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Lafayette will award honorary doctorates to four distinguished leaders as part of the College’s 168th Commencement exercises Saturday, May 24.
Fred Davis Sr., pastor of Easton’s Greater Shiloh Church, will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Brent D. Glass, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and a member of Lafayette’s Class of 1969, will receive an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree.
Lafayette has already announced that Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and former president of Brown University and New York Public Library, will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws. Rebecca S. Chopp, president of Colgate University, will deliver the Baccalaureate address and will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity.
Davis is now in his 29th year as pastor of Greater Shiloh Church, formerly Shiloh Baptist Church. Under his leadership, the church has grown from 19 members to more than 1,000 active members.
His latest accomplishment is the building of a new, 1480-seat, geodesic-domed Greater Shiloh Church that opened this month. The church it replaces, located just across Brother Thomas Bright Avenue, was built under Davis’ direction after he became pastor in 1974 and rebuilt following a devastating fire in 1993.
Davis oversaw the creation in 1995 of Shiloh Community Services, a non-profit agency offering youth programs and community outreach founded in and headquartered in Larry Holmes’ former training center on Easton’s South Side, and in 1998 of Shiloh Christian EduCare Center, a community childcare facility.
He also led the development of Shiloh Manor, a housing complex for senior citizens that opened in 1993 and Shiloh Estates, a complex of 10 new homes, in 1998.
In addition, he expanded Shiloh’s foreign missions into Liberia. He and his wife, Juanita, who is assistant pastor of the church, traveled to Liberia in 1998 with other members of the Shiloh community bringing food, medicine, clothing and Christian love to victims of the war-ravaged country. They have since established a sponsorship program to provide funds for educating children in Liberia.
Fred and Juanita Davis spent two years, 1959-61, as missionaries in the Bahamas, teaching English to and establishing a school for Haitian refugees in Nassau.
Davis holds a bachelor’s degree in business and master’s degree in labor relations from Rutgers University (1966 and 1974, respectively), a bachelor of divinity degree from New York Bible College (1974), and a master of theology degree from Christian Bible College and Seminary (2001).
In 1974, the same year he became Shiloh’s pastor, he began a 20-year career with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME). He became the staff representative of District Council 88, and later was promoted to assistant director of field operations in Washington, D.C. In 1983, he was chosen to lead the 10,000 employees of District Council 90 in Harrisburg, Pa., and served in that position until his retirement in 1994.
Davis has served on numerous boards, commissions, and committees in the Lehigh Valley and elsewhere, including the executive committees of the United Way and Central Labor Council, executive board of the YMCA, Regional Minority Purchasing Council, United Negro College Fund, Harrisburg Chapter of NAACP, City of Easton Police Review Board, AFSCME Health and Welfare Fund, and Governor’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs.
He was chosen to participate in the supervision of the all-races, free election in South Africa in 1994.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sales & Marketing Executives’ Distinguished Man of the Year Award (1998), Congressional Award for Outstanding Leadership (1992 and 1995), Outstanding Leadership Award of the United Negro College Fund of Central Pennsylvania (1989) and NAACP President’s Award (1989).
Fred and Juanita Davis are the parents of four children, including the Rev. Philip A. Davis, youth minister of Shiloh. They have one grandson and six granddaughters.
Glass was named director of the American history museum last October and assumed the post in January. Opened in 1964 and currently undergoing a major renovation of its permanent exhibitions, the museum is the third busiest in the Smithsonian complex, with more than 5,000,000 visitors in 2001. It houses some of the Smithsonian’s best-known treasures, including the Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired the words for the National Anthem; the hat worn by President Lincoln on the night he was assassinated; the wooden lap desk used by Thomas Jefferson as he wrote the Declaration of Independence; the Woolworth lunch counter that was the site of the 1960 student sit-in in Greensboro, N.C.; and entertainment icons such as Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz,” Archie Bunker’s chair, the original Kermit the Frog puppet, and extensive collections from jazz greats Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald.
Glass had been executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission since 1987, managing the largest and most comprehensive state history program in the country. He led the development of several historic sites and museums, including more than $175 million in new construction, expansion and renovation at such places as the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg; the Erie Maritime Museum and Brig Niagara; the Landis Valley Museum near Lancaster; the State Museum and Archives in Harrisburg; and major exhibitions at all facilities. He also led the Commission into the digital age, with a new telecommunications system, a popular Web site, an electronic archives program, and strategic plans for an automated collections management system and a geographic information system.
Glass led the effort to conserve the Pennsylvania Charter and other important documents and artifacts, and oversaw the acquisition of the “Penn’s Treaty” collection and thousands of other artifacts.
Glass holds a master’s degree in American civilization from New York University in 1971 and a doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1980.
While pursuing his doctorate he was research historian, then deputy state historic preservation officer at the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh and assistant director of UNC’s Southern Oral History Program. Beginning in 1980 he served three years as executive director of Durham Neighborhood Housing Services, then three years as executive director of the North Carolina Humanities Council, before moving to Harrisburg in 1987.