Sonoma County business leader Lee Evans becomes a centenarian.
What qualifies someone to say he or she has lived a long and prosperous life? Ask Lee Evans, a real estate developer and business entrepreneur who celebrated his 100th birthday last November. Just the year before, Evans told his daughter, Darla Bastoni, that he wanted a party in honor of his 99th birthday. Bastoni told her father she wanted to wait another year for the big celebration, and he warned her that he might not make it. She told him if he wanted a party, he would have to wait because everyone was waiting to celebrate with him. A year after their discussion, his elegant soiree at the Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club included more than 100 friends and family members gathered in his honor to commemorate his life of achievements.
Business as usual
Evans’ modest office is tucked away near the end of a long hallway on the third floor of an unassuming building in the heart of downtown Santa Rosa. His desktop looks like that of any busy executive, covered with neat piles of publications and papers. He sits there dressed in a navy blue jacket with a crisp, white pinstriped shirt and an exquisite blue tie. His full head of hair isn’t so much grey as a soft white, and his face is framed by wire-rimmed glasses.
He’s friendly and inviting and, from his appearance, it’d be hard to guess his exact age—but I’d bet most people wouldn’t believe he’s lived for an entire century. On one wall hangs a large Welsh flag, evidence of his ethnic background. He explains that Evans is a surname as common in Wales as Jones is in America. Suspended on the same wall is a photo of our current President and Mrs. Bush. Pictures of his daughter and son-in-law sit prominently on a sideboard, alongside a collage of professional portraits of a large sheep dog.
Julie Muschi, who’s been Evans’ assistant for more than 20 years, says, “He’s wonderful; a great boss with a tremendous work ethic.” She goes on to explain how his strong commitment to his job has rubbed off on her. During the middle of winter 2007, Evans caught a terrible cold but still managed to get to his Santa Rosa Avenue office daily. The following week, Muschi caught the cold. She says, had she worked for anyone else, she would’ve been tempted to call in sick. However, Muschi thought, if her 100-year-old boss wouldn’t let a cold hold him down, she certainly wouldn’t let hers keep her away from work.
Family values
Evans has learned a lot about hard work and commitment throughout his lifetime. The longtime Sonoma County resident (who also has a home in San Francisco) was born in Oklahoma on November 17, 1907, just one day after his birth-place gained statehood. Evans studied by the light of a kerosene lamp and attended a one-room school until he was 12 (although his total school attendance was only equivalent to about three years), when his father became ill and unable to work. One of eight children, Evans had to leave school to work full time on the farm to help support his family.
When he was 15, he returned to school, this time walking five miles each way to the small town of Wewoka. He completed both junior and senior high school in five years, with high scholastic honors, while participating on both the debate and football teams and serving with the Oklahoma National Guard.
During his senior year, Evans was honored as the outstanding enlisted man in the 160th field artillery regiment and was offered an opportunity to attend West Point. Sadly, because of his family’s economic circumstances and his responsibility to them, he was unable to serve as a cadet. Instead, he worked as a roughneck in the oil fields for several months to help support his parents and siblings. Then, with $50 to his name, Evans entered the University of Tulsa in the fall of 1929. His work ethic helped him get through the school year (in spite of the stock crash that caused Blue Monday) and enabled him to transfer to Central State University in Oklahoma. Over the next few years, he worked at odd jobs for $0.15 an hour, took out a $50 loan from the senior loan fund and skipped more than a few meals to make ends meet—but he graduated in 1933 with a degree in business and social science.
His first professional job, as a grade school principal, making $900 a year in Seminole, came the fall after he finished college. He married his first wife, Goldie Hudspeth, a graduate of Oklahoma University, in 1934. In 1935, he was appointed Wewoka’s chief deputy court clerk at an annual salary of $1,500. Later that year, he began buying rough, heavy, structural-type lumber from sawmills in Southeastern Oklahoma, East Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, then selling it on a price-cutting basis to people in the oil field trade. In 1940, Evans, his wife and their baby daughter, Darla, moved to Eastern Oregon where he spent most of the operating season building a sawmill.
The following February (1941), the mill he’d worked on tirelessly was burned to the ground, wiping him out financially and forcing him back to work in the lumber industry. December of that year, Pearl Harbor fell under attack and America entered World War II. Evans, who’d been suffering from chronic malaria for 25 years (which he contracted while visiting Arkansas and Louisiana), was disqualified from military service, so he spent the war years directing and managing shipments for a lumber company under the direction of the U.S. government. The materials were used to build military installations and ammunition crates.
A Sonoma County home
By 1945, Evans had paid all his debts and had $2,500 in the bank, so as the war ended, he went back into the lumber business. He moved to Santa Rosa in 1950 because he liked the area and thought it would be a good place to set up a new business. For the next three years, he bought and sold approximately 15,000 acres of land in Northwest Sonoma County, preserving the mineral rights in each sale. From 1953 through 1959, he operated an oil well drilling contracting business in his home state and participated in drilling more than 200 wells used for exploring oil and gas. When his business merged with the Hica Corporation from Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1959, he assumed a role as director with Hica for several years.
As business was booming, though, Evans’ personal life was experiencing a major upheaval. After losing Goldie to cancer, Evans married his second wife, Frances Gerhart, a widow whom he had known for a number of years, in 1957.
In 1960, Evans played a key role, with Hugh Codding, in developing commercial and industrial properties in the Santa Rosa area. Both businessmen wanted to bring more industry to Sonoma County to create more jobs for the local population. Evans was instrumental in the formation of Codding Enterprises, a building and development corporation that helped to bring as many as 15,000 new positions to the county. Hugh’s wife, Connie Codding, says, “All their deals were sealed with a handshake; they are both men of personal integrity.”
But Sonoma County wasn’t the only area to benefit from Evan’s attention. He acquired 5,600 acres of land on the Deschuettes River, just south of Bend, Oregon, in 1961. Under his direction, the next seven years were spent master planning, researching, conducting feasibility studies and ultimately creating what’s now known as the Sunriver Resort. (Sunriver is commonly listed as one of the top 20 resorts in the United States by a variety of golf and travel magazines and has been a AAA Four-Diamond award winning property from 2000-2007.)
Shaped by his service experiences in the National Guard and raised in an era of deep political awareness and involvement, it was with pride that, in 1964, Evans served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention; in 1968, then-Governor Ronald Reagan appointed him to the State Technical Services Advisory Council. Through the years, he’s continued to invest and direct many real estate development projects in the Sonoma County area while managing the family business.
The secret to a long, happy life
Evans continues to be directly involved with his company and his investments, coming into the office several days a week. His regular schedule includes working and exercise. In fact, 25 years ago, when Connie Codding first met Evans, he was still jogging. Codding’s husband, who’s now 90, and his centenarian friend have many traits in common. Among the most important, she says, is, “They both still regularly come to the office and have done something for years that they love.” Connie says they also remain very connected what’s happening in business and have strong social ties with family and friends.
Evans is very close to his only daughter, Darla, and her husband, Richard Bastoni, who reside in San Francisco. The entire family has been very involved in the Sonoma County community. Darla, who shares a love of animals with her father and was on the board of the Sonoma County Humane Society for more than 10 years, feels a number of her father’s habits have helped him to live to be 100. “He never eats any butter, cream or eggs, only Egg Beaters,” she says. This stems from Darla’s mother, who, when Evans was diagnosed with high cholesterol, researched ways to keep it under control (long before the advent of cholesterol-lowering drugs). Evans adopted her devised diet and hasn’t eaten dairy products for at least 40 years.
“Besides their ability to resist disease—perhaps due to good genes—centenarians tend to have good health habits,” says Leonard W. Poon, Ph.D., director of the Georgia Centenarian Study at the University of Georgia in Athens. He says his center’s studies show most centenarians remain active throughout their lives, and they smoke, drink and eat less than other people. Evans still enjoys eating out at fine restaurants, which he does regularly with his daughter, son-in-law and Frances when staying in the city, and he and Frances also dine out regularly with friends in Sonoma County—he’s just very careful about his menu choices.
Darla also mentions her dad is an avid reader who keeps up with politics. “He also has a great sense of humor,” she says. Darla believes it’s a combination of her father’s good habits and positive attitude that keeps him going strong.
Margery Hutter Silver, Ed.D, a geriatric neuropsychologist and a part of the New England Centenarian Study, says the people in her study, “were better at handling stress and managing their emotions. They didn’t dwell on things that caused stress in their lives.” This, in turn, seems to be another key that contributes to a longer, healthier life.
“He was a ‘venture capitalist’ before the phrase was coined,” says Darla. “He’s always been very interested in young people and wanting to see them succeed.” In the past, she continues, he often met with young business people to discuss their future plans; he sometimes even invested in their ventures. “People of his generation went through hard times, and that builds a certain courage and discipline,” she says of her father and others like him.
Evans has also long recognized the importance of community involvement. In fact, the reason he initially started banking with Exchange Bank, he remembers, was because of its commitment to furthering the education of youth. He learned about the Doyle scholarship program and recognized what a difference such a program would have made for him when he was struggling to get through college. He fully supported the concept and started his long relationship with the bank. “Exchange Bank is honored that Lee Evans has been a shareholder for more than 60 years. We admire him as a business leader and are proud of his enthusiastic support,” says Exchange Bank President/CEO J. Barrie Graham, who, among many others, was one of the community leaders who attended Evans’ 100th birthday party.
Longtime friend, Frank McLaurin, former vice president and general manager of Finley Broadcasting (KSRO/KREO) says Evans is, “the last of an era—a true gentleman” and speculates Evans has been successful because “he’s honest and fair and appreciative of everything that’s happened in his life.”
McLaurin also notes how much Evans has done for so many people, calling him a pillar of the community. Asked if he ever plans to retire, Evans replies, “the good Lord will retire me.” If he continues on in the same fashion that brought him through the first 100 years, that may not be anytime soon.
