To my dear friends who make up the Cloud Wars audience: My beloved brother Joe died last week after a long and valiant battle with a brain tumor. While the daily challenges and achievements of this amazing business are noble and worthy, at the same time all of us are aware that life is incredibly precious, and every day is a gift. In recognition of that, I wanted to share with you this eulogy I was honored to give as several hundred family members and friends said farewell to Joe: my brother, my friend, and my hero.
Joe Evans’s rich and wonderful life was centered around the two things he held most dear: his family — Terry, Caly, and Jack — and his faith, manifest here in this beautiful St. Joseph’s Church. And for much of his life, Joe was probably more aware than most of the power of two fundamental beliefs of the Catholic church: redemption and rebirth.
Joe’s life is a rich reflection of his faith and also those themes of redemption and rebirth, and I think we can view Joe’s life in two parts: before Terry, and after Terry. The first part of Joe’s life was marked by his athletic achievements, particularly on the basketball court, where he’s remembered as one of the greatest players in Sharon High School history. In college, Joe’s basketball excellence continued, as he averaged 20 points per game as a freshman.
But just as Joe’s brain tumor confronted him daily for the last 12 years of his life, so too did another opponent challenge Joe throughout the first part of his life, and Joe always referred to this foe as “the demon alcohol.” Just a week or so ago, Joe celebrated 43 years of sobriety, an achievement that Joe frequently acknowledged as the foundation of the extraordinary redemption and rebirth that shaped the second part of his life.
At the age of 30, Joe returned to his hometown of Sharon and lived for a short time with his parents while he began to build his new life. In that rebirth, Joe leaned heavily on not only his parents, Jack and Rita Evans, but also on his two older brothers:
- Frank, who warmly and graciously accepted Joe into his accounting firm and helped Joe lay the groundwork for a very successful career in accounting and business valuation; and
- Harry, a professor in the business school at Pitt, who spent countless hours working with Joe on the skills and insights needed to achieve the highest accreditations in his demanding and competitive field.
But the true rebirth — and the fabulous beginning of the second part of Joe’s life — came late in 1992 when Joe summoned up the courage to begin courting a beautiful young banker named Terry Chandler:
- three months after their first date they were engaged;
- four months after that they were married;
- nine months after that they joyously welcomed daughter Caly into their lives; and
- fifteen months later, son Jack entered the world.
Enriched by his wonderful life with Terry and their beautiful children, Joe began to excel in the game of life even more than he’d ever done on the basketball court. Here are a few examples:
- his professional work at the HBK CPA firm where he launched and led the business-valuation group;
- being elected president of the Sharon School Board;
- engaging with the St. Joseph’s Church community on multiple levels and throughout the year;
- joining the board of ProLife of Mercer Country, eventually becoming president; and
- along with Terry, feeling immense pride at the achievements of daughter Caly, who graduated from college with honors and has rocketed to the top of her profession in operations, business, and engineering management; and son Jack, who graduated with high honors from both college and medical school and is now a general surgery resident.
Joe’s story would not be complete without mentioning his physical strength and energy, revealed in the beautiful home he and Terry built not far from this church, and the lovely summer cottage on Lake Erie that the lake tried for many years to claim but that Joe protected through some engineering ingenuity, great physical exertion, and an indomitable will. Some of the very best times Joe’s family, siblings, and friends had with Joe were around construction projects — in Joe’s eyes, the bigger and more-challenging, the better.
I will add here that while Joe loved golf, golf did not always love Joe back. But even after the complications stemming from his brain tumor had begun to erode Joe’s ability to play at the level expected of himself, Joe rarely had as much fun as he did on the golf course — particularly when he would beat his beloved but “chirpy” brother Frank!
Of the many lessons Joe taught me and others — and he did so by example, not by defaulting to what our Dad referred to derisively as “giving big speeches” — the primary ones were devotion, kindness, and service to others. The greatest and longest-running example of this was how Joe and Terry made it possible for first Joe’s mother and later Terry’s mom and dad to live independently, happily, and safely in a house whose backyard connected to Joe and Terry’s backyard. For the last 10 years of Rita Evans’s life, Joe’s was the first face she saw in the morning, and the last face she saw at night, and Terry was an incredibly kind and thoughtful friend and helper for Rita across those years. And from about the time they could walk, Caly and Jack joined in this family mission to help their grandparents life happily and peacefully.
In the same selfless spirit, Joe confronted his brain tumor with courage and a submission to a higher power — Joe often said that his future lies in God’s hands, and that Joe would accept whatever that plan would turn out to be.
Please let me close by saying that perhaps the greatest tribute I can offer to this kind, brilliant, and incredibly strong and fearless man is that Joe achieved the impossible by being in many ways the second coming of our father, Jack Evans. Joe and his siblings regarded Jack Evans as the greatest man we ever knew — selfless, humble, generous, wise, and totally uncompromising in terms of right and wrong, good and evil — and I think I speak for my siblings when I say that Joe Evans —beloved husband, father, son, brother, cousin, uncle, friend, and colleague — was as close a match to Jack Evans as anyone ever could be.
And Terry, while our hearts are breaking at the loss of Joe, please let us thank you for being the loving and devoted woman who — along with Caly and Jack — made Joe’s rebirth complete, and made him as happy and blessed as any man could possibly be.
Dear Joe — we know you are watching us from above, in peace and no longer in pain. Please watch over Terry and Caly and Jack, and enjoy your reunion with Mom and Dad, and help them root for the Steelers. And please enjoy the eternal peace and happiness of a life very well lived, very selflessly lived, and very courageously lived. May we all live up to the example you have so beautifully set.
And may God hold you in his arms, dear Joe, until we meet again.
