Old Missoula

Dr. Ralph Kirby Davidson by Laura Tanna

Ralph Kirby Davidson, born May 13, 1921 in Webster, South Dakota, died December 2002 in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, age 81. His parents divorced when he was a child and after his father, Alfred Davidson, gained custody of him, Ralph or Kirby as he became known, was separated from his mother and sister. Raised by his aunt and uncle in Webster, where he attended primary and secondary schools, he graduated from Webster High School on May 26, 1938. In 1937 he had started working as a “printer’s devil” for the Reporter and Farmer, a Webster weekly newspaper, learning the printing trade and he continued working there after graduation. Kirby married Laura Agnes Devine from Roy, Montana in December 1941. Agnes already had a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Minnesota, so they moved to Leola, South Dakota where they leased and published a weekly newspaper, The MacPherson County Herald. Daughter Karen Ruth was born on August 27, 1942.

During World War II, Kirby enlisted in September 1942 and served in the US Army Signal Corps seeing action in the Pacific. Discharged December 23, 1945, he returned to work at the Reporter and Farmer, employed as a printer, until entering the School of Journalism, at Montana State University, Missoula, Montana in September 1946. Shortly after coming to Missoula, Kirby joined the local of the International Typographical Union as a journeyman printer.

Elected editor of the Freshman Kaimin newspaper, after his freshman year he was co-recipient of the Warden Scholarship in Journalism and then in his sophomore year became Associate Editor of the university student newspaper, the Montana Kaimin, (Kaimin is the Selish Indian word for “something written” or “message”.) A keen athlete, he participated in football, softball and boxing in the army, adding tennis, hiking, hunting and biking to activities in Missoula.

Daughter Laura Gay was born August 9,1947 and to balance finances, he worked part-time as a printer at the University Press, then in the summer worked full-time in the composing room of The Daily Missoulian, while carrying a full course of study at the MSU. He still managed to devote enough time to his studies to earn a Rhodes scholarship, the only undergraduate chosen from the Northwest regional Rhodes committee.

In his 1947 application for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University he wrote:

“My ambition is to eventually edit and publish a newspaper in a fair-sized city. I believe that in order to do a first-class job and be able to understand and interpret the happenings of the day I will need to have a well-rounded background in economics, philosophy, sociology, politics – in fact everything that touches human affairs.

International co-operation is a growing need of the world. I would like to have the experience of studying in another country – studying their way of life, their government, business, and social relations. It is of prime importance that the men who edit American newspapers know and understand the problems of foreign countries, especially Great Britain.”

When his scholarship was announced December 13^th, Sigurd Anderson, Attorney General, State of South Dakota, wrote:

“CONGRATULATIONS! Your selection as a Rhodes Scholar is the most signal honor conferred upon a city of Webster and I am very happy to say that ‘I knew him when.’ Ralph and Agnes, I am very happy about this great event in your lives. It was most deserved. Great things are in store for you. There is a reward for hard work, self-denial and a vision coupled with ability. I warn you about one thing; don’t come back to South Dakota with an Oxford accent and a bowler hat.”

Awarded the scholarship to study philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Keble College, Oxford University to begin October 1948, Kirby was fortunate that in war torn Oxford he was able to find housing that could accommodate his wife and two small daughters. In addition to his studies, he found time to take the family travelling together – Kirby and Karen on a tandem bicycle and Agnes on her own bike with baby Laura on the seat behind. They also managed one summer in an old Vauxhall to camp throughout the UK, France and Italy.

Despite rationing and difficult conditions in England, the Davidson family made close friends not only with UK and American students, but with Rhodes Scholars from around the world, including from Egypt, Ghana, India and Malta. Ever the athlete, Kirby also rowed for Keble Collage and came home with a long oar earned in a “bump” race, an oar which had pride of place in their homes ever after.

Vic Reinemer, a former editor of the Montana Kaimin, had written in September 1948, after leaving the Western Livestock Reporter in Billings, Montana, to suggest that upon Kirby’s return the two of them, with another friend Ralph Craig, should pool their resources and produce a Montana weekly news magazine. But “home” never again included living in either South Dakota or Montana for Kirby. His degree in PPE at Oxford led him to gain a doctorate in Economics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. With Agnes typing dissertations and Kirby working nights as a linotype operator for the Baltimore Sun newspaper while carrying a full load of studies, he graduated in three years as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society for his high distinction in scholarship. His dissertation, Price Discrimination in Selling Gas and Electricity, was published by The Johns Hopkins Press in 1955.

In 1954 he joined the Economics Department of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana where he quickly ascended from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor to Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of the Graduate School while authoring the highly respected textbook Economics: An Analytical Approach with Vernon L. Smith and Jay W. Wiley, colleagues at Purdue, published by Richard D. Irwin, Inc.

The Keble oar, hanging on a wall of their home, led a group of young men to appear on his doorstep saying they had a rowing club, an old shell from the University of Wisconsin, but needed a coach. Could he? Would he? Become their coach? So, from 1955 -1961 Kirby volunteered as the head coach of the Purdue Crew on the Wabash River and by 1958 was proud that the Junior Varsity Purdue Crew won the JV race at the Dad Vail Regatta. By 2000 the Purdue Crew had grown to having 11 shells and over 1,500 athletes who had been part of the crew’s development to that date. As of 2021 they are still going strong!

The end of 1961 irrevocably altered Kirby’s life as The Rockefeller Foundation, with its motto “For The Wellbeing of Humanity Throughout The World” was attracted by his grounding in UK universities and international relations because of his being a Rhodes Scholar. They asked if he would in January 1962 become Visiting Professor of Economics at Makerere University, which granted University of London degrees, in Kampala, Uganda. That was the year of Uhuru, the year of independence from Great Britain. In addition to lecturing at Makerere, he drove or flew 48,000 miles visiting universities in Nairobi, Kenya, Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia and Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia as they were then called. Of course, one trip included a visit to Cecil Rhodes’ grave on a barren boulder overlooking a sparsely populated plain. On leaving in May 1963, he had visited not only the countries above, but also South Africa, the Congo, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tunisia and Egypt before joining The Rockefeller Foundation in the fall of 1963 in Manhattan, New York City.

In 1961 the Foundation undertook the University Development Program, later named the Education for Development Program, which lasted until 1983 and helped 15 universities in developing countries around the world. This was the program Ralph Kirby Davidson helped create and of which he became head, travelling throughout Africa, Asia and South America. As Deputy Director for the Social Sciences of The Rockefeller Foundation he was also Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), an Institute established in 1975 to identify and analyze alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting food needs in the world, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and on the poorer groups in those countries.

He was author of “Evolution of the Foundation’s University Development Program,” November 1972, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), RG 3.2, Series 900, Box 63, Folder 350 and collaborated on numerous conference papers. A member of the Metropolitan Economic Association, New York City, the Council of Foreign Affairs and Grace Church, Kirby was an inveterate sailor, keeping a boat in Stamford, Connecticut, and continued his love of photography. Some of his work may be seen in My Favorite Fifty Haiku by L.A. Davidson, photographs by Kirby, DLT Associates Inc, 2017.

While Agnes gave up their dream of publishing a newspaper together, she went on to become a charter member of the Haiku Society of America (HSA) in New York City in the mid-1960s and with four chapbooks and over 600 haiku in English published, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University Butler Library acquired her books and papers after her death in 2007. Her ashes were scattered over the old homestead where she grew up near Grass Range, Montana.

Perhaps because of the years of foreign travel between 1963 and his retirement from the Foundation in 1984, Kirby and Agnes divorced after 47 years of marriage and following his retirement he moved to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil in 1988 where he married Dr. Consuelo Novais Sampaio, a professor of history and only the second woman to be admitted to the Academy of Letters in Bahia. Ralph Kirby Davidson lived for 14 years in Brazil before his death in 2002. His ashes are scattered in the bay of Salvador da Bahia.