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He may cringe at the comparison, but Bilson Davis, engineer, onetime Culver City High School coach and lifetime black, reminds me of the First Dude of recent Republican fame — a temperamentally perfectly attuned husband to a power wife, in this case Saundra Davis of the School Board.
As those of us in Newspaperland with one or more wedding ceremonies unhappily realizes, two belting personalities within a single marriage soon leads to one fewer happy person than there was on their wedding day. I presume you and your spouse never agree on whether the main window in your bedroom, especially at this time of year, should be open . At parties, one of you always is a magnet for much greater attention than the other. Doesn’t 50-50 sound boring?
To be clear, Mr. Davis is no Milquetoast.
In his more specialized universe, he is as big and strapping as he physically is. Smart, too. He is not a violet who is inclined to contract . Intellectually, he arrives at mature decisions that are just as muscular and valid as Mrs. Davis’s. Only he doesn’t broadcast his opinions across the community. If I were as disciplined as he, if I could have controlled my tongue as well as he when I was younger, that stack of unruly former wives over to the left would be considerably shorter.
Which brings me to the last time I spied Mr. Davis.
Deeply Rooted Reveling
The most happily chaotic place in Los Angeles last Tuesday evening was Democratic Party headquarters, the resplendent Century Plaza Hotel, which was overrun with more liberals than I realized God ever had time to make.
I parked two miles away, so blatheringly crowded was within the perimeter of the hotel, which felt as if it were swaying.En route, I found myself walking down an eerily darkened street lined on both sides with diagonally parked cars of Swat team-types. Hulking men, they were dressed in black, the better to skim through the night, assembling weapons that were at least two-thirds my height. At first I thought I had happened onto a James Bond set.
You didn’t walk directly into the Century Plaza on Election Night. You stood in a thick, lengthy, massively uneven line. I excused myself to near the top of the line. And still I toe-tapped for 23 minutes before our diverse knot of liberals and sensible persons was uncaged and allowed to file in. Once in the lobby, I immediately was ushered into another line longer than my first two marriages, awaiting passage on an escalator to the main event of the evening for me, the victory party for new County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. The first 7 percent worth of returns had showed him with a walloping 22-point lead over Bernard Parks, and that was as close as the runnerup would be all night.
Nearly Late
By the time I reached the tightly shut door to the party, Fred MacFarlane, from the top of the Ridley-Thomas team, spotted me and called out, “You are just in time.”
Once inside, the first familiar face I detected belonged to Bilson Davis, smiling, kindly, almost benignly, which is his way, as he towered over the younger revelers encircling him.
Husband and wife were familiarly positioned, Mr. Davis alone in the middle of the throng, Mrs. Davis on stage with other important persons, beaming, within arm’s reach of the jubilant new Supervisor Ridley-Thomas.
Like everyone else in the raucous room, Mr. Davis, a man who spends his few words meticulously, said he had two reasons to celebrate. “I am here to congratulate Mark Ridley-Thomas for becoming our new Supervisor,” he said, “and to celebrate our new President of the United States. I am so happy. This is the best thing that ever could have happened to this country.”
When someone tells you “I am so happy,” and you can see this singular feeling coursing through the length of him, even if you are a sensible Republican, you, too, can momentarily feel a surge of enhanced wattage.
Mr. Davis said he backed Mr. Ridley-Thomas because “Mark gets things done. He has been working, every day, for the people of his district for years. I remember during the riots when they had those charettes going on. I was working them, and I saw how involved Mark was with the people of the community. I have been following him ever since, and I am very proud of what he has done”
Smudged Memories
A Texas native, the 57-year-old Mr. Davis grew up in the sickening fumes of the last throes of Southern-style segregation, ugly, unending days when overt racial hatred was believed to be an immutable part of the human landscape. I have heard him tell stories from his childhood, how he and his family humiliatingly were forced to circle around to the back of a restaurant — urban or in the country, made no difference — because his family was of the wrong color.
Forty-five years later, it must have felt like a miracle to be standing gloriously in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, a thousand miles from home,with people of all colors cheering for the selection of two of his heroes, who just happened to be black. What must those hateful Texas restaurateurs be thinking now?
Four days later, Mr. Davis turned up in the news again, and we shall discuss that tomorrow.
