Stephen "Wort" Evinger

Stephen M. Evinger, known to one and all as Wort, died on Wednesday, February 6th at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, aged 73.

The eldest child of Windell W. Evinger and his wife Betty, he was born in Carthage, Missouri on August 7th, 1945, giving him the distinction of being able to claim that he was born in the middle of a nuclear war.  After graduating from Pittsburg State University (Kansas) he served in the U.S. Army from 1967 to 1971, stationed at Udorn Air Base in Thailand and later in Sinop, Turkey. He attained the rank of Spec 5 and was a military intelligence monitor.

Wort moved to Oregon in the 1970s and remained here for the rest of his life, working for a series of employers including Janus Youth Programs and the Multnomah County Library, among many others.  For the last twenty years, he was a well-known figure in St. Johns, familiar to everyone up and down Lombard. “He never met a stranger” and knew every clerk and shop owner in the district, even bringing them gifts as he walked his dogs.  Wort had a long succession of Great Danes, but his last dog was a rambunctious pit bull named Hunter. He is survived by two sisters, Martha Eaton of Oklahoma and Sharon Daniels of Kansas.

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