Evelyn E. (Evie) (Jones) Watkins |
| Posted 2020-02-02 by Pat R |
| Wickenburg Sun (Wickenburg, Arizona) Thursday, August 14, 1980, p. 5 Services held for Arizona pioneer By Nell Simcox Saturday, August 2, 1980, Evelyn (Evie) E. Watkins was buried in the Wickenburg Cemetery. I was among friends and loved ones who gathered around the flower-banked casket to pay last respects. As Reverend Donald Chilton of St. Albans Episcopal Church began the brief service, lightning forked low across the sky and thunder reverberated along the canyons and among the hills. In contrast to the flamboyant storm, only a gentle shower fell steadily, dampening the earth and those who were gathered for the ceremony. Having known Evie most of my life, I could not help reflecting on the appropriateness of the storm for her last farewell. Evie, whose reactions might sometimes soar in sudden furor, much like the service, could also be as gentle as the shower that sifted earthward in its wake. Yes, I'm sure Evie would have thought the summer storm on the desert she loved a fitting epitaph for her passing. Evelyn E. Jones, born in Michigan in 1892, arrived in Phoenix, Arizona Territory, with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Jones, in 1895. The following year the family moved to Congress where her father managed the general store for Congress Consolidated Mines until 1906. "I was as wild as some of the Indians that lived around Congress in those days," Evie once confided to me. "My brother and I roped the burros that drifted in and out of town. We'd ride them with nothing more than a lasso around their necks. Sometimes they were really wild, but then, so were we. "Poor Mama," Evie smiled softly. "She was a charming, gracious lady, and I was such a tomboy! She often despaired of me during those years." But Evie managed to survive, and her mother never gave up hopes that her tomboy daughter would someday become a lady. And she did. Evie graduated from Tempe Normal School in 1912. A few years later she was teaching school in some of Salome's early school "houses." A spare room in Dick Wick Hall's once-famous Blue Rock Inn served her one-room school in 1919. By 1922, a larger, more spacious room had been partitioned inside the old saloon which was closed when prohibition came to Arizona. Large pasteboard boxes from her father's store were opened and tacked in place to hide the bar and to make a cozy room which was kept warm with a pot-bellied stove donated by her mother and fired with wood my father hauled to the back door in his wagon. Evie was married to Boyce Watkins, and before the first schoolhouse was constructed in Salome, she quit teaching school to raise a family. A daughter and one son died in early childhood. One son, Boyce, Jr., survives. Since his father's death in 1969, he and his family have been a constant source of support of Evie. When her father retired from his general store in Salome, Evie and Boyce Sr. took the business and worked together for many years. She also assisted in caring for her aging mother, driving a car between Salome and Los Angeles when the road was little more than a wide cow trail. She visited exotic places, and when she was nearing eighty, took a long camping trip, never admitting for a moment that she might be slowing down. Evie was a witty woman who enjoyed a good laugh. She cried sometimes, too. Her lifelong interest in children never wavered. Her loyalty and honesty, as she perceived the truth, was resolute, and her colorful vocabulary could sear or soothe, depending upon the circumstances. She was an individualist, and her life was an epic of a vanishing era in our history. Evelyn E. Watkins died near her son and family on July 24, 1980. See Also: Find A Grave |
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