CHAPTER 14: THE STROKE YEARS

Stroke didn't switch off light for this engineer

By Lupi Saldana

This article appeared in the September 29, 1992, edition of the Whittier Daily News

Twelve years ago, the life of Walter R. Evans, a brilliant electrical engineer living in Whittier's Friendly Hills, was almost turned off like you turn off a light switch. What happened was that on June 2, 1980, Evans, while running for exercise after work at Rockwell International, was hit by a massive stroke that left his right arm and right leg useless and robbed him of his speech.

What does an engineer whose work has been thrice honored by the engineering world do?

Lie down and wither away? Well, this could happen to some other 60-year-old engineer, but it didn't happen to Evans because, now 72, he is in surprisingly good health and despite major physical handicaps, is leading a busy and pleasant life.

Although he is forced to remain in a wheelchair, Evans attends Senior Care at Hillcrest Congregational Church, plays chess, bridge and rummy, draws and paints beautiful pictures, goes swimming at the local YMCA and engages in a postcard chess game with a friend in Seattle. He also plays on a computer, having the game early from his grandmother, Eyeline Burgess, U.S. Women's Champion from 1906 until she died in 1936. 

Evans' activities may sound easy, but don't believe it; he works hard. Take picture painting, for example. He is righthanded and yet he has learned to use his left hand to paint. And in chess, his efforts prove that the stroke didn't affect his mind.

Evans' recovery isn't strictly a one-man show. Hardly. Given much credit for Walter's success is his wife Arline, a blond lady Walter Evans, with the aid of wife Arline, developed new interests after stroke while jogging balls. who stands 5 feet, 3 inches and weighs 118 pounds. She might be called a “mighty mite” because she takes care of all of his needs.

Evans and Arline are not exactly strangers, having celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last April 11. They met at the ripe old age of 13, but didn't start dating until they were attending Washington University in St. Louis They were married one year after graduation. 

The couple's four children: Randy, Greg, Nancy and Gary, are all college graduates. Greg and Gary received their master’s degrees at Stanford. Demonstrating his sharp engineering knowledge, Greg won a $10,000 Chairman for Innovation at ESL, a subsidiary of TRW, last year.

Evans set the electrical engineering world on its heels in 1948 when he unveiled the Evans Root Locus Technique, which provides a direct display of system stability and natural characteristics for feedback control systems. This process is now used by engineers worldwide.

To help engineers with the Root Locus technique he invented the Spirule, a tool which simplifies the task of constructing accurate plots,

In 1950, the cost of a single ring machine shop Spirule was $30, but Evans said it wasn't worth $30. and could sell it for much less if he had 500 orders for a stamped version. So, when he received one large order, he started The Spirule Co. and charged barely enough to pay expenses. Arline handled the orders and shipped more than 100,000 around the globe. Now there are Root-Locus computer programs.

Evans, who received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and his master’s at UCLA, was recipient of outstanding awards after his stroke. In 1987, he received the Oldenburger Medal from the. American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Boston, in 1988 the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Engineers Award from the American Automatic Control Council in Atlanta and, in 1990, an Engineering Alumni Achievement Award from the Washington University School of Engineering in St. Louis.

In his remarks introducing Evans at the Oldenburger Award luncheon, Dr. Robert H. Cannon, Jr. observed that the Root-Locus approach "quickly became widely known and used and soon took its place as the control context for the preliminary study and design of feedback control systems." At Rockwell (then known as North American), it became the preliminary method for designing automatic pilots for high performance aircraft and for the X10 pilotless missile and led development and construction of the stable inertial platform for the guidance systems for the Minuteman ICBM and two submarines the Nautilus and Skate which used these systems to navigate for the first time under the polar icecap without any external reference.

As Airline relates, Walter's sharp mind came up with other ideas that didn't catch on at the time: spray painting tennis balls (bright yellow and orange) to improve their visibility, mounting wheels on luggage to enhance their transportability, and staggered work hours to ease traffic congestion. 

“Let's face it, Dad was just ahead of his time," recalls Greg, who played tennis with his father at La Serna High with colored tennis balls.