Aug. 31, 2003 – After 20 years of welcoming visitors on St. Thomas and 57 years in the hospitality business, Frank and Mary Davis have sold their Danish Chalet Inn to McCoy Webster, who owns the Palms Court Harborview Hotel across the street.
They closed the deal on Tuesday and caught a plane on Friday to Florida, where they will be semi-retiring to Treasure Island, on the state's West Coast near St. Petersburg.
"We hate to leave," Mary Davis said in a telephone interview before their departure.
However, the couple are getting up in years — she's 78 and her husband is 82 — and it was time to stop working so hard, she said. They don't intend to give up working entirely, however: They plan to "inn sit" from time to time for owners of similar small inns who want to take a break.
The Davises began trying to sell the Danish Chalet in 1995. In fact, they had two essay contests with the inn as the prize. The deadline for the first one was Sept. 15 of that year, which happened to be the day an unwelcome visitor named Marilyn checked in, and since the inn sustained some damage, they decided to refund everybody's entry fees. The second contest, in 1999, didn't work out either.
Deals with prospective hoteliers also didn't happen, mainly because the prospective buyers didn't have the deep pockets to get through the slow summer season, Mary Davis said.
After a round of farewell parties at the various organizations that had the Davis' on their membership lists, they spent the week packing up their belongings and saying goodbye to friends.
"We're totally blessed," Davis said, dashing off to answer the door.
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