Cynthia Davis joined the Chicago Tribune features staff in 1970 and spent the next 32 years keeping the department going. She ordered supplies, wrote to book reviewers, shopped for the paper’s test kitchen groceries, archived stories and gave quiet advice to new managers about how to approach old reporters on touchy subjects.
If office equipment broke or office supplies went undelivered, the normally sweet-natured woman picked up the phone and barked orders that got problems fixed immediately.
She could be both taskmaster and hand-holder. Early in her career, that included helping reporters stumbling in from three-martini lunches to stay focused on the job. Though that kind of behavior among reporters disappeared long ago, colleagues said Ms. Davis remained a sympathetic ear in a personally demanding job.
Ms. Davis, 52, described by one editor as “the invisible glue that held the Chicago Tribune features department together,” died Tuesday, May 7, of liver failure in Jackson Park Hospital.
“We have three sheets of the things she did every day, and it was all done thoroughly and quickly,” said features editor Geoff Brown. “She also managed to navigate the wide variety of personalities we have in features, and she did it flawlessly. It was fun to watch. Her anecdotes about this or that potential personality land mine were hilarious.”
On Thursday, her desk remained piled high with interoffice mail and stacks of newly published books, but also held toys like a foam airplane and a rubber brain on little feet. Ms. Davis was famous for her laugh.
She delighted in her post by the features department’s 5th floor mailroom, which allowed her to greet everyone as they arrived at work, while also giving her a front row seat to passing luminaries and developing stories.
“She said it put her in the middle of everything,” said features secretary Rosemary Johnson. “If there was breaking news, she knew about it. And she got a kick out of the celebrities and dignitaries that came in.”
Ms. Davis enjoyed newspapering so much that her job at the Tribune was really the only one she ever had. And the scores of editors, secretaries and reporters who worked alongside her in the years since were glad of that, said Rick Kogan, a writer for Chicago Tribune Magazine.
“She was the perfect person to do what she did at a time when newspaper people were not reluctant to share their darker sides,” Kogan said. “She was understanding not just of the business of newspapering, but also of the personalities who practiced it.”
Ms. Davis fractured her hip in a fall in March and was hospitalized after trying to keep working. Though she returned to her job briefly, persistent liver problems hospitalized her again in April.
Ms. Davis is survived by her father and stepmother, Herbert and Vera Outlaw; two sisters, Lois Fortune and Connie Gary; three brothers, Ronald, Russell and Larry; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.
Visitation for Ms. Davis will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Triedstone Full Gospel Church, 1415 W. 104th St., Chicago, followed immediately by a funeral at 11 a.m. in the church.
