Doris Davenport Tribute
by Maggie Davenport
The other day, the very kind lady, DrJazz, from the Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project emailed me—again—asking for my most cherished thing about my big sister Doris that I wanted the world to know.
Not any one thing came to mind, oddly.
She was so many things.
As anyone who knew her knows that she loved magic, and she sought to create it in all its forms. This need transcended all else. No amount of bullshit or bombardment deterred her from pursuing it any longer than it took her to catch her next breath. Although Alice in Wonderland was what hooked her when she was ten or eleven years old, she fell hopelessly in love with Harry Potter. She dressed up like Harry Potter, had mugs, glasses, T-shirts, watches; she saw all the movies, then bought the videos. When she loves and supports something or someone, she goes all in.
She once told me that she wanted her own Hogwarts. In her own way, she created that magic for herself, her ROOTS dawters and all the scholars (as she always called her students) that she helped to create.
I’m sure that she must have written about this someplace in her vast repository of papers where she kept memories, events, and ideas. For her, magic lived in the beloved mountains of our hometown, Cornelia, Georgia. It was on every corner of its cherished Soque Street and at the top of the steps at Ms. Sally Café.
She said that ours was a culturally sustainable, viable Community all by itself; and that this community engendered and demonstrated excellence, hard work, and determination. Her love for the lessons she got at our Cornelia Regional Colored School created an extraordinarily creative, brilliant intellectual person in my Big Sister.
She never did learn to pop her fingers; and dammit, I meant to teach her. Every time she went to say ‘ask’ it came out ‘ax.’
As one of her first (LA lesbian) lovers recently said, my sister was stubborn. And she was. It was her ability to be singularly focused, driven to pursue:
Joy
Laughter – real, loud laughter
Love
Righteousness living
Justice
Giving
Whatever she did was done with that same force, that same vision, that same drive and determination. Nowhere was this demonstrated more fully than when she won the top selling prize for Avon lady in several categories over several years. Yep, Avon lady. My sister was an Avon lady, and she was proud of it! While packing up her house, I found just a ton of Avon memorabilia: bottles, lipstick, watches, statues, and a king-size pillowcase with buttons she had received as top seller and for leadership acknowledgments.
She was a collector of things as well as a celebrator and cheerleader for and of anything anybody ever accomplished. She kept bits and pieces of life, events, activities.
My sister was the consummate scholar: brilliant, and with an incredible breadth of knowledge.
Oh, yes, she loved camping and being in nature. And I know that she loved her lesbian life and the great friends, personal/political/feminist growth, and everything that came with it. It brought her immense joy, and I thank y’all.
During her memorial, her good friend from her beloved (beloved!) Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, Pam, shared that my sister was always the person she wanted to be. Imagine that!
For me, my Big Sister Doris Juanita Davenport, aka dr. doris diosa davenport, hung the very Moon.
And I hope you will forgive all my grammatical errors, sister. I love you soooo much, and I will forever feel and mourn your absence as I remember and celebrate your life.