Archives West Finding Aid

Crowe Girard "Jebbie" Davidson was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1910. He received his bachelor of arts degree from the Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in 1930. He earned a law degree from Tulane University in 1933. He served as an attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority from 1934 to 1937. At the same time, he attended Yale University Law School, earning a juris doctorate in 1936. He subsequently entered private law practice in Lafayette. In 1939, he and Mercedes Hester were married, and in 1940, the couple moved to Oregon, where Davidson worked as a consultant to the Bonneville Power Administration until 1946. He also commuted to Washington, D.C., to serve as Assistant General Counsel of the War Production Board from 1944 to 1945. In 1946, he remained in Washington to serve as assistant secretary of the U. S. Department of the Interior until 1950. He then returned to Portland, Oregon, and practiced law. In 1952, he and Mercedes Hester were divorced, and the next year, he and Joan Kaplan were married. Davidson was active in the Democratic Party, serving as Democratic National Committeeman for Oregon in the 1960s. He and Joan Kaplan divorced in 1967, and later that same year, he and Sylvia Nemer were married. He was appointed to the Oregon Educational Coordinating Council by Governor Vic Atiyeh in 1972 and served as chair from 1974 to 1975. He was also president of the Alaska Lumber Company from 1958 until his death in 1996.