Manager

Davison.Williams.Lyons.002.jpg

Dublin Core

Title

Manager

Alternative Title

Manager

Subject

Veterans--Florida

Description

A newspaper article describing the opening of Bert Davison’s new tire store in St. Petersburg, Florida. The article pinpoints the location of the store on the corner of Ninth Street North and Ninth Avenue. It was published in the St. Petersburg Times on August 31, 1929.

Bert Collier Davison (1892-1945) was born on July 28, 1890, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Anna Davison and Robert Davison. At the age of nineteen, Davison started a career in pharmaceutical sales. He registered for the draft on June 5, 1917, and was inducted into the United States Army on June 26, 1918. He left from France aboard the USS Zeelandia on September 8, 1917, and was assigned to the Administrative Labor Army Service Corps of the Quartermaster Corps. Near the end of the war, he earned a promotion to Corporal on October 1, 1918. Davison was tasked to stay with the Third Army during the occupation of the Rhineland after the war officially ended and did not depart from Europe until October 19, 1919. The work he did during the occupation earned Davison a promotion to Sergeant on May 20, 1919. He was honorably discharged on November 5, 1919. After returning home, Davison continued his work in pharmaceutical sales at Budd’s Pharmacy in St. Petersburg, Florida. He opened his own pharmacy in 1926. In April of the same year, Davison married Johanna Horstmann, a German woman. In August 1929, Davison shifted trades from pharmaceuticals to tires when he became the manager of a Firestone tire store and filling station. In 1930, Davison moved from Firestone to Goodrich tires. He had major surgery at the Mound Park Hospital in St. Petersburg in July 1930, followed by six weeks of recovery. Ultimately, his health issues would cause him to retire early at the age of forty-seven in early 1940. Davison died in 1945 from what his wife called “a long illness.”

In 2017, the University of Central Florida was one of three universities selected to launch the National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Legacy Program Project. The program engaged a team of scholars to make the life stories of veterans buried in the Florida National Cemetery available to the public. The project engages UCF students in research and writing and fosters collaboration between students, faculty and local Central Florida schools to produce interactive curriculum for K-12 students. The corresponding website exhibit uses RICHES Mosaic Interface to create a digital archive of related data. The public can use the project-developed augmented-reality app at more than 100 gravesites at the Florida National Cemetery, where they can access the UCF student-authored biographies of veterans.

Source

Digital reproduction of original newspaper article: "Manager." St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1929.

Date Created

1929-08-31

Date Copyrighted

1929-08-31

Format

image/jpg

Extent

393 KB

Medium

1 newspaper article

Language

eng

Type

Text

Coverage

St. Petersburg, Florida

Accrual Method

Donation

Mediator

History Teacher

Provenance

Originally created and published by St. Petersburg Times.

Rights Holder

Copyright to this resource is held by the St. Petersburg Times and is provided here by RICHES for educational purposes only.

Curator

Stoddard, James

External Reference

Abney, Barb. "VA Selects UCF Historians to Archive Stories of Deceased Veterans Veterans." UCF Today, March 13, 2017. Accessed August 9, 2017. https://today.ucf.edu/va-selects-ucf-historians-archive-stories-deceased-veterans/.
Tuchman, Barbara W., and Robert K. Massie. The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I. 2014.

Citation

St. Petersburg Times, “Manager,” RICHES, accessed November 21, 2024, https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/items/show/10679.

Locations

Categories