Louis Evans Jr.

Louis Evans Jr., 1958-2005

Michelle Hunter
Staff writer

Somewhere along the way, Louis Evans Jr. lost his rhythm.

A fan of old school funk and a trumpet player in the West Jefferson High School band, Evans loved music and always had the latest records as he was growing up in Marrero, said his niece Giselle Johnson Lewis.

A Jackson 5 aficionado, Evans and some of his friends even formed a tribute group as teenagers, performing as the famous Motown quintet for family functions.

But when Evans remarried in 2001, Lewis said she noticed at the reception that he and the beat were no longer acquainted.

"Way back in the '70s he had it," she said, giggling. "I don't know what happened to it. I think he just lost his rhythm at some point."

But friends and family said that being rhythmically challenged in his later years never put a damper on Evans' love of music and never stopped him from taking the lead in a second-line.

Born in Algiers and raised in Marrero, Evans experienced loss early in life. His father and baby brother died when he was very young, and after his older siblings moved away, teenage Louis declared himself the man of the house.

"He basically took care of his mom," Lewis said. "It was just the two of them living together."

Evans graduated from West Jefferson and received an associate degree in business from Holy Cross College. He picked up welding jobs and did ornamental ironwork for a while, then went to work for Monsanto in Luling as a lab tech.

Evans married his first wife, Corliss, in 1978. The couple had three children: Louis Evans III, LaTanya Evans and LaToya Evans. Corliss died in 1999 of a heart attack. He and his second wife, Karen Valentine, were virtually inseparable. He treated her so royally that friends of the couple nicknamed him "The Prince."

"They were so lovey-dovey, they couldn't keep their hands off of each other," said Evans' co-worker and friend Jeffery Wright. "Kiss-kiss, hug-hug, and that was for years."

Wright said Evans had an itch to go into business for himself. For a few years, he ran a women's health spa in Harvey. But he later sold the business, and he and Karen Evans incorporated Hallmark Constructions. Through the company Evans built his wife her dream home, a mansion in Barkley Estates in Harvey.

It was his desire to make sure all was well with his wife's castle that brought Evans back to the New Orleans area from Houston just two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall Aug. 29. He told her he wanted to make sure any repairs were done quickly so he could get to work helping anyone else in the neighborhood in need.

The two called each other every few hours, Karen Evans said. And that's why she felt something was wrong on the evening of Sept. 2 when Evans hadn't called to tell her goodnight.

Evans had been staying on a large boat with friends on the Harvey Canal. Earlier that evening, they had gone out in a smaller craft that overturned. Everyone made it to the banks except Evans.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office divers searched the swollen waters of the canal for hours, but couldn't find his body. A family friend searching the water in a boat found Evans, who was pulled from the water and brought ashore by family members.

"He waited for us to come," Karen Evans said. "God wanted him to be embraced by loving arms."

Published in The Times-Picayune