USS Rodney M. Davis a floating monument to Georgia hero

But photos don’t tell the whole story.

There’s the obelisk, erected in the Medal of Honor recipient’s memory at a small cemetery here. There’s the interchange where Interstate 475 veers off from I-75, named in the Marine’s honor.

And there’s the ship. The USS Rodney M. Davis is berthed in Everette, Washington, far from the red hills and green folds that birthed its namesake.

Next year, the Navy plans to decommission the ship, ending nearly 30 years of service. The Davis likely will be sold to another nation friendly to the United States; a frigate, even with thousands of nautical miles under its keel, is worth millions.

So, in the dwindling time that the Rodney M. Davis has to serve, the ship is a tangible reminder of what sacrifice means.

Monday is Memorial Day, when we honor Americans who have died in the military. Since the Civil War, nearly 1 million men and women have died while in uniform. On Monday, Scouts will plant miniature flags in cemeteries where identical stones stand in permanent formation. Main streets will echo with the clang of bands and the shuffle of old soldiers whose march is slow and stiff. And everywhere people will remember a loved one who met an untimely end while serving this nation.

Few did so as heroically as Davis.

The place: Vietnam’s Que Son Valley, Sept. 6, 1967. Marines with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division were in a vicious firefight. Among them was Davis, 25, a sergeant assigned to Company B.

It was a pitched battle, the Marines facing superior forces. Sgt. Davis ran from one Marine to the next, urging each to keep fighting. Whenever a grenade landed in their trench, Davis grabbed it and hurled it back at the enemy.

But he couldn’t get them all. One fell in the midst of five Marines. Davis didn’t hesitate. He dove on it.

Keeping the memory alive

USS Rodney M. Davis is an imposing sight: 453 feet of steel, armed with missiles and torpedoes. Its motto: “By Valor and Arms.” It served in Asia and across the Pacific, and it saved people on overcrowded fishing vessels and seized drugs on the high seas. In its May 9, 1987, commissioning, the ship’s first captain noted the service of the ship’s namesake.

“Sgt. Davis gave his life to save others and enabled his platoon to hold their position,” he wrote in a program given visitors at the commissioning, held at Long Beach Naval Station, California. “Rodney M. Davis (FFG 60) will go to sea with the spirit and honor of Sgt. Davis.”

Its current commanding officer, Cmdr. Todd Whalen, shares that earlier captain’s sentiments. “It’s an honor to be stationed on a warship named after a hero like Sgt. Davis,” said Whalen, speaking from Everette.

Whalen said he routinely asks sailors new to the vessel if they know anything about the man after whom the ship is named. About half, he said, do.

Few knew Davis better than Debra Raye, his sister. Raye, 60, attended the ship’s launching, and for several years made sure the sailors on the Davis had homemade cookies during the holidays. She’s also the keeper of family photos that chart her brother’s progress from boy to man, from student to Marine.

“We always think of him,” she said. Especially on Memorial Day.

A tough kid

Like so many young men, Rodney thought he was indestructible, said his brother Gordon Davis Jr., the oldest of five children born to Gordon Davis Sr. and Ruth Davis. Rodney, their second child, was born in 1942

“There was nothing Rodney thought he couldn’t do,” said Davis, 73.

The children grew up in Pleasant Hill, an African-American neighborhood near downtown Macon. It was a good place to be a youngster, filled with adults who understood the maxim that no child grows up right without a village keeping close watch.

“One time, Rodney threw a brick through a window,” recalled Raye. “Mama knew about it before he got home.”

Rodney defended himself and his siblings, too. He got a reputation as a tough kid, quick with his fists. “I was basically the referee” in playground scuffles, said Gordon Davis Jr. “People knew what Rodney was going to do.”

His father, Gordon Sr., had been in the Navy in World War II. In 1961, Rodney enlisted in the Marines.

His siblings recall when he came home from Parris Island boot camp, tough and muscled. One Sunday, Rodney declared he’d stay home and read the newspaper. Mama said no; Rodney was going to church.

I'm not! I'm not! he declared. I'm a Marine!

Mama was firm. I'll tell your daddy.

The Marine marched off to church with the rest of his family.

Rodney was 6-foot-5, a handsome sight in the Marines’ dress uniform. He was posted overseas to guard U.S. embassies in Great Britain and the Mediterranean, where he met a tall beauty from the Caribbean. They married, and soon Rodney and Judy Davis had two children, Nicola and Samantha Jane.

In 1966, Rodney requested a change of duties. He was headed to Vietnam.

Judy Davis and her daughters moved to Macon to stay with the rest of the Davis family until her husband returned. Gordon Davis Jr. remembers his last conversation with his younger brother.

“He said, ‘Since you’re the oldest, I want you to look after my family until I come back.’”

Three months later, he was dead.

Nearly a week passed before the family learned that Rodney had been killed. It was two weeks before his body came home. Two years passed before the Davis family visited the White House to receive the medal honoring son, brother, husband and father. Eighteen years later, the Navy bestowed the final honor.

Judy Davis, Rodney’s wife, died of cancer two years ago. His daughters are grown with families of their own.

As one years follows the next, Davis’ siblings worry that the world may forget about a young man who gave all in a firefight a world away. Now, the ship bearing his name soon will be a footnote in Navy history, one ship among thousands that served under the American banner.