Why I am the only Davis in the family

I will begin by telling how our family was formed. My grandparents on my mother's side were Walter Gilwill Borchers and Elizabeth Speed Davis. They came to Brazil as single Methodist missionaries; his first job was in Rio Grande do Sul, our southernmost sate and her first job was in Rio de Janeiro, at Bennet School. As her mother had died he wrote her a condolence letter, she replied … and a correspondence was begun. Two years later they were married, in São Paulo, in 1909.

My parents met when they were children, in Santos, where they lived. My grandfather was the pastor of the Methodist Church in Santos and my grandmother played the organ and taught Sunday School. My father's family attended this church.

At that time, missionaries worked for seven years, then went back home for one year, on furlough – a kind of vacation combined with visits to churches and family, with reports about the work done.

My mother went to the US once when she was 5 years old, came back one year later, stayed in Brazil for seven years and returned to the US, this time to study at Bethel Academy, in Wilmore, Kentucky. It was a boarding school. When she finished high school she began nursing school, at Asbury College and later at LaGrange College, in the state of Georgia.

After staying in the US for 8 years she came to Brazil on vacation but did not go back. She and my father Aluizio met again and soon were engaged. They were married and moved to Franca, where my father worked as a teller at the Banco do Estado de São Paulo (a state bank). My sister Ellen and my brother Clovis were born in Franca. When it was time for me to be born, my mother decided to come to Campinas, where my grandparents Walter and Elizabeth lived.

My arrival in this world was dramatic: it was a difficult delivery, all the doctors and nurses were fighting hard to save my mother's life and when grandmother arrived at the maternity hospital she found me bundled up in a corner all by myself. She took care of me and told me that the first night of my life I slept in her arms. It was in her honor that I received the name Davis – and my descendants too!