Sailor Is Beacon of Hope for Hungry

Bob Davis’ red compact pickup has dings and scrapes from supermarket loading docks and narrow alleys. The truck is known from Point Fermin to Wilmington, where for 12 years Davis has made his daily rounds, collecting expired baked goods and distributing the food to needy people around San Pedro and the L.A. Harbor.

The 83-year-old former Navy sailor and union official brings a romantic touch to his avocation. Along with the bread and bagels and buns, he picks up bouquets of flowers discarded by produce managers and gives them to the women on his route.

“I’ve been on the same route for so long now people just wave,” Davis says. “We have a neighbor lady who’ll take care of it if I’m under the weather, but I’ve only had to ask her maybe two or three times over the years.”

On good days, Davis hauls 200 bundles of baked goods to nonprofit groups with tight budgets. He routinely stops at San Pedro’s Beacon House complex, a live-in recovery program for 120 homeless male alcoholics and addicts. Nearby, his route takes in the 186-bed Harbor View House for the mentally disabled. Around the curve of the port surrounded by towering gantry cranes and moored container ships is Wilmington’s Beacon Light Mission for the Homeless.

“Bob is probably the most giving person I know,” says Mary Proper, executive director of Beacon House. “When he brings day-old flowers, I think, ‘If he weren’t married. . . .’ ”

“He is such an excellent person,” says Joanna Chow, dietary director at Harbor View House. “We tried to have him come here once to accept an award, but he is too modest. He didn’t feel deserving.”

Gene McCann, director of Beacon Light Mission, which has served the Harbor Area’s down and out for 91 years, up to 40 a night, agrees about Davis’ lack of egotism.

“We always hurry to help him unload his pickup, but sometimes we don’t even see him before he’s been here and gone.”

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Davis, an Oklahoma native, joined the Navy as a teen-ager. After a shipboard injury resulted in his medical discharge, he found employment during World War II at a Los Angeles shipyard. In the mid-’80s, he retired after 40 years as secretary-treasurer of Pile Drivers, Bridge, Wharf and Dock Builders Union, Local 2375, which also represents offshore oil rig workers.

Not one for idle retirement, he was prowling alleys looking for cast-off appliances to fix when he met a woman behind a market who was gathering day-old bread for the needy. Davis saw what he wanted to do.

“I’ve been a very lucky man all my life,” he says. “I just do this little bit I do to try to be useful.”

Davis keeps an ambitious garden going at the rear of the San Pedro hillside home he shares with his wife of 31 years, Louise, who is indulgent of his humanitarian hobby.

“She gives me a growl about it every now and then, but she knows a man will go crazy trying to sit and watch television all day,” Davis says.

The fact that many who often look to him for their daily bread have struggled with addiction has no special significance to him.

“I’m not a member of their group, although I figure there but for the grace of God go I,” Davis says. “I’m just an old sailor who tries to keep busy and not get bored.”

* This column tells the stories of the unsung heroes of Southern California, people of all ages and vocations and avocations, whose dedication as volunteers or on the job makes life better for the people they encounter. The column is published every other Monday.