Remembering Beev. COVID-19 kills mentor who inspired 2 generations of Pascagoula kids
To two generations of Jackson County kids, he was Uncle Beev: James Davis, Jr., the director of the Boys & Girls Club Andrew Johnson unit in Pascagoula, and fixture at every high school football and basketball game.
Though few knew the story, and some who once knew it had forgotten it, the nickname Beev dated to childhood, when he had been a skinny kid with big front teeth. The nickname was “Beaver” at first, but Beev was what stuck.
Davis, 48, worked at the Boys & Girls Club for more than 20 years. Through the daily routine of snack distribution, homework checks and basketball games, he influenced and inspired thousands of children.
He spent extra time coaching young athletes and mentoring young men around Pascagoula. To many, he was a big brother, or a father figure.
He died on Tuesday morning after battling pneumonia caused by COVID-19. Friends and young mentees now spread around the country struggled to imagine a Pascagoula childhood without him. They mourned his loss not only for his family, including three young daughters, but also for the kids who will never know him.
“I hope everybody that has had a relationship with Beev feels blessed that they were able to have him in their lives,” said Seneca Wilson, 43, who first met Davis as a teenager in Pascagoula. “What I really hate, what I’m more concerned about, are the kids that will not ever have that experience with him. And I think that’s up to all of the people that he has inspired to continue what he does.”
Raised at the Rec
Davis’s grandmother ran Pascagoula’s Andrew Johnson Recreation Center, called the Rec. As a kid, Davis spent long days there playing basketball and ping pong and swimming, impressing other kids with his flips off the diving board.
“He had a basketball in his hands probably since he could barely walk,” recalled LaMont Parson, 47, who grew up playing basketball and football with Davis.
That early exposure and practice helped make Davis a standout athlete, Parson said, especially in basketball.
Rev. Larry Hawkins, Sr. of Union Baptist Church was Davis’s pastor for 33 years. Hawkins saw Davis grow from a teenager who sometimes stayed out late to a man who counseled others with the wisdom of experience.
“When it came full circle, he was a positive force to be reckoned with there,” Hawkins said.
Chad Dean, 39, grew up one house down the street from Davis. When Davis came home from college at Alabama State University, he became a mentor to young men in the neighborhood. He helped them work out for football and with homework. He encouraged them to work hard in school and aim to go to college, explaining that he regretted not finishing his degree.
He attended all of Dean’s football games and was the only person who came to support Dean on signing day. Some nights, he would stay up late talking to dozens of young men gathered outside the Rec or on Dean’s porch. Davis sipped Gatorade as he talked.
“We knew he came from the world that we were in,” Dean said. “He understood what we were going through. So he could speak to us. He just had that language to speak to us.”
Where would Dean be if he had never met Davis?
“I’m pretty sure I’d be dead or in jail.”
DeMond Rodgers, 40, was another one of the lifelong friends Davis first met at the Rec. The two spoke almost every day. Rodgers said Davis was motivated by helping kids succeed beyond what he had accomplished.
“He said he didn’t have that push,” Rodgers said. “He learned most of his stuff on his own. Being able to push children and at least reach one or two of them... to excel to another level: That’s what made him keep going.”
‘I’m proud of you’
Catherine Glaude, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Jackson County, first noticed Davis when he was helping out at the Rec after he came home from Alabama State. Watching him help move bleachers and clean up, just because he wanted to, she knew she had to recruit him, she recalls.
At first, he refused pay. They finally convinced him to become a staffer, and after about seven years he became unit director at Albert Johnson, working in the same facility his grandmother had run.
He loved to play sports with the kids, who ranged in age from 5 to 18 years old. He also brought in guest speakers from the community to give them role models. He chaperoned trips to college campuses away from the Coast, like Mississippi State and Tougaloo College, to encourage teenagers to think big for their next step in life.
He was an effective disciplinarian. Wilson now works in Birmingham, but his 13-year-old son lives in Pascagoula and played on Davis’s travel basketball team. When his son’s grades were slipping, Wilson called Davis.
“He’d say, ‘Say no more, don’t even worry about him, I got it,’” Wilson remembers. “My son calls me the next day, mad, ‘cause Beev made him run laps, do pushups.”
Keisha Smith’s son, now 24, “came up under his wing.” Davis kept in touch with club members’ teachers about their grades, and if a child was in trouble at school, he would reinforce the lesson at the club.
And he never hesitated to tell someone he was proud of them, even if he’d said it before.
“He’d always talk to my son, tell him, ‘I’m proud of you. Keep doing what you’re doing,” Smith said.
‘An awesome dad’
Teena Payton met Davis because their daughters were on a softball team together. She was impressed by how he came to every game, how he interacted with the kids, and how he was always happy and outgoing. They started dating in 2010 and have been together ever since.
Their daughter is now 4 years old; her sisters are 13 and 15. Davis, Payton says, was “an awesome dad.”
“He always used to say, ‘I’m not perfect, but I’m trying the best I can,” she said. “The girls were his world. That’s all he talked about.”
As a family, they liked to go out to eat and to the movies. Davis loved Buffalo Wild Wings and Texas Roadhouse, where he’d ask the waiters for the honey butter recipe.
Recently, Davis took a class on fathering.
“He just wanted to be the best father to his girls,” Payton said.
He was also talking about getting into real estate and going back to school to better provide for his family’s future.
Davis’s friend DeMond Rodgers, who owns the T-shirt company Mondesign, often hired Davis to help him print shirts. They’d sit in the shop working nights, talking and laughing. Davis would tell Rodgers, a Saints fan, to print him a Steelers shirt.
“I said, man, I been taught you how to do this, so why don’t you sit down at the computer and make your own Steelers shirt?” Rodgers said. “He said, No, I want you to make it.”
Rodgers always refused.
They dreamed that one day Mondesign would be big enough that Rodgers could hire Davis as an employee. That way, Davis could afford health insurance.
A lifetime of service, and no health insurance
Rodgers first noticed his friend wasn’t feeling well in early December. Davis said he was tired, too tired to go to the gym to work out like they’d been doing together. And he sounded congested. When Rodgers told him to see a doctor, Davis said he was worried about the bill.
At home, Payton saw that Davis was exhausted, going right to bed when he came home from work. He insisted he was dealing with routine sinus issues. If he had to go to the hospital, he didn’t know how he would pay for it.
“He got [health insurance] at one point and just couldn’t keep it up, didn’t make enough money to pay for it,” Payton said. “And that was something we talked about. We tried to find some cheap healthcare for him. All of it was so expensive, and we were both just check to check, trying to make sure the kids were straight, paying bills and all of that.”
Any time he saw a doctor for his diabetes, Payton said, they always paid cash.
When Davis started coughing and it seemed more plausible that he had COVID-19, Payton took the girls to her sister’s house. Davis and his daughters talked over FaceTime.
On Monday, Dec. 14, his symptoms were so bad that he went to Singing River in Pascagoula. He tested positive for COVID-19. The staff told Payton Davis had one of the worst cases they had seen.
On Tuesday morning, he died.
Rodgers is finally going to make that Steelers T-shirt, and wear it to Davis’s funeral.
Parents have been calling Jennifer Anderson, director of operations for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Jackson County, and crying over the phone because they know how much their kids loved Davis.
Wilson hopes the recreation center or the street it’s on will be renamed in Davis’s honor. Glaude and Anderson say they expect that the Youth of the Year prize, honoring one student from the Jackson County clubs, will be named for him.
Four-year-old Kaycee remembers her father’s lessons.
“When she got ready to eat, she told me, ‘Well, daddy would want me to pray,” Payton said. “She told me, ‘Before daddy died, he told me he loved us, he told me he loves all of us, and I’m going to do exactly what he told me to do.”
Davis’s family has set up a GoFundMe to help pay for his funeral costs: https://www.gofundme.com/f/q7shx-help-with-funeral-services
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 5:50 AM.
