Beloved Eagle photographer Don Evans Dies at age 96

March 4, 2016 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Don Evans worked for the Brooklyn Eagle and Brooklyn Heights Press until he was 90 years old. Eagle photo by Mario Belluomo

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Donald Evans died Thursday, March 3, at Cobble Hill Health Center, where he had been a patient for the past five years. He was a survivor of bladder cancer, but most recently suffered two bouts of pneumonia which weakened him. He was born May 14, 1919, in Portsmouth, Ohio. His father, H. R. Evans, worked as a railway clerk in Portsmouth.

Evans graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with a degree in journalism thanks to the GI Bill. World War II had interrupted his college career, but he returned to the campus after the war and graduated in 1948.

Evans served in the army for five years, from 1941 to 1946, first serving in the Aleutian Islands for 29 months. He ended up in Europe, first in France at Ike’s headquarters, where Ike pinned on his 2nd lieutenant bars, then in Germany with the Army of Occupation at the end of the war as an Aide de Camp to Brig. Gen. Jesse Ladd, where he arranged a luncheon for Gen. Patton at Inglestadt, a base north of Munich. He recalled actually seeing the general’s pearl-handled pistols for which he was famous.

Evans’s career in journalism spanned close to 70 years as he worked for the Brooklyn Eagle and Brooklyn Heights Press until he was 90 years old. Along the way, he worked for the Portsmouth Times, Wooster Telegram Gazette and Columbus Dispatch — all in Ohio; the Princeton Packet in New Jersey; and the two publications in Brooklyn. He also held public relations positions at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, the Greater Princeton Chamber of Commerce and Princeton Hospital.

Two younger brothers, Rich and Robert, pre-deceased him. His only known surviving relative is a grand-nephew, Michael G. Evans, in Granville, Ohio. Evans never married.

He had lived on Montague Street from 1982 until he moved into the nursing home in Cobble Hill. While there, he served as a member and Sgt. at Arms of the Residents Council and continued to write, with articles printed in the facility’s monthly publication, The Scoop.

Even as his health deteriorated, he continued to be interested in the news and features of his beloved Brooklyn Heights Press and Brooklyn Eagle.