Tacoma’s John Davenport was a coach and a mentor. He died from COVID-19 on his birthday
READ MORE
Cost of COVID-19
A closer look at the more than 400 Pierce County residents have died due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Expand All
Growing up in Detroit, Sheila Davenport remembers her younger brother, John, as the only male in the house.
Their father had exited the picture early, and their older brother had grown up, leaving John to look after Sheila, her sister and their mother.
Almost every day, Davenport said, John — who was four years younger than her — would walk to the bus stop — no matter the weather — to accompany their mother home after her shifts at the local jail.
It’s an experience that helped to shape her brother, Davenport recalled. Long after he got older, joined the Army, and eventually made a life for himself in the Tacoma area, John was always the type of person who wanted to be a “brother, uncle or father figure” to someone, Davenport said.
“He took the role of protector, to make sure that the household was fine,” Davenport said of her brother’s upbringing.
John Davenport died on Nov. 24, after a battle with COVID-19 that required the former youth football coach and nonprofit director to be hospitalized and intubated for more than a month. It was his 52nd birthday.
Over more than two decades in Tacoma, he built a family that extended the physical boundaries of any home, she said.
He left behind four kids, but scores of others came to look up to and depend on him, largely through the connections John forged on the football field and the work he did through the nonprofit Puget Sound Youth Empowerment Services, which served kids ages five to 17 with educational and recreational opportunities, Davenport said.
As the former coach of the Tacoma Steelers youth football program, John impacted the lives of hundreds of young people, many of whom came from difficult backgrounds, Davenport said. Though the wins piled up over the years, unlike some other coaches, her brother always concerned himself more with building character than the scoreboard, she recalled.
As a coach, her brother’s motto was “Play with intensity. Live with integrity.” Every game, every kid would play, no matter what, Davenport said.
Davenport fondly recalled her brother accompanying some of his players to school, intent on making sure they stayed on track to succeed.
“That was one of his passions, was kids,” Davenport recalled. “They weren’t athletes. They were student athletes. You had to have your stuff together in the classroom to have your stuff together on the field. He didn’t care how well you played if your grades suffered. You were benched until you got your grades to where they need to be.”
In some ways, Davenport said, her brother’s interest in helping kids was likely a result of his own experience in school. Though he was incredibly bright — the kind of kid who read the dictionary for fun and dominated family Scrabble games — he often skipped class because he was bored.
He left high school in Detroit before graduating, Davenport said, and quickly earned his GED. Before long, he was earning a living working at a local dry cleaning business.
In adulthood, he wanted children in Tacoma to have the positive role model and mentor he lacked growing up, Davenport said.
“He always wanted to have relationships where kids understood they were important,” said Davenport. “He was just that figure for those who were going down the wrong path, or could go down the wrong path.”
John approached fatherhood with the same love and passion, his sister said, though it wasn’t always easy. After years spent battling cancer, his longtime wife passed away two days before Mother’s Day in 2019. The couple’s youngest was 14 at the time, Davenport said.
Having previously experienced the death of several close family members, the loss left her brother overwhelmed, Davenport said. But even through the grief, however, John somehow managed to be the rock his children depended on, his sister said.
“He was really just existing,” Davenport said of her brother in the year that followed his wife’s death. “I don’t think he had really even started to heal.”
Some of Davenport’s fondest memories of her brother came during family gatherings, she said. He was a whiz on the grill, and loved nothing more than hanging out and spending time with his loved ones, she recalled.
On the day he died, Davenport said the family gathered one last time — via Zoom — to celebrate John’s birthday.
As was their custom, they traded stories and good-natured ribbing, just like they had in years past.
Later that day, John was gone.
“Because of the fact that so many people had died from this virus, even before my brother, I knew it was not a joke,” Davenport said.
“But dealing with my brother’s death has let me know just how devastating it is.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
.png)
