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I'll never forget the night that
Evan threw his hands up in the air on Oct. 19, 1996
and announced: "I'm winning everything!" He'd just caught
the garter I'd thrown at my wedding. He'd also picked
up a few door prizes, although they were items that
didn't look like they were even worth picking up at
a garage sale. We hugged and it was a big gesture for
me and for Evan, who was so thin that his feet may have
left the ground. For a moment there, a door to our childhood,
a connection closed by time, was opened. He'd loved
our wedding reception because for a time as people were
arriving, classic television clips like Abbott and Costello,
were playing on a television set on one end of the gift
table. I joked with him that we needed enough weight
in presents on the other end of the table to balance
the weight of the television. With a laugh, he pressed
a business card into my palm. ."Evan's Planet: Somebody's
gotta live here," his card read. It was obvious that
this was someone whose company would always be appreciated.
Wherever he went, an easy laugh, intelligent conversation,
and jokes that connected with and broke the ice with
even the most frosty personality. Where he'd come from
as a child, full of the desire to laugh and to have
others around him laughing, had not dimmed at all. "Evan
J. Kittredge. Time and Therapy Have Relaxed him." it
continued along the bottom of the card. I looked at
him, laughed and asked:. "What's going on with the weather?"
as though he would be able to explain away the harsh
weather with a lighthearted quip. . A small hurricane
had hit the shore that afternoon and made most roads
impassable due to flooding. But most attendees were
able to get through and said that it was one of the
best receptions they'd ever attended. Inside the warm
and cozy reception hall and bar of the Seabreeze Beach
Club, in Seabright, heavy rain pounded the large rounded
"sun-windows". If you looked past the rain that made
it hard to see out, you'd see that the ocean was at
high tide and the waves looked about twenty-feet high.
But who wanted to see that. Inside there was a magician,
a dancer that seemed to be a cross between Elvis and
James Dean complete with a jukebox with 100 great oldies
in it, a fully stocked bar and buffet and of course,
the door prizes. Some might have thought that we were
living on the edge, partying in the face of impending
disaster, but only a couple of the kids even bothered
to look out at the beach and the giant breakers and
they were quickly pulled away from the glass, with the
fears that the glass might break in due to the wind
and heavy rain! I didn't know at the time that this
kind of thing was routine on Evan's Planet, and welcome
to it. Things had calmed down for the last ten years
on Evan's Planet, but his bad luck was catching up to
him again. In the recent months it was like the black
cloud that he'd thought he'd left behind, was back.
Just before the wedding in 1996, he'd had several bouts
with epilepsy, one of which caused him to fall down
a flight of stairs, a fall which he had miraculously
survived. He would soon be mugged, tortured and left
in a car trunk for three days, then he would black out
while driving and his car luckily came off the road
and didn't hit another car, which would have been much
worse than what happened: hitting a tree. That was bad
enough, but there were more operations and treatments
to come, including the daily ingestion of 32 pills.
Everything Evan got he had to fight for and like a superhero
movie where two dozen impossible obstacles blocked his
path, if he was going to party, it wouldn't happen easily.
So when he woke to a clear morning on my wedding day,
stretched and said to his dad::"It looks like we're
going to have a nice day." he, at least, may have had
some doubts. Soon it began to rapidly cloud over and
became as windy and rainy as it could get, short of
a hurricane. But he dealt with it. By midafternoon,
the streets were rivers and cars were underwater near
the seaside reception hall. Some wouldn't have tried
to make it there but Evan did. I hadn't the slightest
idea of what it was really like to live on "Evan's Planet".
In pictures , he appeared fragile and childlike, his
growth stunted by his illnesses, but Evan's spirit had
come through it all intact. They drilled his body with
radiation, removed his spleen and even replaced his
bone marrow but Evan's spirit never sagged. With a twinkle
in his eye, despite the ravages that illnesses had taken
on his body, he'd soar above his problems. His problems
were an effect of living on "Evan's Planet" and he'd
been saddled with ten times of what the normal person
could expect in their lifetime. Some may have thought
that he was carrying more burdens, so that others wouldn't
have to but the radiation treatment that caused many
of his problems, was changed due to his life becoming
a study on how to treat Hodgkins Disease. Patients that
followed Evan benefited from that treatment. Bug in
the ice-cube, snapping gum, a birthday candle that could
not be blown out or a golf ball that disintigrated into
a cloud of dust when you hit it. All harmless jokes.
When little, he'd seen Candid Camera and he was hooked!
. His singular interest in having fun in some harmless
way and his kindness and consideration for others is
why he was trusted as Operations Supervisor of Transportaion
and Manager of the University of Virginia Transportation
System, a position he held for ten good years. And what
happened in those ten years, between his early twenties
and early thirties? He was able to put his illnesses
and problems on hold and finally start living his life.
For ten years, he took adult responsibilities in stride.
So here he was, come to dance to the music, smile and
celebrate. There couldn't be too much more "weight of
the world" to carry. That was the optimistic point of
view but however much he wanted to break away, he was
still inextricably tied to "Evan's Planet." Evan's Planet
was a harsh place. From age 14, our mischevous angel
faced some terrible challenges, but whatever he went
through he'd never have wanted anyone else to join him
on it.
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