Wendy Davis, the daughter of Daniel Davis who had been missing since November, said Tuesday that in the months searching for her father, she found out more and more about how proud he was of her.
Daniel Davis was found dead Monday in Blue Island.
“We knew this was definitely a high possibility this whole time, but obviously not hoping for it,” Wendy Davis said. “So when I got the call, I, after I hung up the phone I kind of was like, did I just hallucinate that whole thing? I was like, was that even real?”
She said she met many of her father’s close friends for the first time during the search. They told her he would often stop whatever he was doing to show them her achievements, even when he was busy running lights for a show at the entertainment venue 115 Bourbon Street.
She said his close friends also knew how sacred their father-daughter monthly lunch dates were. She said his coworkers all knew not to bother him when it was “Wendy lunch day.”
“Honestly, his mind would have been blown just with me getting to know his best friends,” she said.
Davis said she received the news her father’s body was found at 3:30 p.m. Monday as she was outside on a beautiful sunny day. She delivered the news to her mom, boyfriend, grandparents, her dad’s best friend and other friends and family.
Monday night, she gathered with her father’s friends as they told stories and memories of Davis, while also playing darts and shooting off bottle rockets, which she said her father would have loved.
“He had a lot of aspirations, but at the end of the day, all he wanted to do was just play games and have a good time with his friends,” she said. “He was always with somebody else that loved him.”
Blue Island City Administrator Thomas Wogan said Blue Island and Cook County sheriff’s police found the body at 3 p.m. Monday in an undeveloped wooded area next to a train track and under a bridge at Midwest American Transloading, adjacent to 3301 Wireton Road in Blue Island, when responding to a 911 call.
Wogan said an investigation is ongoing.
Davis, 59, was last seen Nov. 25, leaving 115 Bourbon Street, 3359 W. 115th St., Merrionette Park, and the search narrowed on Blue Island in early December, according to police.
Camera footage showed Davis leaving St. Donatus Church in the 1900 block of South Union Street at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 26.
Davis was also seen at 1:15 a.m. Nov. 25 leaving 115 Bourbon Street, according to police reports.
He was involved in a multivehicle accident the day before, where police said he may have suffered a head injury. Davis refused medical treatment after the car crash Nov. 24, and a responding Cook County officer gave him a ride to Bourbon Street, his place of work, according to Chicago police.
Hours later, Davis was spotted on the bar’s cameras trying and failing to get into employees’ cars in the bar’s back parking lot then leaving on foot at about 1:15 a.m., according to Jenn Barber Masuka, Wendy’s mother and founder of a Facebook group devoted to the search.
Masuka said an off-duty community service officer allegedly drove past Davis staggering on a sidewalk later that morning and called Bourbon Street management, because the officer recognized Davis as an employee. She said at the time that Davis’ coworkers called the police and have been active in the search.
Masuka also said there is video footage of Davis falling on a sidewalk the morning of Nov. 25 and that he may have needed medical attention.
A Chicago Police Department canine picked up his scent from the church and followed it to train tracks near 127th Street and Hoyne Avenue in Blue Island, where the scent stopped, Wendy Davis said.
Wendy Davis garnered a social media following in the search for her dad, which initially started as a volunteer search party organized on Facebook and around the Blue Island area.
She said her videos asking for help and describing the search received more than a million views, and people reached out to her from other states and even other countries, offering advice and suggesting she put up signs along highways and at rest stops.
She said that even people from New Zealand and other countries reached out to her about the search for her father. She said all of this attention would have blown her father’s mind.”
“If nothing else, everyone’s support has definitely carried our spirits higher than they ever would have been without it,” she said.
She said in late December a nonprofit search and rescue team from Fredericktown, Ohio, was bringing its own canine team to sniff along the river and help with the search. Davis said a woman with the nonprofit The SAR Sheps reached out to her on social media.
Masuka and Wendy both said Davis’ disappearance was unlike him.
Masuka said Davis was an extremely talented artistic person and lighting designer, and said musicians who played Bourbon Street loved him.
Wendy said her dad was a “huge goofball” and said her childhood is packed with memories of them laughing together, along with treasured traditions. She said they often would go mini golfing together and even chase each other around with water guns outside playing “assassin.”
Her favorite thing to do with Davis, she said, was visit the Indiana University campus in Bloomington every year and walk around on Christmas day when no one else was there.
“It’s all quiet, and that is, I look forward to that every single year,” she said.
Wendy said her father’s close friends and coworkers called him a “complete creative visionary” and said that his ideas were ahead of his time. She said he would often make up new games when spending time with friends.
At work, she said he was always the person to fix a problem before anyone else knew there was an issue, even if that meant getting to work early.
“My dad was a very independent, like kind of hardheaded person, but in a good way because like he would take care of things that people didn’t even know needed taking care of,” she said.
“It’s not until he’s gone that people realized how much he carried,” she said.
She said they would visit their favorite pasta restaurant, Pasta Palazzo, in Lincoln Park, and order the chicken alfredo every time, or grab lunch at Asuka Japanese restaurant in Bloomington and take a stroll around the campus.
Davis said Tuesday she was awaiting next steps and autopsy results from the Cook County commander assigned to the case. She said she hopes to get questions answered such as how Davis ended up in the spot where he was found and how long he was in that spot.
She said she had a few ideas of ways to celebrate Davis and that she did not want it to be a “solemn sad funeral.”
“Whatever we’re going to do is going to be a bunch of people, having a good time and listening to music and like laughing, you know, making jokes and telling stories,” she said. “That’s what he would want.”
She also said she would like to plan an event to thank all the people who supported the search for her father.
awright@chicagotribune.com
