Like Father, Like Son
For Father's Day: the tale of two sons who followed in their fathers' footsteps at Duke
About 13 years ago, Tommy Davis wasn't sure what to call his father.
The two men, who share the same first and last name, worked in different branches of Financial Services, and about once a month, Tommy walked into a meeting and sat across from his father at a conference room table.
"It was a bit bizarre," said Tommy, now a financial analyst in Duke's Facilities Management. "I couldn't call him Dad, and I sure wasn't going to call him Tom. So I just didn't call him anything."
Despite those occasional moments of awkwardness, the two men enjoy the memories and chuckles that come from being father and son at Duke. To celebrate Father's Day, Tommy and Tom Davis shared with Working@Duke some of those memories from working at the same organization.
The elder Tom Davis started working at Duke in 1975 in General Accounting, where he met his wife. Sometimes on weekends, he brought his children to work and let them roam the Allen Building halls. In 1986, when his department moved to 705 Broad Street, his then 8-year-old son, Tommy, spent an afternoon chasing his younger brother through half-built cubicles and moving boxes.
"Our family spent a lot of time at Duke," said Tom, now a director in the Medical Center Compliance Office.
Despite that early exposure to Duke, Tommy didn't intend to follow in his father's footsteps. When he graduated from Elon University with an economics degree in 2001, jobs were tough to find. "It was the middle of a recession and the banks weren't hiring," Tommy said.
When his father alerted him to an opening for a staff specialist in Plant Accounting, Tommy applied. He got the job and started work at Duke in the summer of 2001.
"Turns out I liked Duke, so I stayed," Tommy said.
He expected to get phone calls or email intended for his father but was surprised when a colleague mistook him one day for his father.
"I don't think we even look alike," Tommy said.
Tom, however, had the opposite reaction when a colleague thought he was Tommy.
"I was delighted," Tom said. "It carved 34 years off my life."