Rev. B. Davie Napier, 91; civil rights activist led Pacific School of Religion

Rev. B. Davie Napier, a Protestant minister and civil rights activist who was president of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and earlier taught at Stanford University and Yale Divinity School, died Saturday.  He was 91.

Napier, an Old Testament scholar who wrote several books in his field, died at Pilgrim Place Health Services Center in Claremont, Calif., his daughter Anne Napier Caffery said Monday.  The cause was complications from a heart condition.

He had been a resident of Pilgrim Place retirement community.

Napier was the son of missionaries.  He was born in Kuling, now Lushan, China and also lived in Kobe, Japan before he moved to Birmingham, Alabama with his parents.

His teenage years in the Deep South helped form his social conscience.

“My first memories of my father are of him going to civil rights marches in the South,” Caffery said Monday.

He joined the faculty at Yale Divinity School in 1949, 10 years after he graduated from the school.  He had also earned a doctoral degree at Yale in 1944.

“He was a revered professor,” Harold Attridge, Dean of Yale Divinity School, said in an interview with The Times this week.  He was also known as a charismatic preacher and poet.  He wrote his first book, “From Faith to Faith,” in 1955 while he was at Yale.

Napier moved to Stanford in 1966, just before a storm of protest erupted over the Vietnam War and the ROTC program was removed from the campus.

“He was very active in the antiwar movement at Stanford,” Caffery said of her father.  A photograph from those years shows him and colleagues with their arms locked together, blocking the entrance to a military recruiting office.

Friends said Napier’s passion for social justice had its scriptural roots in the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament.  He was always on the side of the oppressed, Caffery said.

Napier was born July 12, 1915.  He graduated from Samford University in Birmingham before he enrolled at Yale.

He was ordained a Congregational minister in 1939.  Three years later he married Joy White.  The couple had two children.

He was appointed president of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley in 1971, when the antiwar movement was still strong.

“Our school was embroiled in conflict,” said William McKinney, president of the school, in an interview with The Times this week.  “Davie enabled the school to come back together.”

Napier brought people together around the issues, sometimes at the informal afternoon teas for students and faculty that he and his wife hosted at their home.

“Davie understood the students,” McKinney said.

Napier remained politically active after he retired.  He demonstrated against U.S. involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s, and, more recently, the war in Iraq.

In addition to his daughter, Napier is survived by several grandchildren and great grandchildren.  His son, John, died in 2001.  His wife died in 2003.

A memorial service is planned for 3:30 pm March 18 at the Claremont United Church of Christ, 233 W. Harrison Ave., Claremont.

Contributions in his name may be made to Pilgrim Place, 660 Avery Road, Claremont, CA  91711.

Reprinted with permission, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 2007

REMEMBERING A LIFETIME FULL OF JOY
MARTIN SNAPP, STAFF WRITER

SOME PEOPLE really deserve their names. 

Gray Davis is an obvious example.  So was Joy Napier.

She was the wife of the Rev. B. Davie Napier, former president of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.  Joy died a few weeks ago from complications following a stroke, robbing the world of one of its brightest spirits.

I loved her like a mother, and I’m not the only one.  So did everyone who attended PSR from 1972 to 1977, when Davie was president.

Ditto for everyone who went to Stanford during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s,
when Davie was dean of the chapel.  And for everyone who lived in Calhoun
College at Yale in the mid-‘60s and again in the ‘80s, when Davie was the master of the college.  Her capacity for kindness was bottomless, especially to students who were homesick or feeling left out.

“Every year, she and Davie would memorize the names and faces of all the incoming students before the term began,” recalls Doug Adams, professor of
Christianity and the Arts at PSR.  “That way, they could hail the newcomers
by name on the first day, ‘Hi, Mike!’ or ‘Hi, Phil!’ or ‘Hi, Margaret!’ – Welcome
to PSR!”

But it was at her afternoon teas that Joy really shone.  Whether at PSR, Stanford
or Yale, the menu was always the same:  Constant Comment tea, finger sandwiches (with the crusts cut off), and sherry flowing liberally. “The sherry was important,” says Adams.  “Whenever the Jesuits threw a party, everyone would attend because they have the best bar in town.  But nobody ever came to our parties because our previous president used to be
a Methodist, and he was a teetotaler.  Joy changed all that.”

She was also great one-on-one.  One of my college roommates died from leukemia, and I well remember the tact and consideration with which the Napiers helped him and his family during the ordeal.

Both she and Davie trace their families back to long lines of Congregationalist
ministers, with abolitionists and veterans of the Underground Railroad in their
family trees.  In the ‘50s and ‘60s, the Napiers supported the civil rights movement long before it became fashionable.

Later, when they moved to Berkeley, one of their best friends was Huey Newton.  Huey had little patience with most white liberals, but he truly loved the Napiers because he sensed their innate goodness. 

“Those were the days when college presidents were losing their jobs because they couldn’t handle student protests,” says Adams.  “Davie and Joy didn’t fight the movement; they became the movement, and the whole community came together around them.” 

She and Davie were childhood sweethearts, and they loved each other deeply until the day she died.  But unlike some couples, their devotion to each other didn’t make them an island unto themselves.  They still had plenty of love left over for other people. 

Once, I was at their house, crying on their shoulders about breaking up with a girlfriend.  They were very solicitous and sympathetic, and they filled me up with finger sandwiches and sherry. 

But then Davie said sheepishly, “We’d like to be more help, but we really don’t understand what you’re going through.  You see, Joy was the first person I fell in love with, and I was the first person she fell in love with.  So we don’t know what it feels like to have your heart broken.”  But I’ll bet his heart is breaking now. 

Adams went to visit him in southern California, where he’s living in retirement,
and he says Davie is dealing with Joy’s death “as well as can be expected.”  If you’re one of the many people who loved Joy and Davie, I know he’d like to hear from his old friends.  His address is 627 Leyden Lane, Claremont CA 91711   

Reprinted with permission, West County Times, August 29, 2003