Sikes
Alvin
Bill Davis
People 1 | 2 | 3
| Calif. Families
Sikes
Alvin
Bill Davis
People 1 | 2 | 3
|
|
for Davis, who also racked up $95,000 in personal credit-card debt purchasing a computer system for the clinic. "I wouldn't have done that without some reasonable hope that there was a way of paying it back," says Davis, a married father of four grown sons who acknowledges that the entire enterprise, though noble, could still fall apart. "I've thought about it not working, but I've never said it was not a good idea. We're still in the process of getting there." Until then, Davis relies on wife Wendy's annual salary as chief of ombudsman services for the department of mental health in Sacramento, The couple live on a tight budget. "It's scary," says Davis's mother, Dorothy, 77, a homemaker wed 53 years to William B. Davis, Sr., 76, a turf specialist at the University of California. "But we're certainly proud of him." Growing up in Davis, Calif., with |
his parents and sister Pain, 51, Bill was curious and methodical. "You'd ask him to clean his room, thinking it would take 20 minutes, and it might take 2 days," says Dorothy. "If he's going to do something, he's going to do it right." Three decades ago her son accepted the invitation of 16-year-old Davis Senior High School classmate Wendy Walker to help out at a summer camp. "He had pretty brown eyes and blond hair and great legs," recalls Wendy, now 47. Smitten, they threw themselves into political causes, protesting the Vietnam War and supporting Cesar Chavez's farmworkers movement. Says Wendy: "We got together over wanting to serve the world."
A year after Davis graduated from high school, the couple married. He earned his degree from UC Davis School of Medicine in 1983. When Davis first visited Winters in 1986, he was taken with its |
quaint charm and, rejecting more lucrative offers, set up a practice, often riding a bicycle to visit patients at home. "He's like that special best friend from high school you go to when the chips are down," says Martinez. Ask Victoria Garibay, 63, a recent heart attack victim who suffers from diabetes and hypertension. After treating her in his office, Davis stopped by her home to explain her condition and prognosis to her husband, children and grandchildren. She paid for his services with a promise that her husband will trim the doctor's ivy. Davis knows it will be hard to keep the WHF up and running, but he also knows that this kind of doctoring has special rewards. "It feels better to do something for somebody who is not able to find first-class medicine," Davis says, "than dealing with people who can afford to pay anything."
- Nick Charles
|
 "He never got involved in medicine for the money," son Jason (right) says of Davis (at home in Winters, Calif., in a friendly game with, his wife, Wendy, their son Ben's girlfriend Madoka Itoh, their sons Ben, Ryan and Jonathan and Jason's wive, Jo Ann).
| ||
| PEOPLE 9/10/01 132 Copyright © 2001 People All rights reserved. | ||