Davis is founder and executive director of the American Widow Project, a nonprofit organization that has provided more than 1,000 wives of deceased military members with resources for healing. She started the organization after losing her husband when she was just 21. She’ll be honored on Wednesday at Running Start’s “Women to Watch Awards” at the National Press Club. What prompted you to start the group?
Once you’ve hit rock bottom, the only direction you can go is up. That definitely applied to me. I felt like a statistic. After three months and things getting worse and worse, I was thinking about what my husband would have done. I knew I had to try to live for him until I could find a reason to live for myself. The average age of a service member killed in Iraq and Afghanistan is 26. I knew I wasn’t alone.
When did you realize the impact of your new work?
A friend named Jessica was the first widow I met. I knew it was an instantaneous connection interviewing her. As painful and difficult as it was, there was a brief moment when I saw a gleam come out in her eyes. When I saw that in her, it just really sunk in. My work isn’t about putting women in a classroom but throwing them out of a plane — doing things out of their comfort zone.
How do women move on?
It’s unique for everybody. … For a lot of women, what gets them from second to second may be a child, a promise to a husband to finish school or something else. You need one thing.
Did you anticipate you’d be accepting awards for your work?
In all honesty, what I’ve done is a drop in the bucket compared to what a majority of these women are doing — like that widow raising three kids on her own. I look at it as receiving the award on behalf of all of us.
— Brian Hughes
