By Staff
Melissa Cason
A former Miss Alabama will return to her Russellville roots for the signing of her book this weekend at the A.W. Todd Centre.
Russellville-native Denise Davis will be signing her autobiography on Sunday, April 6 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Davis, who won the title of Miss Alabama in 1976, said her book is the story of her life growing up right here in Franklin County.
"I loved growing up in Russellville," Davis said. "It was like Mayberry to me growing up here."
Davis said she was just part of the group while growing up, and that she liked it that way.
"I wasn't the best at anything, and I didn't really stand out," she said. "I was in the middle among my peers."
Davis loves telling people about Russellville and said she included a lot of detail about her hometown in the book.
But not everything in Davis' life has been so fun and easy-going. Thirteen years after winning her Miss Alabama crown, Davis was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.
"The book talks about what I went through with MS and about my faith and how it made me grow up," Davis said.
Over the past 19 years, Davis has endured many life changing experience, which included blindness on two separate occasions.
"Because of the blindness and the MS, I began pursing the faith I grew up with," Davis said.
The book, "He Never Wastes the Pain," was titled from a statement she had told a friend during her blindness. The friend was a diabetic and had lost his sight as well. Davis told him one day, "He never wastes the pain if you share it with Him."
"When I said that to him, he told me that I should write a book and name it that," she recalled. "So when I wrote the book, I did."
Davis decided to write her story while traveling to different parts of the country singing and giving her testimony.
"I started getting requests for a book when I would visit different places to sing," she said.
Writing the book was very painful, Davis said, because of all the things her illness had put her through. But she is thankful for God because he has gotten her through it all.
"I thank God I don't have to go through this by myself," she said. "There was a time when I thought I could do it all on my own, and when I finally gave in to let God help me, I feel like He verbally said to me 'It's about time.'"