Clergy corner

The Rev. Canon Howard Sheldon Davis was interim of St. Peter's Church in 1985. A native of Bethayres, Pa., Father Davis was born April 14, 1912, educated at the George School in Newtown, and received his bachelor's degree in Latin and Greek at Amherst College in 1933. He taught in the Abington, Pa., school district from 1933 to 1940, then entered the Philadelphia Divinity School to study for the priesthood.
He was ordained in 1943, and became rector of St. Faith, Brookline, Pa. until 1945, when he became a chaplain in the U.S. Naval Reserve for a year.
Father Davis was a priest in nine churches in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, and was canon at the Episcopal cathedral in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s. He returned to Philadelphia, where he was assistant rector to the Rev. Paul Washington at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia; was rector at All Saints, Darby; and interim rector at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Third and Reed Streets; and at St. Peter's Church.
He died Aug. 4, 2004, of heart failure in Philadelphia, at age 92.
(In the photo above, Father Davis, left, performs a baptism, assisted by the Rev. Wendel H. "Tad" Meyer, rector of St. Peter's, September 1989.)