Lorenzo M. Evans had been ill for a long time, and on Thursday, June 24, 1965, he died in St. Anthony Hospital, aged 67. Reporting his death the next day, the Idaho State Journal described him as an Arbon farmer. He was the eldest of the nine children of Lorenzo B. "Ren" Evans and Anna Morse Evans, and he had spent most of his life in the valley his father had helped to settle in the 1890s, when it was still Bannock Valley in Oneida County.
He was born at Samaria, near Malad, on May 20, 1898, the year after his parents married. The papers wrote often about his father's road campaign, oil stock and cheese-factory plan, but the son seldom appears in them, and when a "Ren Evans" does appear it is not always clear which Lorenzo is meant. In February 1916 the father, "from the Arbon district," spent two days in American Falls. He told the American Falls Press that the school in his district, where Mr. Ray was principal and Miss Claudia Cox the primary teacher, was the best they had had in years, and he spoke of one of his sons:
My boy, Wren was out of school on account of illness and a little note that Mr. Ray sent to him established his place in our minds as a loyal friend of the boys and the highest interests of our children.
No other son of Ren Evans is known to have gone by that name, so "Wren" was probably Lorenzo, then 17. In February 1922 the Pauline column of the Press reported that a Ren Evans, with Miss Elva Hill, Miss Elene Noble and Rex Roper, "made a trip to Crystal Sunday afternoon just to see how deep the snow was." In the column printed two weeks later, he and a Joe Evans were among the Sunday dinner guests of Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Young. The same column called the father L. B. Evans, so this Ren was probably the son and Joe probably his brother Joseph, though the paper does not say so.
The family research gathered for this site finds him, at 31, at the head of the household on the Arbon place in the 1930 census, with his parents living there and his father listed as a laborer on the wheat farm. His father died in 1934, and the Pocatello Tribune obituary listed "Lorenzo M." among the sons at Arbon. In 1940 he was still there with his widowed mother and his youngest brother, Thomas, and in February 1942 he registered for the draft at Arbon. The same research, drawing on FamilySearch, records his marriage to Lillie Louise Scott in Ada County on October 16, 1948. She was probably the "Lil" of his obituary, which says that they had divorced.
The obituary adds what the earlier records do not: that besides farming he ran a potato warehouse, that he belonged to the Arbon ward and to the Elks lodge in Pocatello, and that athletics interested him. It does not say where the warehouse stood, whose it was, or in which years he ran it, and no report read for this post tells more.
By 1965 his brothers and sisters were spread from Arbon to Nevada. Joseph and Leslie were at Arbon, Welling at American Falls, Tom at Lava Hot Springs, Milton and the two sisters, Anna Orison and Margaret Waters, at Pocatello, and Walter at Lake Tahoe. Walter is the one child of Ren and Anna whom the family history on this site does not name. The funeral was set for Monday, June 28, in the Manning Funeral Chapel, with burial in Mountainview Cemetery, the cemetery his father's 1934 obituary had named for his burial thirty-one years before.
On this site: Lorenzo Bowen Evans and Anna Morse, the Evans family, Ren Evans of Arbon as the papers knew him, the Arbon area, and the 1943 accident that took his sister Anna's son, Duaine Orison.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, June 25, 1965, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A long illness ended on Thursday, June 24, 1965, with the death of Lorenzo M. Evans at St. Anthony Hospital. The Arbon farmer was 67.
His parents were Lorenzo B. Evans and Anna Morse Evans, and his birthplace was Samaria, Idaho, where he arrived on May 20, 1898. Arbon had been his home for most of his life. He raised crops there and also had charge of a potato warehouse. His marriage to Lil had ended in divorce.
Both the Arbon ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Pocatello's Elks Lodge 674 counted him among their members, and he had a fondness for athletics.
He left two stepsons, Ralph Girard of California and Jay Girard, who was serving with the Air Force in England, and two grandchildren. Six brothers survived him: Joseph and Leslie M. Evans, both of Arbon; Milton M. Evans of Pocatello; Walter M. Evans of Lake Tahoe, Nevada; Welling M. Evans of American Falls; and Tom M. Evans of Lava Hot Springs. So did two sisters in Pocatello, Mrs. A. M. (Anna) Orison and Mrs. Ross (Margaret) Waters.
The paper said the Manning Funeral Chapel would announce the funeral arrangements. A notice in the Idaho Sunday Journal of June 27 set the services for 2 p.m. on Monday, June 28, in the Manning chapel. The Arbon ward's Bishop Anderson would lead the service, and Mountainview Cemetery would receive the body afterward.