87-year-old launches storytelling salon to bridge divides in Park City

John Davis. Photo: Dana Klein

PARK CITY, Utah — In March 2024, two dozen strangers gathered in a Park City home for the inaugural evening of Tell Me a Story. The four storytellers included a Utahn from an authoritarian home, a former federal employee, a Brazilian ski instructor and a first-generation college student. The audience was their friends and family. The organizer and storytelling coach was 87-year-old John Davis.

Typical octogenarians don’t launch ambitious new nonprofits. To Davis’ wife, Mary, and their son, Elliot, this is normal. “It sounded like another one of John’s adventures,” says Mary, a retired lawyer.

Davis always has a story to tell, using storytelling mediums we don’t necessarily recognize as such — for example, wine and cheese, a romantic restaurant and a Jewish men’s group.

Tell Me a Story, a storytelling salon modeled on The Moth, is Davis’ newest medium. It began in response to rising divisiveness in America. Davis believes storytelling can help heal what divides us — in Park City and beyond.

Davis’ story began in 1937, two years before Nazi Germany invaded Poland. His parents divorced when he was 4. His father was drafted to be a side-gunner on a B-17 bomber but never deployed. Davis, an only child, was 8 when his father died in a training accident.

After attending the University of Chicago Lab High School and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Davis tried different jobs — from recruiting to selling corrugated boxes. A wandering, four-month road trip through Europe with a college roommate ultimately focused him. There, Davis tried good wine for the first time.

“It was an unmarked bottle; it was probably 80 cents,” he recalls. At the time, there was no place to sip wine like that in Chicago.

In 1965, Davis opened Chicago’s first wine and cheese café, called Geja’s Café. “I didn’t know anything about wine or cheese,” he admits. But Davis learned, honing the storytelling skill behind Tell Me a Story.

As Geja’s Cafe became known for its wine tastings and events, Davis was recruited to be a wine columnist for Today’s Chicago Woman, a monthly magazine. “He wrote under the pseudonym Marla Merlot,” says Mary. “It’s just another one of those John Davis things.”

“When winemakers came to Chicago, who did they want to have lunch with?” Davis asks rhetorically. “Me. And the two other wine writers in Chicago who worked for the daily papers. These iconic winemakers would come to Chicago and take us out to lunch at fancy restaurants and tell us their stories.”

Telling great stories became the key to his second business, Wine Insiders, one of America’s first direct shippers of wine. Davis wrote and blogged stories about wine for the company. Stories, more than tasting notes, differentiated one bottle from another.

In its first 50 years, Geja’s Café reportedly hosted over 137,000 first dates and 16,000 engagements. Named Chicago’s most romantic restaurant by numerous media outlets, it became a creator of, and setting for, stories of love.

In 1988, Davis met Mary, raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, who had just returned from an adventure in Spain. She was serving at a Spanish tapas restaurant where Davis was her customer.

“We had a funny little interchange about his restaurant,” Mary remembers. “John was somewhat surprised that I had never heard of it.”

They married in 1992, and Elliot was born in 1995. Elliot grew up on stories and adventures instead of devices. “The best thing we ever did was not pay the cable [bill],” says Davis.

At age 5, after Elliot’s first skiing experience in Crested Butte, Colorado, he was hooked. By eighth grade, Elliot’s passion for skiing convinced the family to leave Chicago.

In 2010, the Davis family planned to spend one year in Park City, but “we never discussed going back,” Davis says. Elliot honed his skills as a big mountain skier and went on to become a freeride competitor, a guide on Alaskan glaciers, Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, and a ski patroller at Solitude.

In Park City, Davis volunteered with Peace House, a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse, and joined the Jewish Federation of Utah. He is legendary for creating Men’s Night Out — a monthly gathering in a private home for dinner and a speaker.

During the Davis family’s first decade in Park City, the annual number of hate crimes in the United States increased by 10%. Davis began to research hate and bigotry, leading to the creation of Tell Me a Story.

“Countering divisiveness is quite difficult. Much of the time it’s learned early in the home. Logical arguments get you nowhere,” Davis insists. “I decided a better way is to get diverse people together telling personal, true stories to a diverse audience. Then, maybe we can make a little dent in bias.”

For the inaugural Tell Me a Story, each speaker shared a seven-minute tale of personal transformation. The Utahn raised in an authoritarian home told of how his mother abandoned the family when he was a child — only it turned out she was forced away by his father, who intercepted her letters to her son for five years.

The former federal employee spoke about the time he was arrested in Kenya by the local equivalent of the FBI while working for the U.S. government abroad. The government did not have his back, and he learned that he could only count on himself in certain situations.

The young ski instructor from Brazil told her story of becoming a certified and celebrated ski instructor against all odds. The college student told a story nicknamed “Pizzagate,” the time he rebelled against the arbitrary authority of middle school administrators who didn’t want him ordering in pizza for lunch.

“They made themselves vulnerable, and the vulnerability spilled over into the audience. There was magic in the room,” Davis says.

Tell Me a Story, has now launched its website, and will take place once a quarter. Davis is looking for more speakers and storytelling coaches.

As he walks a reporter to the door, Davis asks, “Did I ever tell you about the time I spent New Year’s Eve with the Ringling Brothers Circus?”

Davis always has a story to tell.