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FAR RIGHT: Eveline painting a wall in Newport
RIGHT:Eveline with the national fire service
Eveline said: “It was sometimes
in Plymouth, asking what women wanted in the service. I said we wanted nylons and our own toilets! “After the meeting we were going
to go out for dinner but I said ‘let’s get out of the city’. Just after that the sky turned black with bombers and there was a huge daylight raid. We had a very lucky escape.” It was during the war that Eveline
was introduced to her future hus- band Robert, an American engineer. She said: “It was a Saturday and the
front door bell rang. The man there told us we had several bedrooms free so we had to have a lodger, so Robert from America arrived. “At that point Winston Churchill
had asked the US to enter the war but they’d said no and sent over equipment instead - jeeps etc, in huge crates by ship to ports includ- ing Bristol. They had to be assembled in Portishead. There was a lot of controversy and confusion over how to assemble them so the US sent over assemblers and my husband was one of them.” Eveline married Robert in Portis- head during the war. They went on to have two sons - Patrick, a flight instructor who now teaches at the University of Ohio; and Warren, a former restaurant owner and interior designer, who now lives with Eveline in Stokenham. They sailed to a new life in Rhode Island aboard the SS Washington from Southampton, and first lived in East Providence, then Newport.
very stormy and scary sailing back and forth on the Atlantic but I came back every year to see my family, first on the boat and then much later by plane. “My sister Kitty and her husband
lived at Torcross - Sea Cottage, right on the front row. I would visit for a couple of months a year. I told them: when I retire, I’ll come back no matter what. “After her husband died she want-
ed me to move here to a bungalow in Stokenham. We were always very
“It was never planned – it all just happened. I
was a prolific painter and shipped all over the US.”
close, Kitty and I. She was dying from TB when she was young but I looked after her and she recovered and we were close ever since.” In Rhode Island Eveline started to
realise her passion for painting. She began with restoring furniture then painting murals on screens, and pro- gressed to her original folk art style of buildings and people. She added: “A friend in Providence
invited me to a street fair, which I didn’t normally bother with. I hung my paintings on a picket fence. “While there I met Commander
Walter Hickey and Mr Norris. Mr Norris asked me to paint his walls with a mu- ral and offered me so much money I couldn’t refuse. That changed my life. “We moved to Newport and met the
most wonderful people. People were calling up and wanting to buy my art. “It was never planned – it all just happened. I was a prolific painter and shipped all over the US. My painting of Trinity Church, Newport, was hung at the Seaman’s Institute. I also ran the needlepoint guild and designed the kneelers for Trinity Church. I had a very busy life. “I drove around in my red Saab
convertible until I was 90 and had my 90th
birthday at Hammersmith Farm.
Wonderful.” “I’ve been very fortunate, I never thought I’d live to be this old. I’ve had a wonderful life with marvellous friends. I’ve been well taken care of and have so much to be thankful for. If I had to live my life over again, I’d do it all the same.” Interview by Kate Cotton
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