Evans, Sterling C., 1899-

Sterling C. Evans (1899- 2001) banker, rancher, and namesake of Texas A & M University 's Sterling C. Evans Library, was born in Devine, Tex . 5 August 1899, the third child of the four children of John Henry Evans and Emily Evaline Crutchfield Evans . The elder Evans arrived in Texas from Burnt Corn, Ala . as a teenaged migrant farm worker. In succeeding years, he married and purchased a farm in Devine, Tex . When he sold the farm in Devine, the family moved to Melon, Tex ., where the four Evans children rode a horse to a one-room school. So that he could attend high school, Sterling C. Evans moved in with a family friend in Uvalde, Tex . and eventually graduated president of the class of 1917. After visiting with a friend at Texas A & M University, Evans was so impressed by the school that he enrolled himself. Evans graduated from Texas A & M University in 1921 with a degree in Animal Husbandry . It was during his tenure at Texas A & M University that Sterling C. Evans developed his life-long love for livestock, literature and the Texas A & M University itself.

During his undergraduate years at Texas A & M, Evans became the school's leading student in livestock judging-a skill he maintained and would use the rest of his life in discriminating keepers from culls among the Santa Gertrudis cattle and Quarter Horses he raised on his ranches.

In his sophomore year of college, Evans was admitted to the Texas A & M University chapter of the prestigious liberal arts college organization called the Junto Society, founded by then director of the Texas A & M University library, Thomas Mayo . The original chapter of the Junto Society has been founded in 1727 by Benjamin Franklin, and ultimately became the nucleus of the American Philosophical Society . The cited purpose of the society was to seek out the truth, encourage good fellowship, and take advantage of the benefits of occasional wine and song. Evans once recalled it was one of the most interesting groups with which I've ever been associated. Evans practiced the self-educating process encouraged by Mayo and the Junto Society throughout his life, resulting in his ability to quote Shakespeare, the Bible, Dickens, or Marcus Aurelius with relative ease.

In 1921, despite the Great Depression looming, Sterling Evans was offered several intriguing opportunities upon his graduation from Texas A & M, including an offer from a West Indies sugar plantation. Nevertheless, it was Evans' Alma mater that called him to service with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service .

As part of TAES, Evans traveled throughout the state working with county extension agents and developing 4-H programs. It was during this time, at a county cooperative meeting in Sherman, Tex ., that he met Kate (also called Cathrene or Cathy ) Thomas who would become his wife in December 1922. It was also during this period of time that he fell in love with the land and agricultural production. He also learned that often success in farming and ranching had more to do with financing, marketing, and credit than sweat, dedication and the weather.

In 1932, on the heels of Roosevelt 's New Deal, Evans found a way to parlay his experience with the farm cooperatives of the Texas High Plains to gain entrance into the newly developed Federal Farm Credit Administration . In the consolidation efforts, a search was conducted in Texas to find the person most likely to make a success of the new program and, after numerous recommendations especially by E. J. Kyle of the School of Agriculture at Texas A & M University, Sterling Evans was made president of the Houston, Tex . based Farm Bank for Cooperatives . After several years of proving his adeptness in the banking industry, Evans was promoted to president of the separate, but related, Federal Land Bank . His co-workers described his work in building the bank to be manifested by intense business acumen and vision.

In 1959, Evans retired from the Federal Land Bank because he wished to spend more time in pursuit of his growing private business interests-ranch partnerships with his friend Gus Wortham -and to begin his appointed term on the Texas A & M Board of Regents .

Sterling C. Evans had been excited to become an Aggie in 1917, when he first came to the Texas A & M University campus, and it is said that, at the Brackettville, Tex . celebration of his 100th birthday in August of 1999, surrounded by friends and fellow Aggies from all around the world, he was wearing his trademark Texas A & M maroon tie and sang along with the Aggie War Hymn . For the rest of his life, Texas A & M and its students had remained Evans' passion and the focus of his often extraordinary generosity.

In 1952, as a member of the Association of Former Students, Evans founded a loan fund for families wanting to send their sons to Texas A & M. During that year, he also served on the board of the Texas A & M Research Foundation, and the next year, he added a term on the board of the Texas A & M Development Foundation . From 1959 to 1971, Evans served on the Texas A & M University System Board of Directors (later the Board of Regents), and was president of the board from 1963-1964.

It was Evans appointment to the Texas A & M University Board of Directors in 1959 that thrust him into the midst of a whirlwind of controversy about admitting women to the all-male Texas A & M College. A proponent of this mostly unpopular change, it was during Evans term on the Board of Directors that he both observed and participated in the extreme political maneuvers on the part of both sides of the controversy, until the matriculation of the first class of Texas A & M freshman that included women. In 1963, approximately 150 women began classes in the newly renamed Texas A & M University during the presidential administration of James Earl Rudder . However, it was not until 1971, the last year of Evans' term on the board, that the university catalogue proclaimed an official policy of the equal and unrestricted admission of academically qualified women to Texas A & M University.

During the same period of time that he was involved so closely in Texas A & M politics, Evans and his mentor and friend, Gus Wortham, also built a highly successful partnership in buying distressed ranch properties. After restoring these run-down properties, Evans and Wortham would build successful agricultural businesses raising cattle and crops, then find a marketing niche, and re-sell the properties at a profit. As one newspaper reported in the early 1940s, Sterling C. Evans is responsible for putting the business in agri-business.

Evans' first foray into the buying of farmland had been his own purchase of 180 acres on the outskirts of College Station, Tex ., which he called Poor Acres . Evans sold this property in order to come up with part of the down payment for his first joint venture with Wortham : a 3,000 acre cotton plantation in Milam County, Tex . Over the next three decades, Evans and Wortham bought and sold over half a dozen farms and ranches in Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana . While the ranches the partners bought and sold appear to have been successful endeavors, each had a unique marketing angle, usually honed by Evans. Also, while owned by the Evans/Wortham partnership, these ranches were very hospitable centers of society, where both little known and world-renowned persons were equally entertained. Notably the Cypress, Tex . Nine Bar Ranch and the Little Eva Plantation in Chopin, La . were sites for extravagant social events, and were also visited by dignitaries from all over the world, who were interested in breeding Santa Gertrudis cattle or hybrid pecans.

The Little Eva Plantation, near Natchitoches, La ., was perhaps the greatest beneficiary of Evans' creative energies in that, in addition to developing an enormous pecan operation, he reconstructed a facsimile of the original of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and marked the graves of two individuals who were supposedly the inspirations for characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe 's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, set in Louisiana . Additionally, Evans and Wortham completely restored a historical African-American church that is still located on the grounds of the plantation.

Evans was also responsible for the first large-scale exportation of Santa Gertrudis cattle to Russia, Venezuela, and Australia . Even into his later years, Evans maintained a keen interest in the potential for developing increased agribusiness in Russia. As late as the mid-1980s, Evans was still corresponding with Russian agricultural officials about exploring the feasibility of setting up an agricultural experiment station in Russia, to focus on research into the cultivation of walnuts.

At age 93, Evans sold his ranch in Castroville, Tex., bought his last new ranch, and moved his entire extended family to Brackettville, Tex . At 95, he, along with close friends, even designed and remodeled an entertainment enclave in Zacatecas, Mexico . There, Evans enjoyed long evenings hosting dinners for friends, accompanied by the music of mariachis, and, on most evenings, was the last one to retire. His accountant told a biographer that, at age 98, he was still actively researching new business opportunities. Evans' keen interest in all new developments in business and agriculture, boosted by his indefatigable mental energy, is evident throughout his fifty years of nearly continuous correspondence with close personal friends, business acquaintances, as well as Texas A & M University students, administrators, and faculty.

Sterling Evans died 5 July 2001 in Del Rio, Tex . and is buried beside his wife in the Community Cemetery of Brackettville, Tex .

It might be noted that, according to most authorities, the middle initial in Sterling C. Evans' name did not stand for a given name. Evans merely adopted the initial at some point because he was not given a middle name at birth, and he liked the way it sounded with a middle initial to complete his name. Texas A & M University's Sterling C. Evans Library is therefore named in honor of an identity Evans forged for himself.

Bibliography

From the guide to the Inventory of the Sterling C. Evans Papers: TAMU MSS 00135., 1845-1996 (bulk: 1939-2001), (Cushing Memorial Library)