Reflection on Evie Woodson’s life
By her friend, fellow STOP member Duff Morton
In the last days of 2022, STOP lost a member and gained an ancestor when Evelyn Jean Woodson died. Evelyn was a loving, smiling, joyful fighter who spent her days spreading hope. For well over a decade, she brought that hope to STOP’s family.
Evelyn adored traveling. Once, in her younger years, she bought a Greyhound pass and wandered all around the Western US. She had a ball, she said: she even saw two bald eagles. But she always came back to the South Side. Evelyn made many friends, wherever she went. Her style was easy warmth. When she heard someone say something beautiful, she would respond, “And you know this!” And when people asked how she was doing, she would answer, “Fantastic!” With her spirit of optimism, she made things fantastic.
Evelyn was an activist and she identified as one. She fought for her own freedom by successfully getting herself out of nursing homes – over and over again, for more than ten years. Evelyn didn’t disrespect the doctors and nurses who were worried about her many medical conditions. She also didn’t run away. Instead, she advocated thoughtfully and forcefully for herself, believing in her independence, striving to live as free as she could. Then she helped other people do the same thing. She teamed up with Access Living, a disability rights group in Chicago, and she even gave a lecture series in nursing homes so other residents could learn from her experiences. Every year, at Daley Plaza, she helped organize Chicago’s Disability Pride Parade.
Evelyn connected her struggles to the struggles of other people. She spent many hours as a hotline volunteer at Metropolitan Tenants Organization, guiding callers through their fights with landlords and the housing system. She traveled as a STOP member to the US Social Forum in Detroit. She was constantly catching a train or a bus to Springfield, where she advocated especially for the home care workers who helped her live independently, but also for many other causes, for the lives and dreams of many other people.
Evelyn gave her time and devotion, in a special way, to STOP’s trauma-center campaign. She had difficulty walking, and often, at the campaign’s marches, she would be the very last person in the line. She always kept marching.
Evelyn’s kidneys ultimately failed. The medical system repeatedly refused to allow her to get on the transplant list because she did not have a stable housing situation. Then, after she finally found her own apartment, the medical system said that her health had become too unsteady. When she turned sixty-five, Evelyn would have been eligible for Medicare, which would have enabled her to pay for transplant services at Loyola, a North Side hospital known for its more lenient access to the transplant list. Evelyn died two weeks before her sixty-fifth birthday.
Evelyn’s suffering should make us question a system that separates people based on their insurance, a system that uses the word “homeless” as a reason to keep you from getting care. Evelyn’s life should make us remember that realities change when we struggle to change them.
Evelyn had supreme faith, hope, and love. She lived as a devoted member of both St. Thomas Lutheran Church and Vineyard Church of Hyde Park, and she visited religious services everywhere. She attended Chicago Vocational School for high school, then Truman College and Kennedy-King College.
(Her friend Juanita Lewis remembers that Evelyn used to serve as the DJ for the late-night radio show at Kennedy-King – sometimes Juanita would stay with her in the booth. If you’ve been in the area for long enough, maybe you heard the two of them spinning records on the air!)
Evelyn lived in many places, including Memphis, which she especially adored, and she was born in San Francisco, but she was raised in Chicago and she always came back to Chicago.
Evelyn had two children, Lakecia J. Woodson and Emmanuel Donnell McDavid. They both died before her, and so did her mother, Jean Woodson, her niece Tanisha Woodson and her relative Latrise Heard. Evelyn is survived by her life partner, Anthony Little, her godchildren, Archie, James, and Future, her brother, Elvin D. Woodson (Donnie), her sister, Lissa Woodson, her cousin Tracy Blakely, her close friends Tracey Hancock, Juanita Lewis, and Loretta Northcutt, and all of us, the people who still receive her grace and joy. Let’s have the strength together to carry forward her memory, to build her hopes into a better world.