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Long Time Nancy K. Perry Children’s Shelter Employee Dies
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by Jerry Bellune, Editor Emeritus
Reprinted from the Lexington Chronicle
Evon Brown was one of those people who could make you feel instantly at ease and as if the two of you had known each other for years.
She enrolled in one of my evening writing classes at Midlands Tech some years ago and almost at once became the house mother and cheerleader for the rest of the class. One of her first exercises as a writing student was to write her obituary. All of my students do it. It’s more than a writing exercise. It’s an exercise in self-examining your life. Try it some time. It will make you think about what you’re doing with your life.
My students are invited to read their obituaries to the rest of the class. This helps us get to know each other and often provokes howls of laughter at what they write about themselves.
This was when we learned that Evon had a deep, dark secret in her past. I say that with tongue in cheek.
Dale Earnhardt, also known as “The Intimidator” because of his aggressive driving style, had hired her to work as nanny for his four children. These included Dale Jr., now almost as famous on the NASCAR racing circuit as his legendary father was. All of us in the class were intrigued that one of us had enjoyed such an intimate relationship with a famous family. We encouraged Evon to write about it. Evon was modest about it and said she would think about it.
Over the years we have joked about the book she should write about the Earnhardts and its bestseller potential. “Maybe I’ll get around to doing it one of these days,” Evon would say.
Evon clearly loved children and for the last seven years worked with Jarrell Smith at the Nancy K. Perry Children’s Shelter caring for children who had been abused and neglected.
“Evon was the heart and soul of the Children’s Shelter,” Jarrell said. “She was a great friend to every child and adult who came to the shelter.“In a small organization such as ours, the staff becomes like family and that’s the way we thought of Evon. She was loved and respected by everyone who came in contact with her.”Jarrell said that during her recent illness, two women who had lived at the shelter visited her bedside, cried and told her they would not be where they are today if it were not for her.
I often kidded Evon that she did not want to go to the grave with her book about the Earnhardts still inside her. But I’ve come to accept that wasn’t what Evon was about. She was about children and helping others in life.
That was the music inside Evon Brown and she played it beautifully.
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