by Peter Twitchell
My first cousin Mary Evon told me when I was a teenager that all my cousins were my brothers and sisters. I began looking at Mary as a leader, an Elder who wasn’t afraid to speak out for what was right. She was a wonderful woman, a loving wife and a great mother to all her children. She was my mom’s older sister’s daughter. I want to tell you a story about my first memory of my first cousin Mary Evon.
It was a beautiful June evening, the river was quiet, it was calm and you could see smoke coming out of smokehouses along the fish camps of the Kuskokwim River.
It was evening and Dad was preparing to go set his king salmon net below Bethel around the corner from Johnny Guinn’s fish camp. Dad anchored the net from the backside and started pulling the net out in a straight line to anchor the other end.
It was like a battle – the weather and the river were calm but the river current was very aggressive and Dad realized it was going to be difficult to set the net out straight! Dad had a 21 foot wooden skiff powered by an Evinrude 40 hp outboard motor.
The motor started cavitating out of the water, the prop spinning with a loud noise breaking the silence of the beautiful, quiet summer evening. After futile attempts to set the net straight out, Dad yelled for me to go operate the outboard motor.
I struggled with that motor trying to keep the prop underwater and the boat was swinging around uncontrollably. While I tried to keep the boat straight the boat swung around and the prop of the motor got all tangled up in dad’s net!
All the while Dad was yelling orders trying his darndest to direct me on what to do. As Dad’s shouting became louder and louder fear came to me. I sensed Dad’s frustration and my inability to control the boat and the motor.
When the prop struck the net, the motor shut down, immediately dad took out his pocket knife and started cutting and untangling the net.
From the shore I could hear an outboard motor start up and a boat started coming straight to us. I realized shortly that it was my cousin Mary Evon and her husband Carlie when they cut their motor about 50 feet from us. When Dad stood up having untangled the net from the prop I heard Mary yell.
“You don’t yell at Peter, he’s just a boy!”
That was the first and last time my Dad ever yelled at me.
When I heard Mary direct some words to my Dad I felt some ease, my first cousin and my sister Mary Evon was like a guardian angel and it was 1958. I was eight years old, I never forgot that Mary Evon speaking words of wisdom.
Then there were the years when Mary Evon worked at Kilbuck School for a long time till she retired and before that at the City Jail.
She wanted students to do well in elementary through high school and she was an inspiration. At first the elementary school kids probably were scared of her but grew to realize that she was a loving woman and loved students. She encouraged us to succeed in life.
