With her bequest, the late Patricia Davidson endows a scholarship at UMF to support future teachers from her adopted home community
By Marc Glass, December 2018
Patricia Davidson, a widely admired colleague in the University family who with great skill, intelligence, and loyalty served a president and a vice president at UMF for nearly three decades, passed away last April at the age of 89.
Davidson in her Merrill Hall office, where she was an administrative assistant to the University’s tenth president, Einar A. Olsen, and later Vice President of Administration Roger Spear. (Photo courtesy of the UMF Archives.)
But as the Ferro Alumni Center team learned earlier this month, Davidson’s impact on UMF and its students will far exceed the 27 years that she was an administrative assistant to the University’s tenth president, Einar A. Olsen, and later Vice President of Administration Roger Spear.
This became clear on December 7, when Spear visited Merrill Hall with a check for $25,000 from Davidson’s estate and conveyed the directive in her will that the gift endow the Lloyd and Patricia Davidson Scholarship at UMF. Davidson’s bequest follows the more than $11,000 she provided to the University through a charitable gift annuity that she arranged several years ago with the help of former Director of Stewardship and Planned Giving Pat Carpenter ’82.
Roger Spear, former Vice President of Administration at UMF, said Davidson didn’t have a lot of contact with students in her role as administrative assistant. But she was keenly aware of their need for financial aid. (Photo by Marc Glass.)
Spear said his late colleague’s generosity reflects the love she had for the University and also honors her husband, a member of the Class of 1958.
“She always felt this was a great place to work. It was not without challenges, but she enjoyed every minute of it and she remembered the institution in her will because of it,” said Spear. “She didn’t have a lot of contact with students in her role, but she was keenly aware of their need for financial assistance.”
Available starting in fall 2019, the Lloyd and Patricia Davidson Scholarship will be awarded to a first-year student majoring in one of UMF’s teacher education programs, with preference given to a graduate of Mount Abram High School in Strong, Maine.
Spear said Davidson’s interest in supporting students who hail from the nearby towns of Avon, Kingfield, Phillips, and Strong is rooted in her and her husband’s ties to the rural, western Maine communities.
Lloyd, a Kingfield native and a graduate of Kingfield High School, taught for many years at Mount Abram after earning a bachelor’s in education at Farmington State Teachers College. Davidson — a native of Halstead, Essex, England, who met and married Lloyd while he was stationed with the U.S. Air Force in the United Kingdom — considered Strong her adopted hometown soon after the she relocated there with him in 1954.
The couple never had children. Lloyd passed away in 2007 at the age of 78, leaving her without close family in the area. But even when Davidson was increasingly visited by the infirmities that come with advanced age, Spear said she was reluctant to leave the region.
“She has a niece in Vermont who encouraged her to come live with her,” Spear said. “Pat emphatically declined the offer so as not to leave her beloved Maine.”
Patricia Davidson (1929-2018) as she appeared in the 1973 edition of Dirigo, the UMF yearbook.
Spear said he was surprised that Davidson asked him to be the representative of her estate after Lloyd passed away. But he considered the request an honor — and a commitment that he would gladly fulfill for someone who had done so much for him.
“She was an incredibly bright person who did her work professionally and with great competence,” he recalled. “She wanted to retire earlier than she did, but she gave me a year’s reprieve. I admit that I didn’t want to lose her. We were a pretty good team. Many a time she made me look good and for that I’ll always be indebted to her.”