From the time he joined Commonwealth’s faculty in the fall of 1972 until his retirement in the spring of 2013, Eric Davis embodied much of what Commonwealth stands for. He loved language, ideas, and working with teenagers in equal measure. Current students who never met him nevertheless know him through institutions like his “How to Write a Good Paragraph,” still used in English 9. And generations of Commonwealth alumni/ae and colleagues “felt the grace of [his] wisdom and mischievous wit” (so wrote Polly Chatfield about Eric when he retired).

Cover image credit: Tom Kates '87