Body Guard
As old basements stocked with cadavers go, it’s a pretty cheery place.
You can thank John Evans for that.
Before the happy-go-lucky 28-year-old arrived, UC Irvine’s Medical Surge II building was just like any other where 60 bodies donated to medical science are stored. Pale brown walls. Dingy floors. Strange odors.
“It was real eerie,” recalled Evans, who once lived above a mortuary. “Even for me.”
Soon enough, Evans transformed the bottom-floor home to UCI’s Willed Body Program into a clean, pleasant-smelling place. He scrounged up surplus from another department and repainted the walls mauve and white. He installed deodorizers. He scrubbed and scrubbed.
Later, he replaced the black plastic cadaver coverings with white ones. To lift spirits even more, bouquets of artificial flowers were hung above the lab’s two embalming tables.
“It gives us a different outlook. A little happier, a little brighter, less scary to people who come here,” said Evans, who has led hundreds of high school and college students on tours of the facility. “It won’t bring them down so much.”
Under Evans’ watch, UCI’s body donation program has flourished. Last year about 150 people pledged their bodies to UCI’s program when their time comes. That’s nearly double the rate at which people signed up five years ago when he took over.
“I’ve been told I sell the program,” he said. “In a certain way, I hope that’s not true.”
For Evans, whose wholesome sensibilities were shaped in rural Montana, the idea of pressuring anybody to do anything, particularly body donation, is utterly repugnant. Yet, he earnestly promotes the nonprofit scientific enterprise relying mostly upon word-of-mouth for donors.
Colleagues say Evans’ naturally sunny disposition--not unlike that of the prototype Disneyland employee--accounts for the blossoming of UCI’s program.
“He’s taken a small program and really developed it,” said Jean Genera of UCLA’s Willed Body Program. “I think it’s his wonderful personality. He’s always happy, which is rare. You see so many people in this business who drag and have no color, but John is definitely different.”
Although Evans takes great pride in his years with the program, he will be moving on in a few months. In June, he and his wife, Jennifer--their marriage owes its origins to a private mortuary tour--will set out for Ohio.
“I need to leave before I get tired and bored,” said Evans, who will pursue a career in business management in his wife’s native state.
With a special enthusiasm that perhaps only a mortician--which he is--can summon, Evans has made the most of a job where one must be equally adept with people on either side of the great divide. His amiable manner is evident in all he does--whether it’s matching medical students with cadavers, leading people through the donation process, or giving a tour.
A researcher asks to reserve a body to practice implanting a pacemaker. No problem.
A med student requests the same cadaver he used before to hone his sewing technique. Checkeroo.
And a tour of high school students, who have never seen a dead body before? A snap.
“He’s absolutely marvelous,” said Mary Kay Keegan, a health careers teacher who sometimes works with Irvine High School students. “He brings people into a world that is difficult to handle--basically a morgue--and presents a learning experience that helps them to value and respect life.”
Tours for excitable high schoolers, however, is not the norm. More than anything, Evans’ occupation is a quiet one. Most days, the loudest noises he hears in his windowless office is the jingle of a phone, the hum of the lights, or the rattle of a janitor’s cart skating by.
Perhaps Evan’s preference for calm--and his interest in death--are rooted in his upbringing in Absarokee, Mont., population 500. Like most ranch and farming towns, there wasn’t much happening except an occasional wedding or funeral.
Evans attended his first funeral at age 16. It was an epiphany for a young man who had never considered a career up until then.
A friend of the family, someone whom Evans had gone fishing with as a boy, had died. The deceased trucker lay in an open casket.
“It’s still very vivid,” recalled Evans. “The first thing I thought was his cosmetics were the wrong color. It didn’t look right.”
Later that night, Evans confided to his mother with some trepidation that he wanted to get into the funeral business. He couldn’t explain it; he just knew it was for him.
“I was afraid that she would get mad at me for wanting to become a mortician,” said Evans, whose mother was a nurse. “But my mom told me I would be living her dream.”
“She had helped out on an autopsy once and she was impressed by it. She said she had even thought of becoming a mortician. It was a unique curiosity that we both had.”
With his mother’s blessing, Evans enrolled in mortuary science college at Cypress College--which led to his meeting his wife.
During John’s college days, Jennifer was a hairstylist. By chance, one day John walked into the right salon, and her scissors met his hair.
John’s unusual career plans were quickly divulged. Jennifer wanted proof--and a visit to the Anaheim mortuary, where he was working as an apprentice.
“The tour was great. It was the first time I saw a dead person. It was fine, not nauseating at all like I expected,” said Jennifer, now 26. “He was so candid and friendly, I just thought he was lying about being a mortician.”
Not normally known for his impulsiveness, John asked Jennifer out.
“We didn’t fall for each other until we met at the mortuary,” he said.
During their courtship, it wasn’t uncommon for the couple to pick up a body together at odd hours of the night.
“I got used to seeing dead bodies,” said Jennifer, who occasionally performed hair and cosmetic work for the mortuary. “It doesn’t faze me now unless it’s someone I know.”
Still, the couple thought that in the long run it would be wiser for John to develop another career. The hours are long and the work can exact a heavy emotional toll.
“At UCI, all of our clients register in advance, and it’s less stress for families and myself because it’s not an immediate death,” he said. “In the funeral business, I tended to take my work home with me. The tension of the office was incredible.”
In a broader sense, however, John’s livelihood around death has enriched his life, he said.
Death is not something he fears.
“If someone is scared of death, it’s a learned behavior,” he said. “I’m grateful for my experiences. I love my life. I love it.”
