Page 117 - Erath

“It must have been the second summer we were here, the summer of 1955,” Chilton began. “Dr. O.A. Grant, a professor of government for many years had been a fairly good tennis player and I’d played a bunch of tennis. J. Louis and Cecil Ballow, who was the dean of men, they challenged us to a tennis match. We accepted the challenge and we were playing on the old tennis courts, about where Hunewell Annex is on McIlhaney Street.

“Dr. Grant and I had Jay and Cecil on the ropes, just about to beat them,” he laughed. “We had them set point. Grant was very outspoken, in a humorous way. He thought he was whispering to me, but it wasn’t much of a whisper. I was serving and he said, ‘Come on, Stuart, let’s get this point so we can beat Squint and Squat,’ referring to Evans diminutive stature and Ballow’s eyeglasses.

“We did not win another point,” Chilton chuckled. “We lost the match. That was their rallying cry.”

Getting serious again, he said the community and the university could never know how much Evans had done. “He was defnitely an asset to this community,” Chilton said. “He did so much. There are too many things to enumerate.”

Maybe Evans said it best himself with the fnal line of his nod to his alma mater.

“Yes, I have the spirit of Tarleton,” Evans’ work ended, “and by the grace of God I’ll always have.”  ECL

“I frst met J. Louis in 1954 when I came down to be interviewed for the job of director of public information and assistant professor of journalism,” Chilton recalled. “We met in the old rec hall on the Tarleton Campus, which was the forerunner of the student center. Mr. Evans was the manager of the Tarleton Book Store.

My wife and I came down earlier and our second meeting here, we came down from Abilene looking for a place to live. My wife’s mother and her sister, Barbara met us here. We were having a Coca Cola to drink and Mr. Evans was talking with some other men and happened to walk past our table. He looked at my sister-in-law, and he said, ‘I believe I know you. I think we went to Tarleton together.’ They had in about 1939 or 1940, Chilton said. “That was the frst time we met. From that chance encounter, we became very good friends.”

Evans and Chilton each worked in several capacities during some very exciting times for the college and later, the university. In 1959 Tarleton became a 4-year institution following approval of the Legislature.

“We graduated our frst class in May of 1963,” said Chilton, who had been named the college’s registrar and dean in 1957.

The duo worked together for more than a decade, according to Chilton.

“During that 12 years I was here, J. Louis and I became close friends,” he said. “I left in ’66 and we moved back in ’96. Jay had retired and come back and served in various jobs. He was the director of development, director of public information. When I came back we just renewed our acquaintance.”

As with his work in the community, Evans was a driving force at Tarleton. He founded the school’s athletics hall of fame and the Texan Club as well as serving on the TSU Athletic Council.

And many Yellow Jacket and Texan football fans know Evans as the voice of the teams. He served as the PA announcer for both teams, never missing a home game in his 20 years at the microphone.

Among his many distinctions at TSU, Evans was a Distinguished Alumnus of Tarleton, and also was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award; He was the founder of Tarleton Development Foundation in 1978, serving as its frst executive secretary, and was executive director of the Tarleton Alumni Association for 10 years. He retired as director of information at Tarleton in 1984 after 23 years on the job.

Chilton, like Roberson, remembers Evans as being very motivated, especially when he was called to task. Chilton reminisced about a story he told while delivering Evans’ eulogy last summer.