Riley T. Evans has been a World War II serviceman, restaurateur, farmer and water management agency chief, but it’s his most recent career as an accomplished poet that allows the Hollywood octogenarian to express his lifelong fascination with Earth’s natural phenomena and relationship to humanity and the universe.
A serious writer for about 40 years, Evans, 82, published his first book of poetry, “Something from the Eaves,” in 1994. Four more poetry books followed: “The Caretaker,” “Echoes from the Universe,” “Echoes from the Universe Again” and “Celestial Engineering,” which was published last year by Jones Harvest Publishing.
Evans also is a lyricist with a 10-track CD, “All My Favorites,” released by Nashville-based Emerald Records late last year, featuring easy-listening tunes such as “The Color of the Universe” and “Wind Flowers.”
Several of Evans’ songs have also been recorded by HillTop Records, and one of them, “A Cloud of Evil,” is part of a CD titled “In Remembrance” that will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Evans said his lyrics, which speak of “this burning hell of falling towers,” are dedicated to the memory of the 9/11 victims and those who continue to mourn their loss. Half of the proceeds from record sales will be donated to victims’ families.
Evans’ way with words has not gone unrecognized. He has been elected into the International Poetry Hall of Fame, selected as the winner of the E.I.A. Star Search in Nashville and voted “Most Prolific Songwriter” for Emerald Records in 2009.
But it was a long and winding road that led Evans to a successful career as a wordsmith in his golden years. Born in Miami in 1928, he later relocated to his father’s hometown of Cleveland, Ga., after the family patriarch, a former farmer, served time in jail.
“The revenuer blew our house up because my father was making moonshine,” Evans said. “It was the Depression. There was no money anywhere.”
Evans’ mother gave birth to 10 children, two of whom did not survive childbirth. Young Riley was a math whiz who loved music. He constructed a homemade guitar from a cigar box and strings at age 6 and would swipe his dad’s harmonica and secretly play it in the family’s chicken coop.
Evans also enjoyed taking in the beauty of his natural surroundings along the 10-mile roundtrip walk to and from the Friendship School in Georgia. “It was quiet and I was by myself,” he recalled. Evans’ musings on “the universe and how it was put together” would become the central theme of his written works.
His inspiration to become a poet was a book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay that he read while serving in the U.S. Navy during WWII. Evans was stationed on the USS Sperry (AS-12), part of the 7th Submarine Fleet, in the South Pacific, where the terrors of marine combat were compounded by tropical storms and typhoons.
After his military service ended in 1946, Evans owned two restaurants – one at the Seascape Motel on Miami Beach and Ginny’s Restaurant, which sat across the street from the former Hollywood Sun-Tattler newspaper – and owned Evans Nursery in Davie for 40 years. He also served as manager of the South Florida Water Management District for 21 years until his retirement in 1992.
These days, Evans runs a weekly bingo club and pinochle group for “something to do,” and he has exhibited his realistic oil paintings in several South Florida art shows. He continues to do all of his writing freehand and donates all proceeds from his work to his favorite charity, Feed The Children.
Now working on his sixth book, “Survival of the Planet Earth,” the active octogenarian plans to “just keep going,” reflecting through poetry and song on the natural wonders of the world around him.
Evans wishes more people would take time to stop and smell the roses.
“It took 20 billion years to build us a home. Why are they in such a hurry?” he wondered. “And every time they blow their horn, I tell them that.”
