Dr. John Davis Donates Autographs From U.S. Supreme Court Justices to Washburn Law School

Autographs of 87 of the 112 U.S. Supreme Court justices have been donated to Washburn University School of Law by Washburn alumnus, Dr. John Davis, Jr. on December 23, 1999.

Delivering the autographs on behalf of her father, Mary Van Bergen, Chicago, said " This is the first time he has donated any part of his collection. He has always had good memories of Washburn where he met mother and was very active in the campus life of Washburn." Davis' other daughters are Dr. Barbara Murray, Spokane, Washington and Jody Miller, Fayette, Missouri. His wife, Virginia, passed away in 1992.

Davis, a retired optometrist from Topeka, has been collecting and mounting signatures for more tha 60 years. His collection includes every president and vice-president in addition to 4,000 baseball players, 2,000 basketball players, 3,000 football players, thousands of Olympic medal winners and 139 astronauts. He started his hobby at the age of 10 when he walked past the U.S. Secret Service and asked President Calvin Coolidge to sign his autograph book.

Davis is a 1934 graduate of Topeka High School. He earned a bachelor of arts in economics from Washburn Unviersity in 1938. He has been honored with inductions into the Topeka High Hall of Fame and the Washburn University Athletic Hall of Fame. While at Washburn, Davis was a Phi Delta Theta and worked on the yearbook and student newspaper.

"We are very pleased to receive this remarkable collection," Dean James Concannon commented. "It will help bring alive famous cases from the past that our students study and will add to their understanding of the history of the legal profession."

In the near future, the collection will be displayed in the Law School for the public.