The ‘remarkable’ Remelle Davis

Ninety-one-year-old Remelle O. Davis says even to this day, whenever it’s stormy, she sits in the middle of her couch and waits for it to pass, as the memory plays back in her head from the summer when she was 13 years old.

Born on July 23, 1927, in Birmingham at the West End Hospital, Davis lived with her mom and dad and two older siblings. Even from the beginning, Davis was a smart student, she said, and eventually got to skip a grade. 

But the months before she was scheduled to attend her first year at Ensley High School, the 13-year-old Davis in the summer was sent off to care for her aunt, who was being treated at a special facility in Alabama for cancer patients.

One stormy day of that hot summer, Davis said she decided to go to the water pump to get her bedridden aunt some fresh water to drink. 

“I was bent over getting that water, and that lightning knocked me back about seven feet. … I was unconscious, and one of the nurses called my parents and said they better come and get me. They thought I was dead,” she said.

When the doctor arrived, he didn’t know what to do about Davis because he said he had never treated someone struck by lightning. 

The damage occurred primarily on one side of her body, in her arm, leg, hand and some of her internal organs, resulting in the inability to ever have children. She was unconscious for nearly two weeks. Over the course of three months, she gradually started to regain some movement, but Davis said she was unable to walk at all for nearly two years. 

To pass the time, Davis drew constantly, discovering she had real talent as she gradually recovered. But because her high school had too many stairs for her to navigate with her braces and crutches, she was unable to go back to school. 

After Davis did some research, her dad took her findings and went to the Birmingham Board of Education, asking if she could attend another high school, which had fewer stairs. When the school was worried she wasn’t prepared enough to attend after missing classes, she took a placement test and scored 100 percent. 

The high school gave her a diploma and said she didn’t even need to finish schooling. She insisted on going to the vocational school, though, where she majored in art and later set out to get a job, despite the fact she still couldn’t walk without braces.

“I got the Yellow Pages down and went through everything that I thought would have an art department, until I found an engraving company downtown,” Davis said, called Labels, located on First Avenue North.

She walked the eight blocks to the company by herself with crutches. Although she was dismayed to find narrow steps up to the building, she made it to the top and introduced herself and showed them samples of her work. Because of how difficult she knew it might be to get a job with her disability, she told them she would work for free. The owner of the company was so impressed with her persistence that he told her she could work for them for 55 cents an hour.

In a few years, she worked hard enough to take over the role of art director. In total, she worked there for 21 years before buying out the company that had first hired her. She renamed it Alabama Labels and Graphics and restarted the business with only four employees, which later grew to 62 employees when she sold the company in 1984 at age 64. 

As the years went on, Davis learned how to walk without crutches and braces, though her leg, arm and hand still give her problems to this day. 

When she was 21 years old, she married her best friend, Jerry Maxwell, who she adored through their 63-year marriage and who died of illness about seven years ago. She said she will always remember what he told her, especially since she thought no one would marry her since she couldn’t have children. 

Davis recalls him saying, “Remelle, I’m not marrying you because I want children, I’m marrying you because I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

While most of her treasured memories are about family, Davis also looks back fondly on her first of many national logo designs and art projects, where a CEO asked her to draw a logo for the new concept and company he and his partners were creating: a Holiday Inn.

The partners loved her sketches, which became the logo for the first successful Holiday Inn in Memphis. Davis even ended up going to help them hand-wire the electricity for the lit portion of the sign. She’s always just been handy like that, she said. 

Just the other day, she was driving around Birmingham when she saw a sign for Red Diamond Coffee — another logo she designed. 

“It made me feel good. … I probably did the Red Diamond Coffee logo about 30 years ago,” she said. “If I had to tell you how many logos I’ve made, I couldn’t begin to start.”

To this day, Davis keeps drawing and sketching, though she gives most of her workaway now.

Eventually, she and her husband donated millions of dollars for a nonprofit called Rainbow Omega to construct a building in Eastaboga, Alabama, where 88 individuals with disabilities are housed with long-term care. At the time it was built, Davis said it was one of the most modern buildings in the state. 

“This is her legacy, the logos that she provided that we see everyday and her care for the disabled with their money and time,” neighbor Anne-Marie Touliatos said. “She goes up there still once a month to visit the people at Rainbow Omega.”

Touliatos said she recently got to learn the many stories in her neighbor’s colorful life.

“Spunk and enthusiasm,” Touliatos said, are two words she often uses to describe Davis.

Touliatos said despite the many struggles she’s had early on in her life, Davis “has done more in her life than most anyone I know.” Davis keeps her attitude overwhelmingly positive and always has a joke to tell people to make them feel comfortable, despite her many hardships and loss of all her family from cancer and old age. 

 “She is a remarkable lady, and one I think is worth celebrating,” Touliatos said.