ETA Davidson, beloved professor at the State University College of Oneonta, mother of five, world traveler, linguist, health food enthusiast, violinist, and lover of life and learning, Edith Trelease Aney Davidson (Terry) died peacefully at home surrounded by family on November 29, 2022 at the age of 99.

Terry spent her childhood traveling the country as her father directed the CCC camps. Her family settled in her ancestral home of Worcester, NY. Her roots go back to Peter Nicholas Sommer, a Lutheran minister who led Palatine Germans immigrants to settle in Schoharie, NY in 1740.

A proud WAC during World War II, she served with the Military Intelligence Service at the Pentagon from 1944-46 where she received three medals for "outstanding performance," one for displaying "remarkable initiative" to study Japanese and hold "half-hour basic Japanese courses daily for personnel at [her] desk…far exceeding the maximum [duties] required." These efforts resulted in her breaking a Japanese shipping code. Later, she earned her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1954.

On Christmas Eve 1957, she married Loren K. Davidson, a fellow literature professor, in Key West, Florida. They began a year-long quest to meet and interview great living American authors by flying to Havana, Cuba to visit Ernest Hemingway. In 1959 the couple moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where they taught at the American College for Girls and Robert College, and gave birth to two of their five children. In their spare time they traveled the interior of Turkey, documenting and photographing Crusader Castles.

Settling in Oneonta, NY in 1962, Terry taught for over thirty years at SUNY Oneonta, specializing in World Literature, Women's Studies and Bible as Literature. She served as Director of the SUNY Study Abroad Program in Würtzburg, Germany (1969) and Tel Aviv, Israel (1971). She took her five children on world tours in a Dodge pop-top camper. The family traveled to England, Italy, Greece, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Spain, France, Austria, and finally, Chile in 1975, where her husband fulfilled his Fulbright. They drove the 12,000-mile journey home from Santiago, Chile to New York State in a Dodge Dart sedan. After retiring, she spent a year teaching English Language Literature at Nan Kai University in Tianjin, China.

She was an avid amateur musician, played violin in the Catskill Symphony, and was a dedicated member of the Unitarian Church. She was a passionate reader of history, literature, literary theory, and science. She read and spoke French, German, Latin, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, Swedish, Spanish, and the computer language Pascal. Terry was an early PC purchaser, which she used to map out a "secret code" she found in the "Book of Judges" and to write her book, Intricacy, Design, and Cunning in the Book of Judges (2008).

Terry's greatest gift was her daily celebration of the "miracle of life" from nuclei to nebulas, from baby buntings to the big bang.  She was famous for saying she was "flourishing." Up to the last, she quoted early Roman playwright, Terence, "Quod fors feret, feremus aequo animo:" "What fortune brings, we will bear with equanimity."

Her husband predeceased her in 2014 at the age of 92. She is survived by her five children, Tina Davidson, Eva Davidson, Scott Davidson, Lâle Davidson, and Loren Davidson, Jr.; as well as five grandchildren, Cassandra Blum, Luke Malone, Theo Malone, Ex Davidson-Brown, and Jared Davidson; her niece, Jill Aney; her nephew, Bill Aney and his wife Ora, along with their three children, as well as many nieces and nephews from the Davidson side.

A memorial service will be convened in the spring.

Contributions in her name are welcome at Helios Care at 297 River Street Service Rd, Oneonta, NY 13820, who surrounded her family in expert and loving care and eased her passing.

To share a condolence with the family, www.lhpfuneralhome.com ; the website of Oneonta's only family owned funeral home, Lewis, Hurley & Pietrobono at 51 Dietz Street.