; and two sons, Roy Davis of Hayward and Clarence Davis of Windsor. Graveside services will be at 11 a.m. today at Shiloh Cemetery in Windsor.