"Dick Davis was born and raised to make sense of human ecology" 
- Bill Carpenter

"Dick was a big, bearded, blue tinted granny glasses-wearing guy that everyone loved.  Dick made COA stronger in those early days.  May he never be forgotten"
-Frank Twohill '80

"Dick's spirit still remains: here today among us, throughout all the years gone by, in the fabric and soul of this place, and surely as a part of me- of why I am here; who I have become, and where I have yet to go."
-Rich Borden

"Dick had about him a kind of infectious sanity.  He taught me that not knowing where I was going was the whole point"
-Tripp Royce '79

"He had the incredible ability to just see where somebody was in their understanding and speak right to them.  Not to tell them the next step but to illuminate the next step so that students would have their 'Ah ha' moment. It didn't matter how brilliant they were and it didn't matter if they were a student or just someone on the street, he was a teacher in his every moment...I really look at him as one of the great teachers of the world"
-Lyn Hurwich '80

"After our swim and lunch it was time to load the canoes, head downstream and find campsites for our final night's rest.  The pool exited via a fast flowing hundred-foot shoot, at the bottom of which was an impressive three-foot standing wave.  Dick and I decided to run the shoot together, with him in the bow.  We shoved off and headed down the middle of the shoot toward the hungry standing wave.  Should I steer to the right of it, or the left?  Mischief overtook me.  I took the route less traveled and set course for the middle of the wave.  As it enveloped Dick's torso he uttered his famous Tennessee yelp.  We laughed all the way to the shore, bailed out the boat and Norah rejoined her partner.  It was a splendid trip on a heavenly river."
-Ted Koffman remembering an OOPs trip with Dick on the Allagash

"One of my dearest memories of COA is sitting on a curb in Don's Stop and Shop parking lot with Dick, talking about the Trilateral Commission.  Dick's only interest was in furthering and deepening my thought.   Dick had a palpable sense for thought.  He knew it as real as the pavement, as a malleable substance which could be used for base ends but could also be refined, with much sweat and love, into forms worthy of itself.  Dick couldn't care less where, physically, this modeling took place, because he knew that, once thinking, we were in a parallel universe with strangely powerful effects on this one."       
-Stu Dickey Summer '82