Everyone who’s ever known Alison Davis, deeply or briefly, has been blessed.  Whether it’s through the books she’s written – “A Sense of Wonder”, “Beloved Companions”, or “Hampton Remembers”, or participation at one of the groups she’s organized, or caroling at her home, where miniature animals walk through a village lit with tiny candles to the Manger, and a fire glows on the hearth.  Even the smallest child stepping into this realm experiences, like a magical spell, a sense of grace and of peace. These are among the many gifts Alison has given us, which she attributes to the gifts she’s received. Her latest book, “Remembering 97 Years: A Spiritual Life”, chronicles the influences — people, places, events and spiritual encounters — of a life well-lived and well-loved.

The first of life’s gifts was her name: Alison Grace – “all is one” and “divine gift” – themes which run through her memoir. A love of literature was cultivated early in life.  Her mother, a voracious reader, would share the adventures she’d read of at the dinner table nightly. Her father, a professor at Brown University, read poetry to the family to “inspire us to be thrilled by its beauty”. The gift of imagination was also thus nurtured, along with art and music, and with a doll house her grandfather built for her as a Christmas present when she was seven, a gift which many Hampton children can attest “continues to give pleasure”.

Alison writes us of the interesting people she has encountered – Miss Longfellow, Robert Frost, Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Edwin and Nellie Teale. She describes distant places she’s visited – Swiss villages, cruising around the Mediterranean to Egypt, Palestine, Italy, and Greece, Austria and Germany, Bermuda; and the interesting places she’s lived – Frost’s writing cabin, Windmill House, purportedly a part of the Underground Railroad, the university towns of Cambridge and Perdue, and, most importantly, Hampton.  Alison discovered Hampton when her parents purchased a summer house here in 1937. The family fell in love with our fields, farms, village, the Little River Grange. Hampton is where her family sheltered two little Jewish refugee girls from Germany in 1942. And Hampton is where Alison met her future husband of 71 years, Wendell Davis, and where the couple eventually settled after his return from service in World War II. First in the Davis homestead with its “fascinating memorabilia from many generations” which inspired historians Janet and James Robertson to pen the best-selling book “All Our Yesterdays”, and then in the 1790 home where Alison still resides. Their contributions to our community are legendary, and include “Hampton Remembers” a collection of interviews Alison conducted with residents who were born here at the turn of the century.

Alison also details the “stepping stones” of her spiritual path, comprised of various religions, starting with the Quakers and the premise that “There is that of God in everyone.” She writes of the influence of Saint Frances when in Assisi, of the Passion plays of Germany, juxtaposed, in 1935, with Hitler’s reign of terror, of Scotland’s Findhorn, of Swami Satchidananda and Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, the Friends of Omega, and finally, the Universal Third Order and its seven principles. An impressive resume, yet Alison also writes of simpler influences — of solitude and silence, of animals and nature, of precious places, like the porch — providing glimpses of the stepping stones to us, and the understanding that they’re all within our grasp. It’s a journey worth taking. Filled with positivity and the philosophy of “looking for the best in everyone”, you’ll find yourself on many pages, with a dawning, or where a light shines on your own worth, and you’ll find hope. Lots and lots of hope. At 97, Alison says, she’s “still growing”.

Dayna McDermott