Evelyn Rota died on August 27, 2020 in Ventura, California from Covid-19. Evelyn was born in Liverpool, England in 1933, the daughter of a waitress and a merchant marine. During World War II at the age of nine, Evelyn and her younger sister Joan were evacuated by train to Wales to escape the bombing of the industrial areas near their Antonio Street home. Evelyn’s early life was shaped by the evacuation but guided by Lady Llewellyn of Llandrindod Wells who took the sisters into her care and gave them access to her library. Evelyn always credited the evacuation for not only saving her life but instilling a life-affirming interest in books.
A superior and eager student, Evelyn attended Saint Mary’s on a scholarship. At 18, she married Frank Tully, an automotive engineer, and immigrated to Canada, sailing on the Franconia II ocean liner. Shortly thereafter they moved to Detroit, became naturalized citizens and began a family. A lifelong Democrat, Evelyn was active in her Catholic parish and the civil rights movement.
Evelyn loved to travel and explore new landscapes. In 1968, her family moved to São Paulo, Brazil. This two year sojourn in South America inspired and nourished Evelyn’s creative spirit for the rest of her life, but her most cherished trips were to England and Switzerland to visit her extended family. Evelyn was intensely interested in people and could spend five minutes in a grocery check-out lane and leave with the life story of the person standing next to her. Evelyn had a lovely singing voice, participating in choirs and community theater, and also hosted a local cable show, “Write On.”
Evelyn instilled her love of books, education, and travel in her six children. She was a loving mother and despite the demands of a large Catholic household, each child enjoyed her unlimited attention. During the ‘70s, Evelyn also pursued her passion and talent for writing. Two of her fiction pieces appeared in “Nuestro” magazine under the pen name, Carlos Carrera. Evelyn’s poetry also appeared in the University of Detroit Literary Review. She also began working on the first of several novels.
In 1984, Evelyn moved to California and attended the University of California at Davis along with two of her children. During her junior year as an English major, Evelyn won a national competition, the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. Before graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Evelyn also won the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize. Evelyn went on to earn a Master of Arts in English from UC Davis.
In 1990 Evelyn married Michael Rota, who worked for US Airways, and they lived in California until his death in 2019. Evelyn also was predeceased by her brother, Bill Webster.
Evelyn is survived by her six children: Dr. Elizabeth Tully and Mark Giles of Ojai, CA; Julia Tully and Daniel Evans of Portland, OR and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Clare Tully and Rob Crawford of Rockport, Maine; Dr. Brendan Tully, a retired military dentist, of Santa Barbara, CA; Matthew Tully & Tracy Howard of Long Beach, CA; Patrick and Wendy Tully of Sacramento, CA; sisters Joan Fazackerley of Liverpool, England and Vera O’Hanlon of Geneva, Switzerland; sixteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.