Beverly Mae (Reitz) Evans passed into the arms of her savior on July 26, 2021. Beverly was born August 14, 1925, on the family farm in Monticello Township, to Aaron W. Reitz and Lydia (Knabe) Reitz. When she was just a month old, she moved with her parents to the Kansas School for the Deaf in Olathe where her father had been appointed Steward and where her mother would later teach. She spent her early years living in an apartment at the old KSD Administration Building, exploring the nooks and crannies of the campus.
Beverly graduated from John P. St. John Memorial High School with the class of 1943 and entered the University of Kansas in the fall of 1944. During her KU years, she worked summer jobs at the Olathe Naval Air Station, where she typed medical records for the incoming flight students, and at the Sunflower Ordnance Plant where she worked in a powder-testing facility. She vividly recalled her 20th birthday (August 14, 1945) when the victory over Japan was announced and she and her parents got up from the dinner table and, like nearly everyone else in Olathe, congregated on the courthouse square to celebrate. Beverly graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in music education in December of 1946, the same month she married Franklin Evans, her high school sweetheart who had returned from Navy service in the South Pacific.
She taught music in the Olathe school district and in several rural Johnson County schools, including Monticello, Cherry Lane and Franklin Hall. She also taught both music and English in the Spring Hill district. Rather than use published programs, she wrote her own creative musicals, including one involving a jolly musical family in a rickety jalopy that she directed Monticello and Spring Hill. Beverly later returned to the University of Kansas for a master’s degree in English, writing her thesis on Creative Dramatics as a classroom teaching technique. After retiring from teaching, Beverly worked in the offices of the music department at Mid-America Nazarene University and College Church of the Nazarene where she was a faithful member for many years.
She will be remembered for being a gracious hostess, a loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, but most of all for being a tireless worker for the Lord. Beverly will be missed by her two daughters, Lydia Barth (Don) and Janice Evans (Kevin); her two grandchildren, Thomas Barth (Candy) and Janie Barth-Cone (Michael); five great-grandchildren (Aaron, Emma, Lilly, Bailee and Miles); and cousins on both the Knabe and Reitz sides of her family. She was predeceased by her parents and a sister who died at birth.
A Private Family Service will be held Saturday, August 7, 2021 at the McGilley & Frye Funeral Home, 105 E. Loula Street, Olathe, KS 66061. Burial will follow at Oak Lawn Memorial Gardens.
Memorial contributions may be made to the College Church of the Nazarene.
