Patricia Davies

Patricia Grady Davies, 80, a Washington Post society reporter in the early 1940s and the widow of diplomat John Paton Davies Jr., died of cancer May 28 at a hospital in Asheville, N.C. She lived in Asheville since 1978.

Mrs. Davies was born in Paris and grew up in Berkeley, Calif. She was a 1940 international relations graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.

She then came to Washington, where her father, Henry F. Grady, was serving as an assistant secretary of state, and became a society writer for The Post.

In her columns "Top Hats and Tiaras" and "Now's the Time," she specialized in interviewing admirals and generals and wrote about cultural figures, such as dancer Martha Graham.

Mrs. Davies left The Post in 1943 after marrying Davies, who became one of the "China hands" at the State Department and who then was political adviser to Army Gen. Joseph W. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.

She traveled with her husband and worked in decoding rooms in China and later in Moscow, when he became first secretary at the U.S. Embassy there after the war.

John Paton Davies was fired from the State Department in 1954 during a purge inspired by ill-informed members of Congress who sought diplomats to blame for the "loss" of China to communists.

Davies was fired though he was cleared of wrongdoing in several security hearings.

After Davies's firing, the couple operated a furniture business in Peru before returning to Washington, where they lived from 1964 to 1971. The State Department officially exonerated him in 1969.

During those Washington years, Mrs. Davies wrote a column, "Once Over Lightly," for the Rome Daily American newspaper. She also became a design consultant to William Pahlmann Associates Inc. in New York and Klein & Saks in Washington.

The couple later lived in Europe before settling in Asheville, where in the early 1980s, Mrs. Davies produced classical music and news programming at a public radio station.

Of her husband's ordeal at State, Mrs. Davies told The Post in 1969: "It's like standing in Rotterdam being bombed. When you are the target, your problems are tremendously simple. . . . It's harder for the people near you; they have the moral dilemmas about whether they should resign, should they have done more, things like that, all kinds of trauma.

"But we don't dwell on all that," she added. "Our lives are full. We live very much in the present."

Her husband of 57 years died Dec. 23. Survivors include six daughters, Patricia "Tiki" Davies of Washington, Alexandra "Sasha" Davies of White Plains, N.Y., Susan Davies of Chatham, N.Y., Jennifer Davies of Seattle, Megan Davies of New Orleans and Deborah Davies of London; a son, John Grady Davies of Baton Rouge, La.; a brother; and 11 grandchildren.