SEAVIEW, Wash. Whether hes discussing his latest gig as head waiter of the Shelburne Inn restaurant in Seaview, Wash., or the shrapnel that pierced his side in Vietnam, Michael Daviss friendly smile never leaves his face.

I feel like Im still 21, but with 43 extra years of life experience, he jokes.

A specialist in the food service industry for more than four decades, Davis can make two claims that many people cannot: He is very good at his job, and he loves it now more than ever.

Its great fun working 25 hours a week, meeting new people and finding out where theyre from, said Davis, the excitement rising in his voice. Just in the last two weeks, Ive met people from all points of the globe. We get a lot of folks from Japan, Sweden, Denmark and England.

A brazen extrovert, the 64-year-old Davis refuels on hearing the stories of his patrons and sharing his own in turn. And with such voluminous experience, he knows how to practice a philosophy of hospitality that he believes everyone in the restaurant biz should hold.

When someone walks through your front door, you should think of that person as somebody walking into your home, he said. You greet them, make sure they have a good time, and when they get up to leave, you say goodbye, thank them for being there and welcome them back.

Customers, in other words, dont just represent a servers payday; they are his guests. Each one is a potential regular. And after a while a kind of friendship develops between customer and server that can carry on for years.

Anyone whos successful in the business really does want the best for his or her customers, Davis said. If you cant walk onto the floor of a restaurant setting and ensure people are enjoying themselves, then you just cant deliver, and youre making a horrible career move.

Davis found his vocation when he returned to the U.S. after a brief stint in the Marine Corps. He had been stationed in Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War and left because of a shrapnel injury. I was too happy to be alive to experience any post-traumatic stress, Davis said. War is not healthy for living things.

In his early 20s, Davis worked roughly 80 hours per week at a Black Angus restaurant in Hawaii while attending the University of Hawaii as a full-time student. He started out as a busboy, became the assistant manager after two years, then rose to general manager when the chain expanded. From 1969 to 77, the restaurant business became an enormously important part of his life. 

Davis eventually dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles in 1977. There, he held down two restaurant jobs simultaneously, one in a Carls Jr. warehouse, the other at Stuart Andersons Cattle Company. He operated his own upscale, fine dining restaurant for about a year.

In 1986, he and his wife, Vicki, chose to start over in Portland, where Davis worked in several restaurants owned by the company McCormick & Schmicks, and in McMenamins Black Rabbit restaurant at Edgefield in Troutdale.

He then spent six years as a stay-at-home dad, serving as president of the parent-teacher association, a Cub Scout Den Leader and later as a Scoutmaster when his son, Joe, joined.

Those years as Mr. Mom gave me a chance to do many of the things I wanted to do and didnt feel I had the time for while I was working fulltime in restaurant management, he said.

All told, Davis has worked in eight restaurants, including the historic Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland. He had intended to retire in early 2009, but the recession has put such plans on hold for the moment.

It happens, he reflected.

With his new job at the Shelburne the oldest continuously operated hotel in Washington since 1896 Davis begins the transition from a life in Portland to a life in Seaview.

The house in Long Beach that served as his familys beach house for 13 years has become his permanent residence, and eventually his family will join him. During Daviss two-day trips to Portland each week, he helps his wife of 35 years care for her mother.

Meanwhile, you can catch Davis in his natural habitat, the dining room of the Shelburne Inn restaurant, as he works the night shift alongside owners David Campiche and Laurie Anderson.  

The Shelburne is reinvigorating its restaurant after a few quiet years by changing its menus and bringing in new faces with new ideas, Davis said. His own hiring five weeks ago is a part of this process. He says it will be fun to remain in constant contact with new and interesting people.

Its the same thing thats done in restaurants across America, and you just hope you can do it better, he said. Its paying attention to the details that gives a restaurant its strength, and thats what we do.

Davis likes to tell a story.

Because of a clerical error on the Marines part, Davis status during the Vietnam War somehow switched from wounded to killed-in-action. He was recuperating in a hospital bed and waiting to be shipped to Guam when he heard of his own untimely demise. For four days, his parents assumed their son was dead because their letters to him were being returned.

The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated, I finally told them over the ham-relay radio phone, he said.

Later, Davis was approached by the FBI when he was a university student to become a mole in the Students for a Democratic Society. He turned the agency down.

Dont you want to help your country? they asked me. I did once before, I said. and it had me killed.

Erick Bengel