OAKLAND — The Raiders may have departed Oakland years ago for Las Vegas, but Carol Davis had remained nearby in Piedmont, at a longtime home of the family that reigned over one of sports’ most memorable teams.
Indeed, the storied NFL franchise’s “First Lady” kept a residence on Mountain Avenue up until her death Friday at 93. It was the culmination of a life linked intrinsically to the East Bay and football alike, the kind that her son, Mark Davis, described Sunday as “wrapped in a cloak of immortality.”
“I love you mom; you will be missed,” said Mark, who shared a “controlling interest” in the now-Las Vegas Raiders with Carol, a stake inherited from the family patriarch, Al Davis, one of the iconic figures in the history of American sports.
Carol Davis was omniscient in the owners’ suite at games; she gave the team’s star players and executives a hug “hello,” they remembered, and would demonstrate a watchful eye about everything happening in the organization — even, for instance, a team employee’s divorce that Davis would not be expected to know about.
Her passing was the latest notable death among memorable Raiders figures from the team’s history. George Atkinson, the last member of the team’s beloved defense in the 1970s known for its unprecedented physicality, died Monday at 78.
Al Davis, a swashbuckling head coach with an unmistakable Brooklyn accent, simply “adored” his wife, the legendary Raiders quarterback and head coach Tom Flores remembered. Al and Carol ran in a tight inner circle of team officials and Bay Area businessmen, even amid the Raiders’ 13-year stint in Los Angeles.
Al Davis ended his long streak of joining the Raiders on road trips to work out of the Oakland hospital while Carol recovered from a massive heart attack and stroke in 1979 that kept her in a coma for 23 days. Carol miraculously recovered, earning a reputation for toughness that the Raiders themselves rallied behind on the football turf, winning the Super Bowl the very next season.
“She was a very intelligent and very dedicated woman,” recalled former Raiders executive John Herrera, an Oakland native who began working for the franchise as a teen in the 1960’s and finally departed in 2012. “She was a very interesting person to be around — and she kept up with everything that was going on, not just in sports but in the world.”
Through it all, Carol Davis remained committed to the idea of the Raiders as a model of teamwork, the kind of ideal that made the football team a storied fixture of NFL history, but an ambition that slumped in the 21st century before the team limped to a sleek new stadium in Las Vegas.
“She was a strong behind-the-scenes figure,” said Ignacio De La Fuente, the former Oakland City Council president who in 1995 recruited the Raiders back for their second stint in Oakland. “My perception was that she would keep Al realistic about things in our negotiations.”
Born Carol Sagal in New York City, she had been a buyer for retail stores even after Al finished military service and before his start as a pro football coach. The couple married in a Brooklyn synagogue but quickly formed roots in the East Bay once Al began with the Raiders ahead of the 1963 season.
During the team’s most storied years — an AFL championship in 1967 and a pair of Super Bowl victories in 1976 and 1980 — Carol stayed mostly behind the scenes, those who knew her recalled, though she always demonstrated an awareness of what was happening on the field.
“There were so many instances where she would say something that would cause me to giggle, at times where I should not have been,” said Amy Trask, a longtime former Raiders executive and the first former woman to serve as an NFL team’s CEO.
“They tended to be at Raiders business dinners,” Trask added about these occasions, “and usually involved a wise, keen observation about someone in attendance.”
Carol read newspapers every morning, always offering fresh insight about the country’s politics or society at large, friends remembered — a fitting description of a woman who led a team that broke new ground in diverse hiring.
Flores, the league’s first Mexican-American quarterback and head coach, recalled the warmth that Carol showed the team’s players, despite her and Al’s penchant for keeping their business private.
“To them, people were Raiders — it didn’t matter which color you were, what ethnic group you belonged to,” recalled Flores, who is 88 and lives in Palm Springs. “She was just very proud of you when you finished your journey.”
Al’s passing in 2011, seen as a pivotal moment in the franchise’s history, had Carol lined up in the succession plan as controlling owner. Trask, though, found herself notifying the league that Carol’s son, Mark, would take over operations instead, the outcome of discussions between mother and son that altered how the torch would be passed.
Trask departed from the franchise not long afterward, and the Raiders — fed up after stalled talks with Oakland for a new stadium — departed for Vegas.
Carol, though, stuck around in the house in Piedmont that Herrera had helped the family secure.
“I never tried to impose any of my beliefs on Carol — it wouldn’t have done any good either way,” Herrera said. “She was very strong in her opinions and she did exactly what she thought was right.”
Still, until her passing last Friday, those who knew her remembered her the way they do the Oakland Raiders: a football team with tall aspirations and a swagger.
“As the originals, we all had the same dream, but we didn’t know how to get there,” Flores said. “Al and Carol had that dream — and they knew how to do it. They brought us where we wanted to go.”
