Allene Delories Evans

1951 - 2025

Allene Evans's favorite literary character was Pollyanna Whittier, the unfailingly optimistic 11-year-old English girl who always saw the bright side of everything. Some might consider that plucky attitude unfashionable or corny these days, but not Allene. She was a modern-day Pollyanna and was admired by all for those uncompromised qualities.

Once asked what she looked for in a husband, she replied, "Someone who is kind, fun and smart." She accepted "two out of three" as an answer and agreed to marry Tom Herod, her husband of 25 years. But Allene was all three. She always did the right thing, whether it was a big thing involving a negligent automaker or a small thing involving a homemade dressing for her signature arugula salad or even something so comically unhip that it would have been wrong for anyone else, other than Allene.

Even in the final moments of her life, Allene did the right thing. She died of ovarian cancer on April 12, 2025 the way she wanted at home in Crestone, Colorado, facing Mount Blanca, the fourth highest summit of the Rocky Mountains of North America. She fell in love with it as a coed, gazing at it each morning from her dorm room at Adams State College in Alamosa. The slightest mention of it made her beam.

Allene is survived by her husband, Tom Herod; daughter, Elizabeth Evans Herod (24); brother Thomas Downing Evans of New Bern, North Carolina; sisters Mary Margaret Evans Tate, also of Bern, and Elizabeth Evans Kittrell of Fulton, Maryland. She was preceded in death by her parents, Allen Douglas Evans and Margaret Elizabeth Spradley Evans of Cleves, Ohio, a village in the western suburbs of Cincinnati.

As everyone who had ever met her will attest, Allene was a justice hawk, and she marshalled her intellect and energy trying to make the world a better place. She was born October 4, 1951, in Cincinnati, Ohio and attended Taylor High School in nearby, Cleves. She rose to the highest rank attainable at that time in the Girl Scouts of America and graduated in 1968 as valedictorian of her class.

Though she could have gone anywhere, she chose to attend Adams State because she sought "a life of adventure" and fondly remembered the San Luis Valley from her first visit at the age of 12 on a family camping trip to the Great Sand Dunes.

While at Adams State, she spent six months in Puebla, Mexico, attending the Universidad de las Americas. Years later, she became a co-chair of a group she helped found, the Texas Mexico Bar Association. She graduated in three years from Adams State and then became a Vista volunteer in Minnesota. Inspired by those experiences, she specialized in legal aid at the University of Minnesota Law School, not law review. She worked briefly at a Minneapolis corporate law firm, before, putting her training to good use as a municipal court attorney, then assistant DA in Corpus Christi, Texas, where she sometimes handled as many as 100 cases per day.

"She told me many times it was the most fun she ever had as a lawyer." Herod said.

From Corpus Christi, she moved to Austin to work for another justice hawk Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. He was the son of a sheet metal worker and a waitress, and he fought fiercely for open government and equal rights. Allene was appointed chief of the anti-trust division and soon took on huge insurance companies as well as prominent Texas hospitals that colluded in denying economic justice to regular folks.

One of the insurance companies was global behemoth, Lloyd's of London, which lost to her in a case involving writing policies for daycare centers, prompting the Times of London to publish the following headline: "Beware the honey blonds of Texas."

After being appointed as one of three commissioners on the Texas Insurance Board by Governor Ann Richards, Allene became a partner in the Corpus Christi law firm of Perry and Haas, mainly litigating automotive products liability cases coast to coast.

In 1998, she met Herod on a blind date, set up by the wife of a film school buddy and a couple of other members of what was affectionally dubbed "El Grupo Doce" the group of 12. It consisted of six female lawyers and their six artsy husbands. Together, the group traveled extensively, celebrated countless birthdays and holidays, drank and ate and danced to no end, comforted each other after UT losses to Oklahoma and finally celebrated together the 2006 national championship and the 2023 Big XII title game.

Their final trip together came in 2024 to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they gathered on the patio of the Drury Hotel and sipped margaritas and watched a gorgeous sun set over the Jemez Mountains.

Allene and Tom married in Crestone on August 1, 1999, and Elizabeth was born on February 15, 2001. Allene took off two years to fully immerse herself in motherhood, then returned to Perry and Haas. In 2013, she joined the Health Law Section of the General Counsel's Office of the University of Texas System. Within a year, she became the head of that section and the chief legal advisor and administrator of the UT Medical Liability Insurance program for UT medical employees. She oversaw the legal concerns of seven medical schools and eight medical institutions that included more than 12,000 employees, over two million hospital days, and ten million outpatient visits.

In 2023, she was promoted to Assistant Vice-Chancellor of the University of Texas System and retired in March of 2024.

Allene also sat on the Board of Directors for the non-profit, Texas Appleseed, from 1998 to 2025 and served as its chair from 2012-2013. Her proudest accomplishment was leading the board when the Texas Legislature encouraged by Texas Appleseed's advocacy banned misdemeanor ticketing in schools. This policy change kept thousands of kids stay in class and on track to graduate. "Her vision was that the organization would lead the way in making life better for children in foster care, indigent persons accused of crimes, families desperate for sustainable credit, and others," said founding executive director Annette LaVoi. "I believe Allene lived to see that vision realized, and I will always be grateful for her role in that work."

On top of everything, Allene was adventuresome and fearless. She'd visited all 50 states plus five continents, including her dream trip to the Galapagos Islands. She traveled as a single woman on a photo safari to Kenya and took such excellent photographs that they found their way into the movie, "Mean Girls."

Allene always said that the Kenya trip changed her life and to give back, she funded a scholarship for a young Kenyan woman to attend a high school boarding school and then onto Egerton University in Njoro, maintaining a correspondence with her up to the last month of her life. While in Kenya, she met a teenage boy who was impressed that she was a lawyer. "Why do you think lawyers are important?" Allene asked, and the boy replied, "They are the guardians of a free and just society."

Allene was that and more.

A life-long member and an ordained deacon of the Presbyterian Church, she never saw anything but the bright side of life and the best side of others. She even attended a promote kindness group in the last months of her life. She loved quinoa, Rancho Gordo beans handleless tea cups, dirty martinis, dry white wine, blue-footed boobies, and her family's three standard poodles Ginger, Parker and Red. Allene made a mean margarita on the rocks three parts Herradura Añejo tequila, two parts fresh lime juice and one part Grand Marnier, and, of course, with salt on the rim. Allene never fudged on anything.

"Driving five miles over the speed limit on a wide-open road in the middle of nowhere, in broad daylight, without a cop or any another car in sight, was still 'speeding' to Allene," Herod said. "And speeding was against the law, so she wouldn't do it, and she wouldn't let me." Allene never fudged.

A Celebration of the Life of Allene Delories Evans will be held in the banquet room at Scholz's Garten from 3-5 p.m. on June 14, 2025. Not required, but RSVPs sent to tom@thfilms.com would be appreciated.