PAULINE’S DEATH LEAVES A BIG HOLE IN THE AB LEGACY

Before Google, I had Pauline.

Pauline Davis was not just a good friend, a traveling companion, a co-worker, she was my memory. From the day I met her at Amusement Business in 1976, she was my guide to the industry and my ever-ready journal of faces and places.

Pauline Davis, also known as Hardaway and Gerson before she reclaimed her maiden name, died of a bilateral stroke on July 24 near her home in Smyrna, Tenn., outside Nashville. Born in Kentucky, one of the last three of nine siblings, she got her college degree, taught English, married and became a mother, prior to landing a job at Amusement Business. First, she scheduled ads (known as ad trafficking) and then, at the urging of publisher Walter Heeney, became a top advertising account executive.

There were very few women professionals, especially working moms, in the live entertainment trade press at the time, at least not many that interfaced with the industry. She had to navigate the halls of amusement park, fair and carnival conventions, arena and stadium managers gatherings, and entertainment conclaves. She loved it all.

“She loved the industry, and the industry loved her back,” said Donna Dowless, artist and ambassador in her own right, who spent many years with Ticketmaster. “And she loved The Bill, she thought he was the coolest thing ever,” Donna added, referring to her own husband, Bill Racek. “I loved it when she showed up. She did just show up. Pauline lived in the moment.”

Donna’s husband was one of the North and South Carolina venue managers who knew how to have a good time, men like Jim Dalrymple and Ted Lewis. They were a perfect match for Pauline, who actually spent many of her retirement years in New Bern, N.C.

Pauline’s smile, her wit and her willingness to go anywhere are remembered by most in the industry. Travel was a delight to Pauline, who worked with traveling teen groups post-AB days so she could stay on the road.

She had the travel bug so bad I was even able to convince her to still go to Expo 86, the World’s Fair in Vancouver, B.C., after she broke her foot. (I had to Google the year because I don’t have Pauline now to tell me when we went to Vancouver.) We had made plans and were looking forward to traveling to the event for Amusement Business when fate intervened. It’s surprisingly easy to break a small bone in your foot and it’s a long healing process.

Normal people would have canceled the trip, but I wanted Pauline there and she wanted to be there, so she finally caved to my coaxing and crutched her way onto the plane. At that time, we were both West Coasters for AB. That’s when we both learned the advantages and disadvantages of disabilities. We boarded the plane first, since she was in a wheelchair. We skipped lines at the World’s Fair, going in the back door, albeit in a wheelchair. I’ll never forget standing in a long queue waiting for a cab at the end of the day – for a world-class event, Expo ‘86 had some big transportation issues – when who but Mike Jenkins of LARC should direct his cab to stop and add us to the ride. Pauline had that effect on people. They wanted to help her.

On the downside, it was not the same experience and we missed a lot of things because she was in a wheelchair. On the real downside, she was probably miserable, but she made the best of it. It reminded me of the fair convention trip we took when she had a broken toe (not as disabling as a broken foot, but no fun). She was hobbling along in fashionable shoes and I asked her how she coped. “It just reminds me to smile,” she said of the pain.

Pauline was one of the first women and first mothers to work and travel for AB. When I came along, it sort of cramped her style, I’m sure. At AB, we had to share rooms on the road to save on expenses. She had not had a roommate, however, because there were no other women on the traveling staff. Therefore, in true Pauline style, she would invite her girlfriends to share her room in New Orleans, or wherever, and have a mini-vacation.

I say New Orleans, because I was a last-minute addition to that 1976 IAAM convention (International Association of Auditorium Managers at the time) in that city and she had already arranged for friends to room with her when I checked in as her official roommate. We learned to cope right off the bat. She taught me to be free and accommodating to other people. And a lifelong friendship began.

She was a mentor to many young women working for AB and Billboard in those early years, like Billboard’s Melinda Newman who remembered Pauline “was absolutely a pivotal part of my AB experience… an amazing roommate and my protector in so many ways against my own naiveté during conventions. I adored her.”

Later, when I founded Venues Today, I brought Pauline on board and on the road, selling advertising. And lo and behold, VT Marketing Director Samantha Le had a similar experience with Pauline on the road. Pauline taught her to tip the hotel maids. I questioned it as an expense report line item, and she said fine, she wouldn’t expense it but she’d still do it, because Pauline taught her to. She was right to do it.

We worked together for years in Nashville and then I was moved to L.A. to be West Coast Editor for AB. A few years later, Pauline came West too, to sell ads. She had no interest in living in Orange County, where I resided. She wanted to be in L.A. She moved in with an English bloke she met in a coffee shop, a guy named Don who had a room to rent and was drawn to her. It was karma.

Years later, when I moved back to Nashville to be managing editor for AB, Pauline was already there. We decided to finally live together. She left my extended stay hotel one night and driving down Cloverland Lane in Brentwood, saw a man posting a for-rent sign in front of a stone house. She called me and I was there at the crack of dawn. The man was Stonewall Jackson, country singer, and the house was his starter home. He had built a new one across the lake. We were in like Flynn. It was a hoot from day one, with the lake, the geese, the racetrack in the woods, the tour bus pulling up behind our house on our side of the lake when it was time for Stonewall to hit the road.

When it came time to buy my own house, Pauline helped me find one. While she didn’t like the house in Franklin I eventually bought, she made it work by helping me design a second master bedroom in the unfinished space over the garage. My tenants there now, David and Benita Teems, also in the music/writing business, love that room, as well as the finished basement which is now home to their son Shad, who has his own band, Framing Hanley. If Pauline only knew, she’d be so pleased the house is so musical and her design works.

Connections like that followed Pauline. She embraced everyone. She loved travel, having gone to Europe many times with friends, once with me – to England and Scotland. She became the companion of choice for many friends traveling to Greece. One of her favorite movies was “Shirley Valentine.” Pauline was passionate about what she liked.

She loved music. Music is the score of our lives. Neil Diamond was top of her list. We once went to a taping with Neil Diamond and Merle Haggard. She was in heaven. The two guys in front of us at the Ryman turned and asked, “Why do women like Neil Diamond so much?” Her jaw dropped. “Just look at him…What’s not to like?”

When she was dying, the nurse asked her lovely daughter Susan if Pauline liked music. Oh yes, she does. Neil Diamond. She brought a tape the next day.

Life was full for Pauline. Her daughter Susan married Marty Evans and they have four lovely children — Brittany, Lauren, Fourth of July Jennifer and Wyatt, the baby and only boy. Thankfully, Pauline was able to live with them and absorb even more of the joy of family in her last few years.

A career was very important to her, but it came back down to family — both the extended one, worldwide, and the immediate blood ties.

The Evans family suffered the trauma of death of a loved one during Covid 19, something that is impacting so many lives in 2020. Because of Covid 19, they could not be with Pauline in her last lucid hours, talking through a hospital window, waving and blowing kisses, playing music and church services. It’s a story like so many these days, not just people dying of the coronavirus, but people dying during a pandemic from any cause.

It’s another chapter in a very colorful and caring life. I have so many memories of Pauline and I’m just a speck in the painting of her life, which embraced so many.

She will be terribly missed by her children Susan and Marty Evans, four grandchildren and legions of friends. Some of you will be shocked to learn of her death. I’m sorry, so sorry. It’s been two weeks, but it’s now an eternity. Memory eternal.

Preliminary plans are to have a celebration of Pauline’s life on or near Oct. 18 in Nashville. It would have been her 80^th birthday. Shhh — she wouldn’t like me telling that. — Based on memories of Linda Deckard

PHOTO AT TOP: Pauline Davis, West Coast account exec for Amusement Business in the 80’s and 90’s, with Sam Young, founder of AB West along with editorial’s Sam Abbott, and Emily, front and center, a sales assistant learning from the pros. (AB Photo)