OBITUARY: Robert Sawin Davis
Robert Sawin Davis, Sr. died at age 95, Friday, August 15, 2014. A twelfth-generation American, he was born in 1919 and raised in Storrs, CT, where his father was Chair of Agricultural Economics at the University of Connecticut and mother, an historian, wrote UConn's alma mater.
Attending the Hart School of Music in Hartford on scholarship as an early teenager, he later graduated college from The Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where he majored in voice. He initiated his Manhattan career as a tenor in the Metropolitan Opera with conductor Arturo Toscanini; versatile, his talents led him to various Broadway shows and early television's The Show of Shows. He won Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts twice, first in a vocal quartet, then as a soloist.
A First Lieutenant in Italy during World War II, Bob commanded and lost troops at Anzio. Wounded near a hill town north of Rome, he recovered in Florence where he oversaw radio broadcasting and U.S.O. entertainment; there he met a woman singing in the U.S.O. who later, in New York City, would become his wife and the mother of Bob's two sons. He received The Purple Heart and The Bronze Star Medal "for meritorious achievement in ground combat."
Bob left New York to spend four years at WLW-TV in Cincinnati during the mid-to-late '50s, when he had his own television show and also was a regular on Ruth Lyons' The 50/50 Club. Bob afterwards moved to Groton, becoming an award-winning academic book salesman, but always continuing to sing. Lexington, KY was his final residence, for 35 years, and until he was 85 traveled with different vocal ensembles performing in the British Isles and Europe.
Bob created "Delhi Dads" in that Cincinnati suburb; was a Mason for more than 50 years, beginning in Cincinnati's Price Hill Lodge; was a newspaper columnist for a newspaper near Groton; a linesman for UK tennis; a Kentucky Colonel because of his community services; and an avid participant - and singer - at the Rotary of Lexington. Song and committed social participation were his callings.
