01 Aug 2021 Remembering my father

Michel Evard

Re­tired phys­i­cian, Dr. Michel Evard, 83, passed away peace­fully on Ju­ly 23, 2021 in Nor­man, Ok­lahoma. The son of the late Fre­der­ic Henri Evard and Jeanne (Gilles) Evard, Michel was born Au­gust 28, 1937 in Gland, Switzer­land.

Dr. Evard is sur­vived by his lov­ing wife of 59 years, Janene (Odom) Evard; son Remy Evard and his wife Michele (Pez­et) Evard; daugh­ter Melina Evard; and grand­chil­dren An­dre, Rose and Joelle Evard. He was pre­ceded in death by his broth­ers, Rene and Jean-Paul Evard and his sis­ter, Chris­ti­ane (Evard) Poub­lan.

Michel at­ten­ded high school on the is­land of Maur­i­ti­us and in Bo­gen­hofen, Aus­tria. Hav­ing traveled to the United States by ship, Michel at­ten­ded Uni­on Col­lege in Neb­raska where he and Janene met. He liked to say he fell in love with her at first sight. They were mar­ried on Ju­ly 22, 1962.

Michel gradu­ated with his MD from Loma Linda Uni­ver­sity in Loma Linda, CA in 1965, then com­plet­ing res­id­en­cies for otolaryngo­logy (Ear, Nose, and Throat) and gen­er­al sur­gery as well as a year of post-res­id­ency train­ing in head and neck can­cer. He es­tab­lished his med­ic­al prac­tice in Ar­d­more, OK in 1976 and was a be­loved com­munity phys­i­cian for over 40 years.

Dr. Evard not only took care of gen­er­a­tions of fam­il­ies, but also con­tin­ued to study new tech­niques, in­clud­ing en­do­scop­ic si­nus sur­gery which he in­tro­duced to the state of Ok­lahoma. Later in his ca­reer, he taught sur­gery as a vo­lun­teer pro­fess­or at the Uni­ver­sity of Ok­lahoma Med­ic­al School and the Ok­lahoma City Vet­er­ans Hos­pit­al.

Michel played the vi­ol­in for most of his life. He loved wa­ter­col­or paint­ing, pho­to­graphy, clas­sic­al mu­sic, hik­ing, ski­ing, and his fam­ily most of all. He made sure to take his fam­ily to Europe as of­ten as pos­sible so his chil­dren could know their ex­ten­ded fam­ily, in­clud­ing their Swiss grand­par­ents and re­l­at­ives in both France and Switzer­land. In re­tire­ment, he en­joyed trav­el­ling with Janene to vis­it his chil­dren, grand­chil­dren and ex­ten­ded fam­ily.

He will be deeply missed by his fam­ily and all who knew him.

A Gath­er­ing of Re­mem­brance for Dr. Evard will be­gin Sunday, Au­gust 1, 2021 at 2:00 pm with the fam­ily re­ceiv­ing friends af­ter­wards till 4:00 pm at the fu­ner­al home.

The fam­ily asks that in lieu of flowers, me­mori­als be made to the Ad­vent­ist De­vel­op­ment & Re­lief Agency ( https://adra.org/ or 1-800-424-ADRA).

Remembering my Father

Like all of us, my fath­er was many things - a son, a broth­er, a hus­band, a fath­er, a grand­fath­er, a friend, a phys­i­cian, a hiker, a pho­to­graph­er… a pro­vider.

In re­cent years, I’ve real­ized he was some­thing to me that may sur­prise the rest of my fam­ily, and prob­ably would have sur­prised him. As I grew older and came to un­der­stand him bet­ter, I star­ted to see him as an in­spir­a­tion. When I look at the choices I’ve made, I see that he prob­ably was an in­spir­ing fig­ure for me from the be­gin­ning.

To un­der­stand my Dad, one has to un­der­stand his back­ground and con­text - the chal­lenges he grew up with and over­came.

He was the young­est of four chil­dren, the son of an Ad­vent­ist min­is­ter and mis­sion­ary, and grew up in Europe dur­ing World War II. Those four factors - the fam­ily, the church, Switzer­land, and the war - were at the cen­ter of who my fath­er was.

He didn’t talk about his child­hood much. I heard more stor­ies about those times from my moth­er and oth­er re­l­at­ives. My grand­fath­er, ac­cord­ing to those stor­ies, helped Jews to es­cape from France in­to Switzer­land. He housed refugees in their home, he car­ried mes­sages across the bor­der, and he main­tained the strict­est au­thor­ity in his fam­ily to help keep them safe.

The fam­ily was in con­stant danger and was barely sur­viv­ing on war­time sup­plies. When I asked Dad about those times, he only said that food was scarce, and that he’d heard stor­ies about fam­il­ies in nearby vil­lages be­ing roun­ded up and killed. It was clear that he had lifelong scars from that time.

That brings me to the first of the ways in which he was an in­spir­a­tion: while it would have been so easy to stay in the safe & con­ser­vat­ive en­vir­on­ment of his ex­ten­ded Swiss fam­ily, his small town, and the fam­ily his­tory of be­ing in the min­istry, he in­stead took the bold step to leave home and coun­try to come to the US for col­lege and to pur­sue a ca­reer as a phys­i­cian so that he could heal and cure oth­ers.

Ap­par­ently, when he left Europe for the States, he only had $50 to his name. For me, grow­ing up, his jour­ney here and him be­ing a doc­tor - that’s just how things were, it was a fact of life, it was just what Dad had done. But, look­ing back now, I real­ize what a cour­ageous act that was for him, and I know now that it in­spired and en­abled me to take risks - much smal­ler risks - that changed the course of my life.

When he was in col­lege, he star­ted the second thing that I find so in­spir­ing. He met, dated, and even­tu­ally pro­posed to Janene Odom, the wo­man who would be­come the moth­er of Melina and I. And some­how they stayed mar­ried and in love un­til the end of his life, for 59 years of mar­riage. In these times, that’s amaz­ing.

It wasn’t all bliss. They had chal­lenges from the be­gin­ning: massive cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, tight fin­ances, messy fam­il­ies, a de­mand­ing ca­reer, and a myri­ad of oth­er head­aches… like learn­ing to par­ent to­geth­er des­pite vast philo­soph­ic­al dif­fer­ences in how to handle com­plic­ated kids. I re­mem­ber many won­der­ful times when grow­ing up, but also some times that were very dif­fi­cult for their part­ner­ship. My par­ents some­how over­came those to­geth­er.

Part of that in­volved my fath­er grow­ing: learn­ing to listen and be more flex­ible than his ri­gid child­hood con­di­tioned him to be, learn­ing to share, learn­ing when to be sup­port­ive rather than dir­ect­ive. Even as a teen­ager, I saw some of those changes in him, and I saw the quiet, com­plex, con­fid­ent love and ded­ic­a­tion that he had for my moth­er. Again, I learned from that. He in­spired me to fol­low in a sim­il­ar pat­tern in my own life, build­ing on what I saw in my par­ents’ re­la­tion­ship.

Dad and I didn’t talk a lot. It just wasn’t a thing with him. In fact, in col­lege, when I learned about per­son­al­ity types, I real­ized he was a clas­sic in­tro­vert. He needed quiet time at home to re­charge from all of his time with people in the of­fice. He liked to ob­serve the ac­tion, not to be in it, which, I sus­pect is one reas­on why he liked to be the pho­to­graph­er. And it’s why so many of many memor­ies of him are from the quiet times to­geth­er.

I re­mem­ber one par­tic­u­lar quiet mo­ment when I learned a lot from him about his re­la­tion­ship with my mom. We were out on a fam­ily hike in the moun­tains. As usu­al, he and I were out in front… me with the daypack, him with his fancy cam­era and his fa­vor­ite ugly hat. We ar­rived at a fork in the trail.

Mom was way be­hind, as usu­al. She says it’s be­cause she likes to smell the flowers, but the im­pa­tient teen­ager in me was sure it was be­cause she didn’t like to walk fast enough. An­noyed, I said to Dad, “so now we just wait?”. He nod­ded sol­emnly, looked me in the eye, and said “and we smile”.

That leads me to the third ma­jor he way he was an in­spir­a­tion to me - the way he thought about his role as a par­ent. He had high ex­pect­a­tions - and he also gave me the free­dom to find my own way. I knew he was al­ways there if I needed him, which gave me the con­fid­ence to grow.

As a par­ent now, I real­ize how chal­len­ging that bal­ance is, and also how hard it must have been for him. His ex­pect­a­tions were clear and strict: work hard, ex­cel in school, take care of oth­ers, re­spect the fam­ily, do some­thing with your life that mat­ters.

He taught me those les­sons by his own ex­ample, and through sparse dir­ec­tions like “try harder” and “stop feel­ing sorry for your­self”, man­dates I heard many times as a kid. And yet, when I made choices that were dif­fer­ent than what he’d ex­pect - pur­su­ing de­grees in com­put­ing, not sci­ence or medi­cine; get­ting mar­ried at a young age; crazy ca­reer choices; choos­ing to live in parts of the coun­try far from the rest of the fam­ily - he was sup­port­ive.

Once on a chair lift while ski­ing (which was one of the few places we would have dis­cus­sions, be­cause he was trapped there with me), he said “well, you have to do what you think is right, and I’m here to sup­port you now”.

One of many ex­amples comes to mind. Grow­ing up, it was clear to me that, after col­lege, I was go­ing to be on my own… and yet, when I gradu­ated and got mar­ried and pre­pared to move across the coun­try for grad school, he quietly handed me a cred­it card and said gruffly “just in case”. I re­mem­ber be­ing com­pletely stunned as I ac­cep­ted the card… I wasn’t ex­pect­ing that. I had thought Dad was happy to get me off the books.

A few weeks later, my young bride and I loaded up all of our pos­ses­sions in a truck and a trail­er and star­ted our move out west. Our vehicle broke down in the middle of nowhere in Wyom­ing, and we had no money to pay for the ne­ces­sary re­pairs. I re­mem­ber be­ing so re­lieved and grate­ful to Dad’s foresight and help. Without that, we would have been in deep trouble.

So, he set an ex­ample of bal­an­cing ex­pect­a­tions, sup­port­ing my choices, and be­ing there to help that has in­spired and guided me in my own par­ent­ing jour­ney.

The way he led his life, and in par­tic­u­lar these three ma­jor themes - the bold choices he made to im­prove his situ­ation and provide for his fam­ily, his long part­ner­ship with my moth­er, the way he pushed and sup­por­ted his kids - those were in­spir­a­tions and found­a­tions for me.

I nev­er told Dad any of this, at least not in these words. In part, it’s taken me a long time to really un­der­stand him and to un­der­stand how much he in­flu­enced me. And it’s been a long time since I man­aged to trap him on a chair lift for one of those chats.

But … he knew.