Elmer Smith: The long, lucid, purposeful life of Sam Evans

SAM EVANS had just turned 90. I figured I'd better interview him while he was still lucid.

Ten years later he turned 100. I figured I'd better interview him while he was still lucid.

A few years ago I spotted him across a crowded room on election night. He was 102.

I figured I'd better interview him while I was still lucid.

He died last week, 105 years into a life of service. I wonder if this town has any idea what we just lost.

A gangling, reed-thin boy from Florida, he came to town 88 years ago with no education or expectations.

He got here in time to see Ellis Gimbel lead 50 employees and 15 decorated cars through Center City in Gimbel's first Thanksgiving parade. The League of Nations was formed that year. Women won the right to vote.

His mother was born before abolition and he grew up surrounded by people who would sooner celebrate the birth of Jefferson Davis than the life of Abe Lincoln.

He was dirt-poor at a time when a black man born poor could expect to die poor.

Apparently, Sam Evans never got that memo.

He believed that America was such a land of opportunity that not even segregation or the Depression or the lingering legacy of slavery could keep him down.

"We were brought here in chains, but it was a blessing from God," he told me 15 years ago.

"God said, 'Give them people over there some free labor' and he gave us a home in a place where we could prosper better than any dark-skinned people on earth."

He had little patience for the kind of civil-rights leaders who, to his way of thinking, did more whining about racism than working to overcome it.

"Some of these people have made a commodity out of racism," he told me three years ago. "If it ended tomorrow, they'd be out of business."

Sam Evans had almost as many detractors as friends in high places. He didn't care.

He didn't seek their love. But he demanded their respect. He built a reputation on his uncanny ability to organize people and events.

Evans used his considerable connections in Main Line society to raise money for politicans and causes he supported. Hundreds of Philadelphia lawyers and doctors got started on their career paths through his American Foundation for Negro Affairs and his Youth City programs that taught civic values by putting children in the roles of civic leaders.

The Royal Philharmonic of London, violin virtuoso Itzak Perlman, pianist Andre Watts and opera diva Grace Bumbry all performed here under the promotional banner of Sam Evans Productions.

He worked just offstage while the people whose careers he helped to build accepted the applause.

Not bad for a guy who got his start in 1920 sweeping floors and moving boxes in a piano store.

"The boss brought me some piano rolls and told me to put them in the trash," Evans recalled when I interviewed him for his 90th birthday.

"I asked him if I could have them."

He took them to the house at 18th and Marvine streets, where he and 18 relatives lived with his brother Perry.

"Perry had a player piano. I played the first one. It was the Piano Prelude in C-Sharp minor by Rachmaninoff."

He'd listen for hours, sometimes moving his fingers along the keys until his interest in classical music was matched by his knowledge of it.

Years later he arranged musical programs as fundraisers for the Ethical Society. He parlayed his knowledge of the music into a career as an impresario.

"I met him in 1967 when I ran for mayor," Sen. Arlen Specter told me yesterday. "I did a lot of work with him on education funding.

"The guy passed 100 and he was still moving. I think we push retirement on people much too early.

"Sam Evans proved we can go at a high-cylinder rate for a long, long time." *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith