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Robert Herndon Davison standing behind his sisters: Grace, Louella, and Ollie.
Ollie is holding her daughter, Edna

Robert Herndon Davison’s Reaction

When Earl was 16, he boarded a bus with only a few coins in his pocket. He planned to visit his sister, Frances

but ended up hitch‐hiking to California with a friend, called Rock Hudson

“I told my grandma that I was going to go to my sister's house in Williamsburg so they never worried about me
right away. Then on Friday Clyde came to pick me up and take me there and I wasn’t there. But in the meantime I
had been sending postcards home anywhere we stopped that I could send a card, I did so they would know I was

safe, that I hadn’t been kidnapped or anything. But my dad didn’t like it, me hitch‐hiking like that. He got over it,
though. I can’t recall any cross words about it, but the worst cross words I got was when I told him I was going to
join the army. He says, “You’re NOT going to join the army!” All my brothers were drafted. I was only 16. I was

too young to be going into the army.” Earl Davison from an interview in 2003