Sidney Alan Davis 1927-2025

Davis started at WKBN, Youngstown, in 1952 as a radio and television correspondent, and also served as news director through 1959.

Davis then joined Westinghouse Broadcasting Company’s Washington bureau, where he covered the White House from 1959 through 1977. One of his first assignments was the Eisenhower-Khruschev kitchen debate.

He was a pool reporter when President John F. Kennedy revealed the Cuban Missile Crisis to the nation, in an address televised from the Oval Office on Oct. 22, 1962.

He was present in the motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated.

While broadcasting from Parkland Memorial Hospital, he was interrupted by White House officials and whisked away to Love Field along with Merriman Smith of UPI and Charles Roberts of Newsweek, to witness the swearing in of President Johnson aboard Air Force One. He then delivered the pool report to the rest of the White House press corps on the airfield tarmac, moments after Air Force One took off for Washington.

Sidney Alan Davis was born Nov. 13, 1927, in Youngstown, to Morris and Hilda Davis.

Davis served as a radioman on the USS Toledo in the United States Navy from 1946 through 1948. He received a BSJ at Ohio University in 1952 as a Sigma Delta Chi Outstanding Journalism Graduate.

He joined WJEH in Gallipolis as a radio correspondent in 1950.

From 1952 through 1959, he was a WKBN radio and television correspondent and news director. He was then hired by Westinghouse Broadcasting’s Washington bureau in 1959, serving as White House correspondent, and later, Washington Bureau chief through 1977.

In 1977, he joined NBC News as Washington Bureau chief and vice president, and later served as senior Washington radio correspondent.

From 1987 through his retirement in 1997, he was appointed to Voice of America as program director. In his years there, he oversaw coverage of the Tiananmen Square uprising and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc.

In retirement, he continued for over 20 years as a lecturer for several organizations, including the U.S. Navy.

Honors included induction to E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Ohio Communication Hall of Fame in 1996, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Gold Circle Award in 2017 and Brookings Institution Guest Scholar.

His wife, Barbara, died in 2015. He was also predeceased by his sisters, Hannah and Edith, and by his brother, Norman.

Davis is survived by his son, Lawrence and his wife, Ladan; his son, Morse and his wife, Caroline; their children, Jacob, Lucas, Charlotte and Alana; and by his brother, Irvin.

Funeral services were private.

He will be interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

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