By Staff
Davis has taught school for 25 years and took 11 years off to raise her family.
Davis was born in Birmingham where her dad worked in the steel mill. They lived there for about four years before the family began to move around a lot when he got into construction. After living in several states and towns, the family moved to Flomaton about the time Container Corporation was building a new mill at Brewton. He got a job with the construction crew and liked the area so much that he put his application in to go to work there on a permanent basis. Davis completed the seventh grade in Flomaton before the family moved to Brewton. She then started school at the "new" T.R. Miller High School where she graduated in 1965.
She did get her bachelor's degree but not her master's because she got married instead. She got a job at the old West Brothers Department Store during a Christmas vacation and met Pete Davis. Pete's mother also worked at West Brothers and Pete, who was attending Jefferson Davis Junior College, got a job there at the same time.
They dated for a couple of years and then were married after she graduated from college in 1968. Pete still had another year to go until he graduated so the couple moved to Mobile, where she worked while he finished college. In February of 1969, she took over a class at Springhill College when the teacher had to be on sick leave with the promise of a full time position for the next year.
It was during the war in Vietnam and Pete received his "Uncle Sam" letter which later proved to be a clerical error. She resigned her position to come back to Brewton while Pete went into the military. At the last minute the clerical error was rectified and they were both employed by the Mobile County School Board.
They came home to Brewton one weekend and Annette's younger brother, Maurice, told them that two of the teachers at Brewton Middle School didn't show up for work.
Davis remembered her association with Dale Garner. He had been her high school principal and also her economic teacher.
She called Garner on a Friday and told him that she heard that two teachers had not shown up for work. He said, "What's the matter Gross? Do you need a job?"
It turns out that the two jobs available were not in their particular fields, but Garner told her to come on anyway. He said that he knew they could handle the classes. By Monday they had accepted the jobs and came back to Brewton. She taught math and Pete taught science.
She taught at Brewton Middle School for the next three years until she stopped teaching to be home with her two daughters, Jennifer and Mary Margaret.
In the meantime, Dale Garner persuaded him to go back to school to work in administration.
In the meantime, Annette was a stay-at-home mom for 11 years. She was called in 1984 to go to Jay, Fla., to fill in with an overload of students. It was a part-time job and was perfect to ease her back into work. She returned to Brewton Middle School and taught seventh grade English from 1985 until the end of the 2004-2005 school year.
She was honored with a retirement party at school and on the last day of school, she was greeted outside the school with a limousine and her whole family to be taken to a family dinner. At that dinner she received what her husband called "what you wanted the most," a bag with her alarm clock smashed to bits.