Beating Fate : Paralyzed From Chest Down Because of Motorcycle Accident, Evan Evans Finds a Way to Keep Competitive Fires Burning

For more than three years, Evan Evans has been paralyzed from the chest down, sentenced to life in a wheelchair after a freak motorcycle accident that left him in a crumpled heap on a dirt road near his home in the rural Woodcrest section of Riverside.

During those three-plus years, Evans, 27, has dreamed and schemed and planned for a way to resume the off-road racing career he had assumed for years to be his rightful heritage. After all, his father is Walker Evans, perhaps the greatest truck-racing driver in desert racing history, and until that accident in July of 1989, Evan was being groomed as his successor.

After four months in a hospital and a year of rehabilitation, Evan spent $120,000 to build a race vehicle--equipped with hand controls--out of a Chevy Blazer that his mother had been using for trips to the market. He raced it last year in the SCORE and High Desert Racing Assn. off-road seasons with moderate success, but when he was unable to find a sponsor to finance him this year, it looked as if the dream had ended.

But Ken Hodgdon, a neighborhood friend of Evans who took a fling at stadium racing last year and found he wasn’t cut out for it, had a Jeep Comanche and a burning desire to stay in racing one way or the other.

And so, Hodgdon will furnish the truck and do the mechanical work, and Evans will drive in the high-profile Grand National truck class in the eight-race Mickey Thompson Off-Road Gran Prix series, which will start next Saturday night at Anaheim Stadium.

“I’ve never driven in a stadium race, but I went to a lot of them with my dad, so I know what to expect,” Evans said while taking a break from working on the Jeep in the racing garage next to his house. “The stadium should be much safer and much better for me than racing in the desert.

“In the desert, if I crashed and got injured, I could be 100 miles from help with no one around but Paul

Farieo, my co-driver, to help me. In the stadium, there are course workers at every corner. If I flip, or get knocked around, someone will be right there to assist me. I have no feeling from my chest down, but I have 100% use of my arms and shoulders, and when you spend all day in a wheelchair, you develop some pretty strong arm muscles. I’m really looking forward to it.”

One of Evans’ biggest disappointments when he returned to racing in the desert last year was that his father, instead of encouraging him, tried to discourage him.

“I could see his point, that he didn’t want me in the truck if I got re-injured and he might feel responsible for it,” Evan said. “And from a business point of view, he didn’t want to take a chance on me not being able to run a full season for one of his sponsors.

“But I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t know how I felt, how much racing meant to me. He knew that’s what I’d done, and planned on doing, all my life. He was training me to take over his program when the accident occurred. I was on his team at the time, and when I recovered I still wanted to be a part of it, but he said no. I know how much he loves racing, so I thought he should have known that I felt like racing was in my blood.”

Evans’ switch from the desert to stadiums might help put father and son back on the same racing plane.

“I’m looking forward to seeing him in the stadiums,” Walker said of his son. “I thought that’s where he should have been in the first place. It’s a whole lot different, running 10 to 15 minutes three times in an evening, compared to eight to 12 hours, or longer, out in the desert. That was not a good place for him to race.”

Stadium events for trucks consist of two eight-lap heats and a 12-lap main event.

“I wish him all the best and I’ll sure do what I can to help, to give him any tips or assistance,” the elder Evans said. “He’ll be in my old truck, and I’m looking forward to Anaheim to watch him drive it. Of course, I’ll get an awfully up-close look at him.”

Hodgdon, who owns an auto body shop in Riverside, bought the Jeep from the Evans Motorsports team two years ago with plans to drive it himself in the Thompson stadium series.

“I ran it last year at Anaheim, but I didn’t have the aptitude for it. So I had a couple of other guys (Scott Douglas and Jimmy Nichols) drive it,” Hodgdon said. “I’d known Evan for some time and knew he was having trouble getting money enough to run in the desert, so we decided to pool our resources and put him in my stadium truck this season. We didn’t get started until around Christmas, so we’re a little behind, but thanks to some help from American Racing Wheels and Goodyear, we’re going to be at Anaheim.”

The Anaheim race won’t be the first time father and son have raced against one another, although in their first meeting seven years ago, Evan was riding with Steve Kelley in the Mint 400. Walker was the favorite.

“That was quite a thrill for me,” Evan said. “I was just 20 and I’d ridden with my dad before, but this was the first time I’d opposed him. We were having a pretty good race when Steve went to pass Dad, and Dad’s transmission blew up. Dad didn’t care much for that, but it was nice beating him.”

Evan Evans, who has worked in his father’s racing shop as well as those of Larry Minor and Dick Landfield’s Enduro Racing, designed and built a special steering wheel with hand controls--his right thumb operates the throttle and his left hand the brake.

“You only shift once, from low to high at the start of each race, and from then on all you’re thinking about is going as fast as you can,” Evan said. “It’s a lot less complicated than the controls on my desert truck, where I had to steer with my left hand and operate the controls on the shifter with my right. It also had a button for the radio and one to pump water in my mouth when I got thirsty.

“In the stadium, there’s no time for talking on a radio or taking a drink, so essentially all I need is a stop and a go. I don’t think anyone else will be out there with hand controls on a vehicle as big as ours (2,600 pounds).”

Another paraplegic, Joe Price of Covina--who was also injured in a motorcycle accident--drives a SuperLite in the Thompson series.

Evans is lifted into the truck by his crew before each race and his legs are strapped together in what he calls a “foot saddle.” One thing that won’t bother Evans is the violent bouncing that occurs during stadium racing.

“I have no feeling below my chest, so when my legs or my butt or my knees hit anything, I don’t feel it,” he said.

Neurosurgeons give Evans no chance to regain the use of his legs because of the severe damage to his spine.

Evan was racing for his father’s off-road team in 1989 and had won four races in a row, driving a Jeep Cherokee in Class 6 (production cars) during the SCORE/HDRA season, when he took a girlfriend for a ride on the back of his motorcycle. He was speeding down a familiar trail in the darkness when the bike hit a ditch and Evans was thrown off the machine. The impact broke his back.

His passenger’s back was broken, but she has recovered.

“I’d ridden over that road since I was 8, but the water company had dug a hole and neglected to mark it with flashers,” Evans said. “I got a settlement that will keep me going as long as I live--but it won’t pay for my racing.”

When the accident occurred, Evans had a large lead in the standings, but by the time of the final race--the Baja 1000 from Ensenada to La Paz--he needed to at least start the race to ensure himself the championship.

Hand controls were installed and after only three days out of the hospital, Evan was driven to Ensenada and helped into the driver’s seat by his mother, Dolly, who is divorced from his father. He needed only to drive the truck 40 miles down the pavement to El Alamo, but instead drove 32 more miles before stopping and turning the vehicle over to Brian Stewart, who is driving now for Walker Evans.

“Brian drove the rest of the way, and we won the championship for my dad’s team,” Evan said.

For that, the younger Evans was named Off-Roadsman of the Year over Ivan Stewart and Scoop Vessels by his fellow competitors.

“I’d hoped I would resume driving for him in 1990, but he was against it,” Evan said. “I spent the year getting my strength back and talking my mother into letting me have her old Chevy Blazer so I could rebuild it into a race car. I’m really proud of how it came out. I built it in the same garage where my dad built his first race truck and I raced it all last year. We finished all but three races.”

Evans ended up fourth overall in both the SCORE and HDRA seasons. Last year they had separate schedules, but this season have merged into one organization. His best finishes were second at San Felipe and in the Gold Coast 500 in Nevada.

“I’ve never raced in a stadium, but I had pretty good luck with closed course races,” Evan said. “I won at Riverside in a Datsun truck in 1988, my rookie year as a driver, and in 1991 I won a heat race at Willow Springs driving my own desert truck.

“I’ve already started work on a new stadium truck that Ken (Hodgdon) and I hope to have ready to race by the end of this season. We’re the only true privateer team out there among all the heavily sponsored trucks, but if we can get some financial help, we expect to be competitive.

“One thing, we’ll be easy to pick out. The colors will be white, yellow and green, and we’ll be No. 13.”

Defending champion Rod Millen and three-time champion Ivan Stewart will be favored in their factory-backed Toyotas, with major challenges expected from the Chevrolet of former motocross champion Rick Johnson, the Dodges of Walker Evans and Brian Stewart, Ivan’s son; the Fords of Rob MacCachren and Danny Thompson and the Nissans of Roger Mears and Roger Jr.

American Racing Wheels purchased a block of tickets for the Anaheim race for distribution to disabled persons in honor of their new driver.

“They gave them to me and I’m going to take them to the Casa Colina Rehabilitation Center in Pomona and give them to the therapists, because they know best who needs to get out and who needs to watch someone like me and learn that life isn’t over, no matter what happens to you,” Evan said.