To devotees of college football who are steeped in the game's lore, she is the answer to a trivia question: Who is the only woman to have been married to two Heisman Trophy winners?
Yvonne Davis, in a voice as demure as the game is gruff, prefers to identify herself as a woman who has been twice blessed -- having wed her childhood sweetheart, the late Alan Ameche, and finding love a second time, with 1946 Heisman winner Glenn Davis.
Yvonne Ameche Davis is the only woman to have been married to two Heisman Trophy winners.
(Bradley C . Bower - AP)
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Football is woven through her life story as the shared passion of family and friends. Along the way, the Heisman Trophy, the college game's highest honor, has proven its strongest bond -- linking her to a close-knit family of honorees and their relatives who gather in New York to renew acquaintances and welcome the newest member each December.
"The relationships I've made, the friends I've made who are friends to this day, the wonderful associations with past winners and their families -- what a special gift," Davis said in a telephone interview this week.
Football friends provided Yvonne's network of support following Ameche's death in 1988. They are doing the same now: Glenn Davis, whom she married in 1996, is battling cancer and congestive heart failure.
Davis was too weak to travel from their home in La Quinta, Calif., for the annual Heisman festivities this weekend. But Yvonne Davis will be there, joined by children, grandchildren, sisters and cousins, as Ameche is honored on the 50th anniversary of his 1954 Heisman Award. In January, she will also be on hand in Pasadena, Calif., as her late husband is inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.
Their eldest son will deliver the main address on his father's behalf at Monday's Heisman dinner, but Yvonne Davis will also make brief remarks. And the occasion has caused her to reflect on the award's meaning.
"It gives you immortality," Davis says. "To think that they would be honoring Alan 50 years after he won it. It's something that kind of lives in infamy. It's an honor that goes beyond the moment."
She was a young wife, the mother of two, when Wisconsin's stampeding fullback won the Heisman in 1954. Fans knew the two-way star as "the Horse." To Yvonne, smitten since she sat behind him in social studies in junior high, Ameche was the cutest thing she ever saw.
She had only been on an airplane once when they flew to New York for the awards ceremony, and she was overwhelmed by the commotion of the city and the elegance of the great event, with limousines to ferry guests about and chocolate footballs with even more chocolate inside for dessert.
Yvonne Ameche was invited each year, as are all recipients and their wives, even after Ameche passed away. And it was at one such Heisman gathering that she came to know Davis, now 78, whose wife had died.
During his glorious career at Army, he was known as "Mr. Outside" to Felix "Doc" Blanchard's "Mr. Inside." With Davis's breakaway speed and Blanchard's force and fury between the tackles, they formed the greatest pair of running backs in the game. Suitably, they took turns winning the Heisman, too, with Blanchard claiming the 1945 trophy and Davis the following year.
Davis went on to a brief pro career with the Los Angeles Rams, retiring in 1951. Ameche joined the Baltimore Colts four years later, cementing his place in NFL history by scoring the game-winning touchdown in the NFL's first sudden-death game -- the 1958 championship -- against the New York Giants.
Yvonne Davis never strayed far from the game in the decades that followed. Her four sons all played football; her daughter, Catherine, married the brother of 1973 Heisman winner, Penn State running back John Cappelletti. She still can't wait to find out each December which players are named finalists for the Heisman. And she can't help but note how much the game has changed over the years, both college and pro.
No one ever held out of training camp in the 1950s, she notes. There was no such thing as agents, she adds with a chuckle.
No one cared who scored the touchdown, either, as long as someone did, she says.
And no one ever thought about collecting memorabilia. These days, hardly a week goes by that Davis doesn't get four or five items in the mail that people want him to autograph. Not long ago Yvonne Davis ran into someone who had bought one of Ameche's jerseys for $5,000. "How could they get one of Alan's jerseys?" she wonders. "I don't even have one!"
