Evelyn Austin Matzko, 100, formerly of 8 Vanderbilt Circle, Greenville, and recently of Shepherd’s Care Assisted Living Center, died on May 23, 2018. She was born on February 12, 1918, in Millville, New Jersey, the daughter of Thomas Forest and Otillige Konschak Austin. After the death of her father in the flu pandemic of 1918, when she and her late twin brother were eight months old, her mother reared her and her two brothers in Millville, Wildwood, and Westmont, New Jersey.
After graduating from Collingwood (NJ) High School, Evelyn worked in the accounting department of Camden Fire Insurance Company and took courses at the Philadelphia College of the Bible.
In 1934, at an evangelistic tent service, she accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior, and shortly thereafter she joined the Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, where she served for twenty years as superintendent of the Beginners Sunday School department.
In 1945, she married John Frank Matzko, and they had three sons. Following the death of her mother in 1983, Evelyn and her husband moved to Greenville; and after caring for him for some years before his death in 1991, she taught a weekly Bible lesson at a senior daycare center, where she was called “the Bible lady.”
Evelyn also volunteered at the Greenville Memorial Medical Campus of the Greenville Health System for more than 20 years, especially at the Admitting/Business Office, escorting patients to their medical procedures. She was a recipient of the Edna T. Childress Award and, in 2009, of the GHS Volunteer of the Year Award. Exuberant, cheerful, and energetic by nature, she thoroughly enjoyed the role of spry nonagenarian, which included pushing the wheelchairs of men half her age. She mowed her own lawn until she was 89, drove and volunteered at the hospital until she was 96, and lived alone in her own house until a month before her 100th birthday.
Survivors include her three sons, John, James (Dianne), and George (Darlene), 8 grandchildren, and 19 great-grandchildren.
She was a member of Trinity Bible Church, Greer, and also attended Faith Free Presbyterian Church, Greenville.
The family will receive friends on Tuesday afternoon, May 29, from 2:00pm until 3:15pm at Mackey Funerals & Cremations, 311 Century Drive, Greenville. A funeral service will follow in the Mackey chapel at 3:30pm. Burial will be in Westminster Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Trinity Bible Church, Faith Free Presbyterian Church, or Greenville Meals on Wheels, 15 Oregon Street, Greenville, South Carolina 29605.
Remembrances of Mrs. Matzko may left at evelynmatzko.com.
