MONONGAH — The residents of St. Barbara’s Memorial Nursing Home may not have realized it, but a great American love story was spooling out in twilight under the roof they all shared.
Right there in Room 14, where Asa and Dolores lived.
Asa Davison was a teenager when he got his draft notice for World War II. He didn’t know it, but he was bound for the South Pacific. He was a Black recruit in a military still segregated.
That meant he’d be fighting Jim Crow, and the Japanese, at the same time.
Dolores Terry, whom he would wed after the war, was a pretty girl with a fetching smile.
She was a textile buyer at Jones Department Store, the towering, Macy’s-styled retail establishment that commanded a block of Adams Street in Fairmont, where they both grew up.
She was first woman of color hired by the store.
Years went by, and as age and its infirmities sat in, the couple gave up their house on Maple Avenue in Fairmont and moved to the convalescent facility.
St. Barbara’s sits on a rise in Monongah, a storied coal town on the northern end of Marion County.
In Room 14 right up until recently, you could hear the sounds of happy laughter and conversation, as people dropped by to visit the sweet old couple regularly doted on by staff.
She was 93 and he turned 100 in February.
Dolores quietly slipped away May 2.
Asa, with so much of his life defined by World War II, joined her just over a month later on June 6 — D-Day.
On the day Asa said goodbye to this realm, and hello again to Delores in the next, the world was marking the 80th observance of the invasion that turned it for the Allies in Europe.
His funeral was this past Friday — Flag Day — at Central United Methodist Church in Fairmont. Burial with full military honors followed at the West Virginia National Cemetery in Grafton.
Shipping out
He and his bride were both in good form last year for his 99th, as The Dominion Post called on St. Barbara’s to wish him Happy Birthday.
“Dolores,” Asa sang out. “Get next to me, girl. Ronnie Rittenhouse is gonna take our picture.”
“Oh, now you want me,” she teased, with that fetching smile of hers.
Asa was stung with racism from time to time and Delores was, too, but both endured.
He was 19 when that bullet — or shrapnel, maybe — stung him, after a day of heavy shelling in New Guinea.
Knocked him flat.
His breath was raspy and hurried, from fear and adrenaline, but there was no blood.
In his shirt pocket, the young soldier carried a Bible from home, with his name engraved on a metal plate affixed to the cover.
Hours later, he would discover that plate dented and scuffed.
Divine deflection?
“I never did figure it out,” he said. “My chest and neck hurt for days, but I was still here.”
Home front
Back in Fairmont, it didn’t take long to figure out that the rights and freedoms he had fought for overseas didn’t necessarily apply to once-and-former soldiers of his pigment on these shores.
Just like the South Pacific, Asa decided he was going to let a lot of that bounce off, too.
By the time he’d received his draft notice in 1943, he had dropped out of school to look for work so he could help support his parents.
He promptly re-enrolled at Dunbar High.
The well-regarded Black school in Fairmont boasted a number of accomplished alumni, including aviator George “Spanky” Roberts, who soared with the Tuskegee Airmen — and Johnnie Johnson, the boogie-woogie piano player and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member who gave Chuck Berry his first gig.
That Dunbar diploma just might open a few doors in the post-war rush to prosperity, he reasoned.
Asa founded his own demolition company before securing a job with the Post Office.
Dolores stayed on for years at Jones, before transitioning into an administrative job at the Fairmont Clinic.
That well-tended house on Maple Avenue was where they raised three boys, Jerry, Brian and Greg, while folding in Mary Tate, a little girl in rough circumstances next door who essentially became the fourth Davison kid.
There were grandchildren, great-grandchildren and enough nieces, nephews, cousins and friends to fill every room of the house during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Asa and Dolores took the kids on road trips across the continental U.S., along with other jaunts to Canada, Mexico and Hawaii.
Later in life, they enjoyed a cruise ship excursion or two.
They loved antiquing and spirited rounds of Bingo.
Saints among us
Lest anyone inquire, their children said, they weren’t about Black or white, or Black-versus-white.
Asa and Dolores, as everyone who knew them noted with quiet amazement, were consumed more with matters of heart and helping their neighbors — no judgment, no questions asked and no stipulations on skin tone.
Many of those neighbors returned the favor on a rainy Feb. 28th at St. Barbara’s.
It was Asa’s 100th, and the afternoon was packed with testimonials from friends, proclamations from veterans’ groups and letters of appreciation from West Virginia lawmakers in Charleston and on Capitol Hill.
When the people filtered out, a couple that shared 73 years lingered a second.
Just them, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish.
“Asa, I love you.”
“I love you, baby. You’re my girl.”
Holding hands, they went home.
Down the hall to Room 14, and happily ever after.
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