Duluth News Tribune Sunday Nov. 26, 2000 Section F page 1
Sharing history, sharing time
Duluth woman pays tribute to mother in period book
Sarah Jackson
News Tribune staff writer
When May Evans was trying to think of a 90th birthday present for her mother, her creativity took her on a trip into the past.
After years of research, Evans ended up offering her mother a book that tells the story of her life intermingled with her hometown's history.
Evans knew her mother's health was deteriorating, so in 1997 she decided to recreate her mother's younger years and document life in Steubenville, Ohio
She spent hours interviewing her mother, Katharine Sinclair Minor, and relatives. She dug up details in old library files, e-mailed siblings for dates and times, saved frail photographs and searched through crumbling World War II letters --often undated--to create a family history book that focuses on her mother and her life from 1908 to 1998.
I think books are often written about people who are famous," Evans said. "My mother isn't famous. She's just a wonderful person who cared a lot about people."
Not just family history
Katharine Sinclair Minor was born into a new century. She grew up and danced in the 1920's, sold life insurance in the '30 and was later married. She endured the war years and raised four children. She was active in historic preservation and community activities in Steubenville, which now has a population around 25,000.
While Evans' gift wasn't published before her mother's birthday Evans was able to read her parts of the draft of "A Twentieth Century Lady: The Story of Katharine Sinclair Minor" in the hospital about a month before her mother died on July 23, 1998 - her 90th birthday.
"After her death, I took the stories I'd written down to the funeral home," recalled Evans, the oldest of Minor's four children. "And people were standing there looking at this things..standing there (reading) for 10 or 15 minutes."
Albert Tezla, former English professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, was Evans' informal editor. He believes the book goes beyond the details of family events.
"It's a period piece. It's a reflection of life in the Steubenvilles of the United States that attracted me to it from the very beginning." he said. "I started to read it and I realized that it is a reflection of the time in which the family lived. Whatever she recorded would have relevance beyond Steubenville."
Evans said the book was a way to bond again with her mother with whom she always had a "friendship relationship."
"She would jot down ideas or parts of stories. She couldn't see very well, but I'd give her a legal pad and very black pen and she would write," Evans said. "We would sit and talk and it was a marvelous thing to do because i had the opportunity to relive her life in an exciting way. Her mind was wonderful so it was a real treat to just sit and talk with her."
The book was also a chance to investigate the family history that Evans had been pursuing casually through genealogy study since her 20's.
"If you have someone who lived in a certain period of time and you're trying to learn about that time, it's more fun to do it with someone that you know. It creates a wonderful sense of discovery." Evans said.
Sharing time
Evans weaves stories of Steubenville and her mother's life with letters, obituaries, news articles and world mile-stones.
Katharine or "Kay" married Dr. Howard Holland Minor on April 27, 1935, in Steubenville. That had four children. Doc served in World War II for three and a half years at base hospitals in Texas and Louislana.
"By doing the book I found I kind of captured my mother's early life..She became much more alive for those early years for me, Evans said.
Katharine was very active in the community and also was named Ohio Mother of the Year in 1972 by the American Mothers Committee Inc. Her roots in Steubenville ran deep.
"I think that's not a terribly common characteristic today. She was born, married and died in the same town. That's rare. And she knew everyone. She was a very special person to a lot of people," Evans said.
Evans' early work on the book came after she fell ill in 1997 while in Birmingham, England, with her husband, Bob, a philosophy professor at the Univeristy of Minnesota Duluth and former director of the UMD Study in England Program.
Evans lost feeling in her legs and had trouble walking. Doctors found a tumor crushing nerves inside her spine. After surgery, a three-week hospital stay and months in a wheelchair, Evans returned to Duluth and eventually recovered.
During her recovery, Evans was able to spend time with her mom in Steubenville.
"I couldn't really do much, so it was a perfect match. I would go out and visit her for three weeks at a time and then I'd come back and work on it," Evans said.
Evans created MCME Publishers and had the book printed in 1999. It brought her a kind of closure, she said.
"I felt I was very lucky because I had had so many quality times with her that last year. And I guess I was especially lucky that I was able to do something she was quite pleased to have done," Evans said.