Maclin "Mac" Paschall Davis Jr.

Maclin Davis, Jr. (Mac) died peacefully in his sleep at home in Nashville just before 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 11, 2023. He was the son of Maclin Paschall Davis, Sr. and Edith Uhler Davis and the grandson of Mr. and Mrs. Norman H. Davis of Tullahoma, Tennessee and Alexandria, Virginia and Mr. and Mrs. William P. Uhler of Interlaken, Massachusetts.

Mac was born in Nashville, where he lived most of his life. His education began at Miss Ann’s Kindergarten in 1931. He attended grammar school at Parmer School from 1932 to 1937. He attended Montgomery Bell Academy from 1937 to 1943, where he played on the varsity football, basketball, and tennis teams and was captain of the tennis team in 1943. He joined the Alpha Chi fraternity and served as treasurer and vice president. In 2021, when he could remember little else, he could still recite the first lines of Caesar’s Gallic War in Latin, which he had learned at MBA in the 8th grade.

Immediately following graduation from high school, Mac entered Virginia Military Institute and turned 17 in Lexington, Virginia on July 13, 1943. In the year he spent there he played varsity football and basketball and was vice president of his class. At VMI, he learned draftsmanship, a skill that enabled him to design the house his young family would live in on Wayland Drive and the barn he had built in the 1980s on Chickering Road.

He joined the United States Naval Reserve in July of 1944 and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the Navy V-12 program from July 1944 to July 1945. A gifted mathematician who loved French, Latin, philosophy, and the United States Constitution, he talked very little of academic accomplishments, preferring instead to remember his participation on the varsity tennis and wrestling teams and his membership in the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

Mac attended the United States Navy Reserve Midshipmen’s School at Columbia University, New York, New York, July through October of 1945, where he played on the tennis team. He was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy Reserve in October 1945 and served on the Battleship U.S.S. Mississippi from October 1945 through August 1946 as a division officer in command of a turret.

He finished college at Vanderbilt University in June of 1947 with a B.A. degree in history. The following September, he entered Vanderbilt University School of Law and graduated in February of 1950 with an L.L.B. degree, which was later made into a J.D. degree. Mac competed on the varsity tennis team and the wrestling team. He was a member of the Omicron Delta Kappa honorary fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity. One of Mac’s happiest memories of law school was playing bridge every chance he got.

In 1941, Mac worked as a clerk in the shipping department of the Se-Ling Hosiery Mill in Nashville, which is now the L&L Building on Charlotte. In 1947, he was the counselor in charge of horseback riding instruction at Camp Hi-Lake, Quebec, Tennessee.

In March 1950, he joined the law firm of Armistead, Waller, Davis & Lansden as an associate. He was made partner in 1955. In 1967, the name of the firm was changed to Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis. Mac had replaced his uncle Paschall as the Davis in the firm name. Except for a nine-year interlude as a partner with the firm of Heiskell, Donelson, Bearman, Adams, Williams & Caldwell in its Nashville Office (1988-1997), Mac worked at Waller for the rest of his over 60 years as a lawyer. He participated in numerous significant lawsuits of all types. Mac is remembered for his sense of humor and his way of encouraging other people, whether in the practice of law, or on the tennis court, or playing a musical instrument.

One of Mac’s most significant cases came about when he served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Tennessee General Assembly from Davidson County, 1954-1956. Compelled by his oath of office to support the Constitution of the State of Tennessee, he sponsored a bill to reapportion the state legislature. He was one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in Kidd v. McCanless, a lawsuit filed in the Tennessee courts in 1955 to enforce the constitutional requirement that the legislature be reapportioned every 10 years according to the number of qualified voters in each county. This case led to the One Man/One Vote decision of the United States Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr (1962).

In 1977, Mac was appointed Legal Counsel to the Tennessee State Republican Party and served in that capacity until 2003.

A life-long Episcopalian, Mac was baptized and confirmed at Christ Church, Nashville, where he served as an acolyte. In 1946, at the age of 20, he transferred to St. George’s Church, Nashville. He was chairman of the board of the kindergarten in 1962. He also taught adult Sunday school, served on the vestry 1963-1966, and was a delegate to the diocesan convention. In 1966, he transferred to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, where he served as a member of the vestry, senior warden, and delegate to the diocesan convention. In 1970, he was a member of the original board of directors of the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer.

An ardent horse lover, Mac bred and raised many horses and showed them in western classes, English classes, and hunter/jumper classes. He rode his own horses in numerous western and hunter classes. Mac and his favorite horse Goodbye Jodee hunted foxes for many years together with the Hillsboro Hounds.

Mac competed in and won many tennis tournaments until he was well over 70. He is most remembered on the court for his merciless drop shot, his crisp backhand slice, and his sly gamesmanship.

Mac played bridge enthusiastically and aggressively. He was a Life Master and the author of The Davis Bidding System. His wife Joan says, “Mac was always a gentleman—except for the time I played bridge with him!”

In the 1960s, Mac played clarinet and saxophone in The Public Offenders, a band made up of lawyers in Nashville, and played tenor saxophone for The Establishment, a big band made up of amateurs and professional musicians, from 1969 to 1978. In the 2000s, he became part of Joan Hager Davis’s band, where he played clarinet in her various musical ensembles before and after their marriage in 2004. Together, they put on Nights of Nostalgia for their fans, and for years they brought joy and music to the residents in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. Always, she was the band leader; and he was the sideman. He considered himself lucky to be a sideman in her band.

Mac was a director and stockholder of the Tennessee Foundry and Machine Company, his father’s business, 1950-1980. He served as Chairman of the Board after his father’s death in 1978 until the company was sold in 1980.

On June 24, 1953, Mac married Dorothy Jane Savage of Memphis, Tennessee, to whom he was married until her death on May 1, 1999. They had three children: Maclin Paschall Davis, III, Joseph Norman Davis, and Dorothy Savage Davis. On October 7, 2004, Mac married the former Joan Bell Hager. He lived the rest of his life with her at her home in West Meade.

Mac is survived by his wife, Joan Hager Davis; his three children, Maclin P. Davis, III (Vicky), Joseph N. Davis (Cindy), and Dorothy Savage Davis, of Nashville; his four grandchildren, Laura Rose Davis of Nashville, John Paschall Davis of New York, New York, Mary Elaine Davis Treuba (Jules) of Nashville, and Paul Maclin Davis of Nashville. Joan’s children, Judy Burch (Charles), Auborn Lee (Bud) Hager, III (Lindsay), and Joannie Pietramale, with their numerous family members, also suffer from the loss of Joan’s husband Mac. Mac’s two sisters died before him, Norma Davis Owen (Penn) in December of 2021, and Edith (Deedie) Davis Whiteman (Harold) in 2005. Another sister, Priscilla Davis, who died in infancy in 1930, is already buried in the plot where Mac’s ashes will be interred. The Davis family wishes to thank the caregivers who have attended to Mac for the last 7 years, especially Barbara Douglas, who died of Covid 19 on April 1, 2021, having given her life in the service of others. We also appreciate the staff of Alive Hospice, who attended to Mac and our family in Mac’s last days.

The Funeral will be a celebration of the Holy Eucharist at St. George’s Episcopal Church, 4715 Harding Road, Nashville on Saturday, February 11 at 2:00 p.m. The Rev. Chris Jones will be celebrant, and the Rev. Joseph N. Davis, Mac’s younger son and vicar of Grace Episcopal Church, Spring Hill, will preach. A reception will follow the service at a place to be announced. Family and friends are invited to an interment of ashes at Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery on Monday, February 13 at 11:00 a.m. Woodlawn-Roesch-Patton Funeral Home is assisting with burial arrangements.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorials be given to Grace Episcopal Church, 5291 Main Street, Spring Hill, 37174; St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, 4513 Park Ave. 37209; the W.O. Smith Nashville Community School of Music, 1125 8th Ave. South; or the animal rescue of your choice.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.Woodlawn-Roesch-PattonFH.com for the Davis family.