Jimmi Evans

Jimmi Evans of Summerlin, Las Vegas, Nevada passed away Sunday afternoon, January 29, 2017. Jimmi was born on June 21, 1943 in Peoria, Illinois and grew up in Bartonville, Illinois. She attended Bartonville Grade School and graduated from Limestone Community High School in 1961 in the top ten percent of her class. Jimmi married her high school sweetheart, Roland Evans, that same year. They began a family the next year and had two children together. Jimmi worked at OSF Healthcare for 32 years, first at St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, and then at St. Joseph Hospital in Bloomington, Illinois, where she served as Director of Patient Accounts until her retirement in 2008. Jimmi felt blessed to work at a hospital and to serve the needs of her community, but she was also a successful and highly respected business woman, and her facility consistently led all OSF hospitals in collection performance under her leadership. Jimmi graduated from the University of Illinois in 1991 with a Bachelor Degree in Management with Highest Honors and a 4.0 GPA, while working full time and raising a family. Jimmi and Roland also started a business in 1993, Evans Benders, in which they patented, manufactured and sold Evans Conduit Benders to the electrical trade until they sold the business in 2005. Jimmi was a published author, having written and illustrated the Little Red Eagle series of books, based on bedtime stories she created for her grandsons, first published in 2011. Jimmi was an avid genealogist and researched, traced, and documented eleven volumes of family ancestral history. Jimmi was also the keeper of her own family history and lovingly prepared 53 volumes of family albums. She was an amazing cook, and while she lived in Summerlin she took great pleasure and pride in being Vice President of the Writers Club, and a member of the Swim Club and Art Club. Jimmi was a strong, beautiful lady, with the finest character. She was incredibly hard-working, self-less and charitable, secretly paying for strangers' Christmas toys on lay-away, taking supplies to homeless shelters, and helping anyone who reached out to her. Jimmi leaves a forever grateful, but heartbroken family, and she will be remembered as a loving and devoted wife, mother and grandmother. Jimmi is preceded in death by her beloved sister Kathleen Fairhurst, Newport News, Virginia who passed just six weeks prior to Jimmi, her grandparents, James and Ada Fairhurst, and her father Fred Fairhurst, who together raised Jimmi and her sister Kathy. She is also preceded in death by her mother Reeda Solomon Fairhurst and her infant brother William James Fairhurst. Jimmi is survived by her husband, Roland Evans of Las Vegas, her son Ty Evans of Indiana, her daughter Staci Evans Plumleigh and grandsons George and James Plumleigh of Oregon, her step-sister Sharon Pennington Mosier, Illinois, and step-brother Bernard Pennington, Virginia.