GAIL COMER DAVIS

Gail C. Davis was born on July 11, 1940 to Robert Henry Comer and Lillian Edna Augusta Fischgrabe Comer in Pasadena, California. She passed away peacefully on July 8, in Ft. Worth, Texas, just shy of her 85th birthday. When she was nearing junior high school age, her family returned to Texas. They lived briefly in Moody and then settled in Waco. Gail graduated from Waco High School in 1957. Following her graduation from Waco High School, she enrolled in the School of Nursing at Baylor, graduating with her BSN degree in 1961.

She entered the field of nursing as a clinician, working at Hillcrest Hospital in Waco, Texas; Hale Center Hospital, Hale Center, Texas; and the University of Minnesota Hospitals in Minneapolis. She completed her MEd in Nursing Education in 1965 at the University of Minnesota where she received a US Public Health Traineeship. She completed her doctorate in counseling and guidance at Texas Tech University in 1973. In 1985 and 1986 she completed a year and a half of post-doctoral study in nursing instrumentation at the University of Arizona Medical School and School of Nursing. Her career as a nursing educator and nursing researcher includes administrative appointments at Methodist Hospital School of Nursing, Lubbock (1965-1969), and faculty appointments at the Swedish Hospital School of Nursing in Minneapolis (1965 – 1966); the University of Missouri – St. Louis (1969), Marillac College in St. Louis, Missouri (1970-1972); Texas Christian University (TCU) (1974 – 1997) and Texas Woman’s University (TWU) (1971-1974; 1997-2009). While at TCU, she held joint appointments with Harris Methodist Hospital-Fort Worth as a Special Projects Coordinator (1981-1984) and as Nursing Research Associate (1988). She mentored 19 students through the masters degree program in nursing and 18 students through the Ph.D. program in nursing while at TWU where she was also a mentor in the Chancellor’s Research Program (2005-2007) and a Research Professor in the Institute for Women’s Health (2002-2010). She holds emeritus status at both universities.

For more than 30 years she did research on chronic pain and the chronic pain experience. Her research was supported with extramural grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Nurses Foundation, Sigma Theta Tau International, and Beta Alpha Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International’s Hogstel Research Award (1999, 2003), as well as intramural grants from TCU and TWU. She authored or co-authored more than 90 book chapters, articles, and abstracts and made presentations at more than 50 professional meetings at the local, state, national and international levels. She was co-editor of The Rheumatologist and was a reviewer for numerous journals in nursing, rheumatology, arthritis, pain and gerontology. In retirement, she pursued research interests in rural Texas Medicine in the late 1800s and early 1900s, particularly as it related to her grandfather who was a druggist in Bell County Texas.

A Virginia Henderson Fellow of Sigma Theta Tau International, her work has been recognized with numerous honors and awards. Among them is the Nursing Research Award from the Texas League for Nursing (1993); the Mary Opal Wolanin Award for Excellence in Clinical Nursing Research with Geriatric Populations from the University of Arizona (1998), the Susan Cass Doroghazi Faculty Award for Research from the TWU College of Nursing (2005), the Star Award and the Master Clinician Award, both from the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals in 2005, and the Hartford Geriatric Nursing Research Award from the Southern Nursing Research Society (2008). In 1993 she was selected to participate in the Measurement of Clinical and Educational Nursing Outcomes Project, supported by the National Institutes of Health, and in 1994 she was an invited participant for the National Institute of Health’s Symposium on Biobehavioral Pain Research sponsored by the Fetzer Foundation. In 1996 she was awarded a Pain Management Fellowship by the Mayday Foundation for study at the Interdisciplinary Pain Center, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. In 2011 she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Louise Harrington School of Nursing at Baylor University.

Her involvement at the local, state, and national levels, in health professional organizations, encompassed service at many levels, including President of the Texas League for Nursing and Secretary and Vice President of the Texas Nurses Association. She served on the Advisory Board for the College of Nursing at TCU for many years.

She was predeceased by her parents, Robert and Edna Comer, her sister, Marlene Sheruda, her brother-in law and sister-in-law, Glynn and LaVerne Davis, and a niece Paula Davis. She is survived by her husband of 63 years, D. Jack Davis, a son, Paul R. Davis, of Ft Worth and his wife Colleen; two grandchildren, Reid H. Davis of Houston and Hannah R. Davis of Dallas and a step grandson, Jacob Allan Wheeler, of Arlington. She is also survived by two nephews, Greg Scott of Jacksonville, Florida and Reverand Robert Scott of Clearwater, Florida, and three nieces, Anne Scott of Christ Church, New Zealand, Melinda Davis Jones of Pittsburg, Texas, and Cindy Davis Dumas of Flower Mound, Texas, and numerous grand nieces and nephews.

A Memorial Service will be held at the Chapel of the First Presbyterian Church in Ft. Worth Saturday, July 19 at 1 p.m. with a reception following at Trinity Terrace.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to the American Nurses’ Foundation’s Gail C. Davis Nursing Research Award, the Gail C. Davis Nursing Research Award at the University of Minnesota, The Gail C. Davis Graduate Fellowship in Nursing at Texas Woman’s University or the Endowment for the Support of the Gail C. Davis History of Nursing and Medicine Collection at Texas Woman’s University.