LOOK UP, almost any night, at the darkened facade of the Metal's Bank Building in the old copper city of Butte and you'll note a square of light on the sixth floor. Someone up there is burning the midnight oil. Not a few passersby well know who the toiler is.

"Tom works too hard," they'll agree as they round the corner at Main and Park streets. "Been telling him that for years‑but he won't let up."

They refer to their fellow townsman Tom J. Davis‑by his own description "just a crossroads lawyer." But they know it isn't his law practice, large as it is, that keeps this strong‑jawed, silver-thatched citizen downtown of nights. It's his lifelong practice of giving his ample brawn and his quick brain to every good thing in town. Big things. Little things.

"My father used to tell me that if I didn't slow down, I'd be old and worn out at 35," Tom Davis recalls. Then, lowering his bushy brow in a wink, he adds, "I'm somewhat past 35 now and I don't feel like slowing down one bit. I hope I never shall."

It was on such a night as I have described many years ago that a certain newcomer to Butte pushed open Tom Davis's office door and asked if he could spare a few minutes. Welcomed, the newcomer began a story, the upshot of which was this: He had come to Butte as the new manager of the local agency of a national corporation. Studying his predecessor's practices, he had found much that he could not condone. Thus he had begun a thorough reform. His brand of ethics demanded it. But his sales force, accustomed to the various "benefits" that had been a part of the old regime, complained volubly and began to work against him. Of late he had begun to question his own stand. His resolution was flagging. A friend had advised that he talk it over with Tom Davis.

Tom Davis had listened quietly. Now it was his turn to speak.

"Bill," he said in his kind basso, "you know you are right. Keep on being right. You cannot beat old‑fashioned honesty. I'll be watching you."

With bolstered resolve the new manager went back to his agency, won his battle there, and by virtue of that success climbed high in his company's management. Tom may have forgotten the episode. This man, now 1,000 miles away from Butte, never will.

Once in a while one meets a man whose personal integrity is so real and so luminous that it is reflected in the faces and actions of all who deal with him. Such a man is Tom J. Davis, the man who will lead Rotary through the coming 12 months.

The people of Montana, from the Canadian border on the north to the Wyoming‑Idaho line on the south, from the Powder River country in the east to the land of the shining mountains in the west, are proud of Tom Davis. And they are proud of the credit reflected upon their State by his election to the Presidency of Rotary International. They know that Rotarians who have not Yet met him will come to love him as the folks at home do‑as a kind, keen‑witted, capable man, endowed with the finest qualities of leadership and motivated by a deep urge to give his energies and abilities for the service of others.

This sounds a little lavish? It's not! It's what his friends think of him. It's what young men whom he helped in their boyhood think of him. Let him walk into a crowded banquet room and there are whispers of "There's Tom Davis." Or let it be announced that he is to speak at some affair and the place will be packed.

"He likes everybody and everybody likes him," is the way one especially good friend, Ben Hardin, a Butte Rotarian, sums it up.

Rotary's new international President came into the world in the little community of Weir City, Kansas, on January 30, 1888, and was christened [named] Thomas Jefferson Davis. Butte has been his home since 1897, when his parents moved west to the bustling mining camp of that lusty era.

The boy Tom Davis showed signs of what the man would become. His superior intellectual equipment and his excellence at sports made him a natural leader. Selling papers on Butte streets and later peddling carpets gave him status as an ambitious boy-businessman among his young friends. After high school and a business‑college course, Tom Davis decided to study law, so off he went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to prepare himself at the University of Michigan Law School. 

TOM DAVIS worked his way. In spite of (or because of) that, he won honors which brought him an invitation to join the faculty there upon his graduation in 1912. He declined.

"I wanted to come back to Butte," he explains. "I was anxious to start my law practice."

Now husky young Tom had set some splendid records in baseball, boxing, and track, and had often been encouraged to try a boxing career. In his last days on the Michigan campus, with the course of his life well set, along came an offer to him from the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. It was a tempting opportunity for a young man with the spirit, courage, and splendid physique of Tom Davis. But he decided against it. He wanted none of the quick but fading glory of professional sports. His interest in athletics was keen., but he played the games for sheer love of them. So, wisely, he came back to Butte and ‑ with $8 - started building a law practice of prominence.

Butte in those days was what magazine writers insist on describing as "a wide‑open, roaring mining camp." Thousands of young men crowded the city, and decent recreational facilities for them were virtually nonexistent.

The young lawyer, with other men of like mind, decided that something must be done. The Butte Young Men's Association resulted and that group, in turn, brought to Butte its modern Y.M.C.A. building, a boon to the miners and a boys' paradise for youngsters who had had no place to play except on the sprawling mine dumps of the camp.

That is typical of the kind of "helping out" Tom Davis so much enjoys. His greatest interest always has been in assisting youth and he put his talents in that field to work when he headed Rotary's international Youth Committee.

It was 26 years ago that Tom Davis joined the new Butte Rotary Club and found therein the high purposes and the opportunity for active service he sought. Soon he became one of the most prominent members of the Club, serving as President in 1920‑21. In 1921 he was elected Governor of the old 20th District, which included Montana, Idaho, and Utah. Three years later he became Third Vice‑President of Rotary International. Through the years he has served on virtually every major international Committee and during the past Rotary year was Chairman of the Aims and Objects Committee.

In the practice of law he has achieved an enviable reputation, known the length and breadth of Montana‑and beyond. Recognizing this fact, four educational institutions have conferred upon him honorary doctor's degrees. He is retained as counsel for 13 industrial and commercial concerns, such as the Soo Lines, Safeway Stores, F. W. Woolworth Company, and Northwest Casualty Company. The name of Tom Davis frequently appears in the court records as the attorney for the "underdog" and the client of which he is most proud is Butte Miners Union No. 1, in which his father formerly "carried a card." Amazing, isn't it, that one man can be counsel for both management and labor? Not at all! Tom Davis is just one thing (not all things) to all men: honest, hard‑hitting, helpful Tom Davis.

A compelling speaker, he has talked in every State of the United States as well as in several cities of Canada and Mexico. 

His great capacity for friendship and great willingness to help have brought him responsibilities in several organizations. For a number of years he has been a director of the Butte Y.M.C.A., a director of the Butte Chamber of Commerce and of the Salvation Army, and has served other organizations too numerous to mention. Recently he was appointed to the Butte Airport Commission, which is charged with the important job of bringing the air field up to Government requirements as a link in the chain of potential national‑defense bases.

Yes, Tom Davis is a busy man. He is at his office early in the morning, probably in court a short time later, out for a luncheon meeting with fellow directors of one of the organizations he serves, and then back to his duties. At the close of the business day he hurries home to his devoted family. Frequently, in the evening hours, he is engaged in work for others. How he finds time to do it all is a miracle.

His wife is the former Hester Christen, a charming lady to whom he gives much credit for his success. The Davis family is a model one, rich with devotion, happiness, and all the finest points of American family life. There are three children. Peggy, the elder daughter, is director of physical education in the Helena, Montana, schools; Tom, Jr., recently married, is an instructor in the United States Army Air Corps at Sacramento, California; and Shirley is a student at the Butte High School. Of course, Rotary's First Man and Lady will protest that they are only ordinary folks‑the average parents of normal children. 

"AREN'T you rather excited about becoming President of Rotary International?" the writer asked Tom Davis.

The new President smiled. "Who wouldn't be excited? I'm excited and proud. And I'm determined to do my very best for Rotary. I expect a year of hard work, but at the same time I know that serving Rotary in this manner probably will be the happiest experience of my life."

We of Montana who know Tom Davis have no doubts about the well‑being and progress of Rotary with him at the helm. We know that the Presidency has been placed upon the shoulders of a man who will be a credit to the post. We like and admire Tom Davis‑and we know you will, too.

Written by a Montana Rotary member in the July 1941 issue of The Rotarian

Prepared by Wolfgang Ziegler 7 September 2003