Walter Raymond Davis was born March 12, 1920 in Pensacola, Florida, while his father was working in the shipyards. As a young child, his family moved several times, returning to his father's home outside of Marianna, in Jackson County, Florida when he was 6. He spent the rest of his childhood in Jackson County and graduated from Marianna High School in 1938. He joined the CCCs where he learned to be a surveyor. When the country entered WWII he enlisted in the Army Air Corp. He was sent to OCS and was commissioned a 2nd Lt., eventually rising to the rank of Captain. He was sent to the China, Burma, India theater where he served as a communications and navigation officer on planes that "Flew the Hump", which meant they flew over the Himalayas and dropped supplies to guerrillas behind enemy lines. His plane crashed in the Himalaya and he broke his back. He was given a medical retirement from the Army Air Corp. He had married Verna LaRee Gardner before going into the service and his daughter, Sandra, was born while he was in China. After the service he went to school at the RCA Institute in New York. He worked in California for a time then moved back to his wife's home state of Utah because she was very sick. LaRee died in 1951, leaving Walt a widower with a small daughter. He married his second wife, Patsy Lorraine Cahoon on March 14, 1952. Walt adopted Patsy's son, they added two children to the family and together raised their four children, two sons and two daughters. In 1955, Walt went to work for Western Electric as an engineer, he worked on Defense Missile Systems and well as on the launch crew for many early communications satellites launched in the 1960s. The family moved a lot for his job but they ended up back in Florida in 1969. Walt retired from Western Electric in 1975 and passed away in Orlando, Florida in 1983 at the young age of 63, from Congestive Heart Failure. He was cremated and after his wife's death, his cremains were buried with her in the National Cemetery in Beaufort, SC.