Meanwhile, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, surgeon-in-chief C. Everett Koop had built a large cancer practice "with a particular interest in neuroblastoma." And by 1969, he needed an oncologist.
So, Koop flew to Chicago and recruited Evans as chief of oncology in the red carpet room at O'Hare International Airport.
"To come to a place as big as Children's in Philadelphia and run their cancer program, wow, that really was a cancer program," Evans says.
At that time, Koop says, surgeons ruled the roost, but used their own techniques too much. To improve care, they needed to standardize, Koop says.
"That is where Audrey came in and did very well," says Koop, the former surgeon general of the United States who now lives in New Hampshire.
As a result, Koop says, her effect on pediatric oncology was not only immediate, but it was durable because she led the effort to standardize care and get the patients into clinical trials in Philadelphia and nationally.
At Children's Hospital, Evans focused her research on neuroblastoma while running the oncology division. She developed a staging system to evaluate the cancer's severity and guide treatment.
And she noticed that the tumors in some infants with widespread neuroblastoma would spontaneously regress.
"It is the only cancer where you can have quite a lot of cancer, where if you sit tight, it will go away," she says.
She was able to identify which kids would get better, sparing them highly toxic treatments.
Still, most don't get the "good neuroblastoma" and, even today, many die even after undergoing various combinations of surgery, intense chemotherapy, and radiation.
"I don't think any disease is quite so extraordinary . . . that you have the wide range of universal death or sit tight" and it will disappear on its own, she says.
Evans also focused on the families of sick kids.
In 1974, she teamed with Eagles tight end Fred Hill, whose 3-year-old daughter successfully battled leukemia at Children's Hospital.
Together they formed the first Ronald McDonald House, where relatives of patients could live during lengthy treatment regimens. Worldwide, there are now 284 Ronald McDonald Houses.
Despite all the support, progress with neuroblastoma has lagged that of other cancers. Still there are successes.
Barbara Mullen was one.
She was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at age 4 in 1976. After surgery to remove the tumor that had spread into her right kidney, the little girl underwent six weeks of radiation and then two years of chemotherapy.
"I was a terror on the ward," Mullen wrote in an e-mail about Evans.
The woman, now a lieutenant commander in the Navy, remembers bursting into the oncologist's office with a water pistol as Evans was talking to parents of another sick child.
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