By Renee Hunter

“I’m overwhelmed that the community recognized what I did,” said Tony Davis after being named the 2009 Greenbrier Volunteer of the Year. “I was just trying to help.”

Growing up, Tony admits he had “never been around volunteering,” but in Greenbrier, he knows several people who exemplify the volunteer spirit, specifically his father-in-law Don Jones and his friend Gus Lorenz, who was named the 2009 Greenbrier Citizen of the Year.
“I got a sense of community from them,” he said.
Tony met his wife, Marty, a Greenbrier native, at the University of Central Arkansas, where both majored in accounting. They spent seven of their 22 years together in Indiana, and then decided to return to Arkansas. Marty and the girls returned first, and Tony stayed behind to sell their house. By the time the house was sold, “we were living in Greenbrier,” Tony said with a smile.
Tony’s first entry into volunteerism was somewhat involuntary. Tony, who has two daughters, first volunteered as a soccer coach and got to know Gus, who is commissioner of the program.
When Whitney was 9, “I was sitting at home on a Thursday night and got a phone call that said, ‘If you want your daughter to play soccer, you have to coach.’ I went out and bought some books and started coaching that Saturday.”
Tony played football in high school and ran cross-country at UCA, but had never played soccer.
Tony coached full time for about three years, and as president of the local association, he now takes up the slack when another coach quits. He hopes to take a break in the near future so he can attend Whitney’s college games if she plays. A high-school senior, Whitney is an all-conference player.
The couple’s older daughter, Rachael, 21, is a senior at the University of Arkansas, majoring in political science, Latin American Studies and Spanish.
Eventually, Tony says he might return to coaching the younger girls, which is more his speed. The reason he quit coaching full time is that Whitney’s team, Blue Lightning, progressed from recreational to competitive soccer. “The girls just advanced past me,” Tony said.
The sport took a lot of his time.
“It just becomes a lifestyle,” he said. “I remember thinking at the end of the season, ‘I’ll be glad when it’s over’ and then not being able to wait for it to start again.”
Coaching also allowed Tony to spend a lot of time with Whitney, which he enjoyed, and enabled him to become friends with many of the parents.
After he quit coaching full time, Tony looked around for another area of service and found it. He served on the Greenbrier School District’s Board of Education from 1999 to 2004, and was president for a year.
Tony owns Conway Machine Inc. in Conway, and as a business owner, he had to adjust to a different way of doing things while on the school board. Some big things were accomplished while he was on the board, including the new junior high school.
Tony discovered an urgent need for a new facility by chance, he says. It was raining on “Teacher Appreciation Day” in 2003, when he visited the old junior high to present small gifts to the teachers. He found himself in rooms with leaky roofs, some of them so bad that class couldn’t be held in them. He had known the building was in bad shape, but he hadn’t realized how bad until that rainy day. He immediately began pushing for a new building.
That the new junior high is now a reality “really makes you feel good,” he said.
But he also wanted a junior high auditorium. That didn’t happen while he was on the board, and that was a frustration. “It’s on the drawing board now,” he said.
The best thing about serving on the board, he said, was getting to know the teachers.
The Davis family became involved in the game when soccer was new to the area. The teams play on and maintain fields owned by the school district.
“The biggest challenge for soccer in Greenbrier has been the acceptance of soccer in Greenbrier,” Tony said. But the game is well accepted now, even popular, he added.
Appropriately, the Greenbrier community has recognized Tony Davis, a volunteer who has helped make the soccer program successful.