Name Edward Davies Education Kettering University | Children Ann Romney | |
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Spouse(s) Lois (Pottinger) Davies Residence Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, United States
Later, Stuart, Martin County, Florida, United States Alma mater General Motors Institute of Technology Positions Co-founder, Jered Industries, 1946 Died September 8, 1992, Stuart, Florida, United States Grandchildren Tagg Romney, Matt Romney, Josh Romney, Ben Romney, Craig Romney Similar People Mitt Romney, Ann Romney, George W Romney, Ben Romney, Craig Romney | ||
Edward Roderick Davies (June 2, 1915 – September 8, 1992) was a self-made industrialist.
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Life and career
Davies was born on June 2, 1915 in Caerau, Bridgend, Wales, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, into a Welsh coal mining family. In 1929 he immigrated to the United States with his father David Davies who had black lung disease and had been injured in a mining accident. David worked at a Ford plant and paid for his wife, Annie Davies, and son, Edward, to come thereafter. In 1938, Edward graduated from General Motors Institute of Technology in 1938 with a degree in engineering and, after serving a stint in the U.S. Naval Engineering corps, in 1946 he co-founded a maker of heavy equipment for marine use, Jered Industries. Some sources have suggested that Jered helped to engineer the landing craft used for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, though this is unlikely as Jered was not founded until well after D-Day. Davies—who had also worked with the NASA's Gemini space program and served as the mayor of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan—was the father of Ann Romney.
He died on September 8, 1992.
Jered
Jered was sold to the British engineering firm Vickers in 1980, at Davies' retirement. (The division became an independent entity again in 1997 and was acquired in 2005 by PaR Systems.)
Religious views
Davies rejected religion and was an avowed atheist. He was known to call organized religion "hogwash" and "drudgery". Before Davies married Lois, he insisted she give up organized religion and later his son Roderick Davies said, "Dad considered people who were religious to be weak in the knees." By the time of his death, he was the only member of Ann Romney's immediate family to have not converted to Latter-day Saint Mormonism. In spite of his atheism and anti-religious views, on the 19th of November, 1993 in a special family meeting, just fourteen months after he died, he was baptized and had his endowment performed for him, a practice the LDS church has come under fire for doing to Jewish Holocaust victims posthumously. On the 10th of June, 1994 Davies, in another LDS Mormon temple ceremony, was sealed for eternity to his wife Lois in the Atlanta, Georgia temple.
Patents
Davies' U.S. patents include: