Carolyn Evans

1938 - 2022

Carolyn Evans
September 19, 1938 - August 9, 2022
By the time Carolyn Evans died, on August 9, she had spent more than a dozen years living away from her home, away from her beloved, Leo Litwak, away from her cats, away from herself. Early onset Alzheimer's had robbed her of the independence, culture, sophistication and wit that had defined her adult life.
In her sunny room at the Heritage Inn in San Mateo, there was usually music playing, and she was well-groomed and well-attended by compassionate caregivers. But at the end of her life, this woman, who'd had so many friends, so many colleagues, was in solitude, alone in her room. She hadn't spoken for years, and her eyes, while often open, seemed unseeing. Litwak, her partner for 50 years, had died in 2018, and aside from her sisters, who came from Sacramento when they could, there were few visitors.
A year or so before, when she was wheeled into the living room of the facility to participate in a party, she seemed to be moving her toes in time to the music. But at the end, that primal instinct, too, was gone. She spent her days staring at the ceiling. It was too late for her to tell her story.
The data on her expired passports includes the basic facts: Carolyn Evans was born in Illinois in 1938, her hair was black, her eyes were brown and she stood 5-feet 3½-inches tall. A black-and-white photo on a passport issued in the 1980s shows her looking both neat and glamorous, her trademark coif short and curly, her eyes wide-spread, with the kind of tentative smile one assumes for a passport picture. She's dressed conservatively, in a dark-colored blazer trimmed with white piping, over a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. She looks professional and elegant, like a corporate executive or an academic, someone who understands the value of looking conservative to be taken seriously, someone who spends a lot of time sitting at meetings.
That, she did. But those meetings weren't about growing revenue or market share or how to navigate academic bureaucracy. They were about her passion and her life's focus: culture. She spent her working life as a professional connoisseur of the arts, dance in particular.
Carolyn, eldest of four siblings, was born in Harvey, Illinois. Her father had been in sales, and then a traveling minister. The family – parents and four sisters – followed him around the Midwest. "She was always putting herself out there," said Joanne Evans, her youngest sister. "She was a high school cheerleader, she always went on trips with her friends. … Carolyn was the one in the family who kind of went out there and explored the world. She was kind of our little explorer."
Did she grow up with dreams of performing in front of an audience? "I don't think so," said her close friend, Priscilla English. "She was just interested in the creative spirit. … in the exuberance of the creative spirit."
In the early 1960s, after she graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Evans came to San Francisco. She had never before been in the Bay Area, but "she was drawn to it. She liked the atmosphere. … She just sort of knew that this was what she wanted to do," said sister Joanne. She did graduate work in public administration at Lone Mountain College, and served as an intern in Assemblyman Willie Brown's district office for a year. Later she would become an arts administration fellow at Harvard Business School.
While doing graduate work at San Francisco State in the late '60s, she met Leo Litwak, with whom she would spend most of her adult life. They became official domestic partners in 2003. Her friend English met Evans in an Afro-Haitian dance class on Fillmore Street. Evans had "no dreams of being a dancer," said English, but she was fascinated by all forms of dance, and she took classes. Later, lessons she learned there proved essential to developing skills she would employ as an arts evaluator.
Long-time friend Dian Blomquist met Evans in the mid-'70s, when both were involved in the newly-formed Bay Area Women's Coalition, focused on getting women involved in politics. At a related event, the 1975 launch of the San Francisco Community Congress, Evans found herself drawn to projects involving the cultural life of the city, "That's where she may have gotten involved in the arts," said Blomquist. "We were working hard to get community artists involved."
In 1977, about 15 years after arriving in San Francisco, she was hired as California Coordinator of the National Endowment for the Arts Dance Touring Program. That position provided her with experience enabling her to establish the California Arts Council Touring and Presenting Program. Over the years she worked as program coordinator, advancement program consultant, peer review panelist and site visit consultant to organizations that included the Alameda County Arts Commission, Northern California Grantmakers, the San Francisco Foundation, UC Davis Committee for Arts and Lectures, Foothill College Performing Arts Alliance, San Francisco Jazz Festival and the Cabrillo Music Festival.
In 1987, forging a collaboration with the non-profit Life on the Water and San Francisco State University, where she had been a graduate student in linguistics, she presented a two-week long jazz tap dance festival in San Francisco. Among her treasured souvenirs was a festival program autographed by tapper Eddie Brown, ""To Carolyn, beautiful person always." Continuing to follow her passion for tap, she became artistic director of the Jazz Tap Summit produced by Jazz in the City. She also co-founded Art World International, which produced tap classes and performances, and organized "America on Tap," a program that toured to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
Her last position, from 1991 to 2003, was as Arts Program Officer for the Marin Community Foundation. It was a big responsible job, managing a budget of almost two million dollars, overseeing 75 grants. She had come to it after more than 20 years of experience as a program manager, performing arts producer and presenter, technical assistance provider, researcher and evaluator.
She was a board member of Life on the Water and Kronos Quartet, and served as panelist and site visit consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts. She knew how to get things done in the arts, and she was discriminating about the results of those efforts. Although she was never a professional dancer, friends reminiscing about her remember her physical grace and particularly feline form of beauty. She always seemed to bask in the creative light emitted by all sorts of performances.
In the end, Alzheimer's took away much of what she had loved, robbing her of so many of those pleasures. Nonetheless, we who knew her will treasure our warm memories of her contributions to culture and to friendship.
Evans is survived by her three younger sisters, Hildegarde, Martha and Joanne, by nephews Cole Evans and Justin Parfet and niece Rene Lolesio, and by Jessica Litwak, daughter of her late partner. Contributions in her memory may be made to the Performing Arts Workshop, ODC/Dance or the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.