Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
The amazing life of Evan Wilson
Evan Wilson, an unlikely Texan on a John Ford scale, died May 19 at Avalon Memory Care in Cedar Park. He was 84. His decline into vascular dementia never diminished his joy in living, laughing, or thrilling at the sight of his wife of 37 years, Ann Hume Wilson of Austin.
He was a grand adventurer. He lived what he loved and what he loved, he brought to life. He was a writer, sailor, civic activist, animal lover, ship modeler, and Army Intelligence officer. He so loved gospel blues that he founded a festival honoring Thomas A. Dorsey, the “Father of Gospel Music.”
Wilson was born December 26, 1939, in West Palm Beach, Fla. He grew up in Washington D.C., attended St. Albans Preparatory School there, and later studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Serving as an Army Intelligence Officer in Bordeaux, France, in the early 1960s, he joked that “the best French intelligence is gathered at garden parties.” His strong, clear reporting on France’s early nuclear deterrence program (the Force de Frappe), rose to the attention of President Lyndon Johnson and earned a Letter of Commendation.
In France, Wilson bought the first of seven Alfa Romeos he owned and raced in his bachelor days. He turned his passion for that 1963 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint into a 1982 book, Alfa Romeo Giulietta, still essential among "Alfisti."
In 1968, Evan worked with other activists at the Peace Action Center in Baltimore to design and produce a bimonthly "Peace and Freedom News," networking with publishers of other underground publications at an Iowa City conference.
Later that year, during a turbulent time in Mexico, Wilson was appointed by Vice President Humphrey to head the U.S. delegation to the first-ever Cultural Olympiad, held in conjunction with the Mexico City Olympic Games. There he led the cultural exchange activities of young Americans participating in the Olympics World Youth Camp. When protests disrupted the camp following the famous “Black Power” salutes of 1968, he focused the young delegates on creating a manifesto for the rights of youth called the “Oaxtepec Declaration."
Returning to Baltimore, Wilson wrote for the Baltimore Sun and worked for an urban renewal initiative called Model Urban Neighborhood Demonstration (MUND). At MUND, Evan recruited and trained community members to write and produce their own community newspaper. He also served as community field coordinator for the Baltimore Public School System.
Gripped by the tragic sinking of Baltimore’s historic tall ship replica, Pride of Baltimore, he studied the questionable safety standards then in place for tall ships, and wrote a cover story for Oceans magazine that formed the basis for his second book, Epitaph for a Beautiful Ship.
In the 1980s, Wilson took to the sea in his restored classic Norwegian folkboat, Leaf. With his tabby cat Edith as his first mate, he spent two years sailing alone, exploring the coast from northern Maryland to Roanoke Island NC. He gloried in navigating the waters, sleeping below deck during a rainstorm, and living on fresh fish and the occasional cheeseburger in paradise.
Wilson became Executive Director of the Oregon Inlet Users’ Association, a non-profit advocacy group for the commercial fishermen of the Outer Banks. As usual, his passion led to another book, Many Winters Waiting, the story of the legislative battles fought on behalf of the heritage family fishing communities of Pamlico Sound.
On the Outer Banks he met his future wife, Ann Hume, and they married in 1987. When Ann became Marketing/PR Director of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, the couple settled in Villa Rica, which Wilson soon learned was the birthplace of his favorite gospel blues songwriter, Thomas Dorsey. Finding little there to honor this milestone of Black History, Wilson proposed both a State Historic Marker and a concert to commemorate Dorsey, who had just died. These efforts led to the 1994 founding of the Thomas A. Dorsey Birthplace Choir and the Thomas A. Dorsey Gospel Heritage Festival in Villa Rica, celebrating its 30th anniversary this June 28-30.
During his tenure in Georgia, Wilson also wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In addition to a weekly history column titled “About the South,” he contributed essays for its popular “True South” feature.
Along with his wife, Ann, Evan is survived by countless individuals whom he counseled and encouraged during his 40 years of sober living.
Evan Wilson was larger than life. His heart held interests as simple as fishing and as complex as global cultures. Many of the achievements here will surprise even friends who knew him for decades. That’s the purpose of this online memorial. Evan Wilson was a man worth knowing. He is a loss to all of us.
We invite you to help us remember him with your own recollections of Evan in the “Memories” section below. Attend his memorial service June 15 in Austin if you are able. Atlanta-area friends may wish to join Ann to celebrate his life at the 2024 Thomas A. Dorsey Gospel and Blues Festival in Villa Rica GA, June 28-30.
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Memory wall
I will miss you!
He marched to a slightly different drummer but he sure seemed to be having a lot of fun doing it.
I believe my history with Evan began as a message from above. I think it was 2007 and I had an urge to google my mother’s family name of Wilcox. I quickly noticed a message from someone seeking information on an Everett Wilcox of Great Barrington, MA. My Grandfather’s name was Everett Wilcox, from Great Barrington, MA so I was quite intrigued. There was a name and number, but I was a bit concerned because the message was posted over 2 years earlier. I called and Evan Wilson answered. I asked why he was looking for Everett Wilcox and he said Everett was his father; I was floored. I told him that Everett Wilcox was my grandfather. He then informed me that he was seeking information on his birth father’s medical history, he knew he died fairly young. He was also curious to learn something about his heritage.
I was very familiar with my Wilcox relatives and I had no knowledge of Evan. Evan explained that his mother had had a relationship with Everett and had subsequently given birth to Evan. He said his mother was a very strong independent woman who chose to raise him on her own, so the existence of Evan was never known to the Wilcox family. I later realized that his mother, who had never married and did not have the last name of Wilson, had given Evan a name with the initials of his father.
Evan said, as a teen, he remembered being told that his father had died and they were going to pay condolences to the widow of his father. He remembers a young woman with her. I told him that would have been my mother, his half sister Shirley, who died almost 20 years later.
I did not have the opportunity to meet my grandfather, so I wasn’t able to give Evan most of the information that he was seeking. I told him he had an older half brother, Merrill who would be able to give him those answers.
Merrill was intrigued, but cautious about the validity of a half brother. At the time Evan and Ann still lived in Maryland, so a meeting was arranged there. Merrill said as soon as he saw Evan he was convinced he was his father’s son when he noticed mannerisms of his father in Evan.
It turns out, Evan spent many years living in close proximity to his Maryland half family. I began to learn more about my half uncle, and his many achievements. How wonderful it would have been to have learned of Evan so many years earlier. My brother and I were lucky enough to be able to meet Evan and Ann, and introduce them to our families, before they left Maryland for Texas. I was thrilled to have found Evan, but sad at the missed opportunities especially sad that Evan missed out on knowing his equally wonderful big half sister; they would have truly enjoyed each other. With the death of Merrill several years ago, I like to believe that they are all enjoying the company of each other now.
Hilary Gates
Evan asked that John Updike’s 1960 poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” be shared with friends at his memorial service. It speaks to his rock-hard faith. He did not dither about it as I seemed always to be doing. He simply believed. For him, acceptance was key. xxxoooxxx
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.
And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.
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He also loved Melville, Whitman, and anything by Bill Bryson.
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