Elizabeth Taylor Evans ’44
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the Fall 2003 issue of “Mainely People”. It was written by Cornelia Evans ’82. We are republishing the story to highlight the Lawrence and Elizabeth Taylor Evans Fund established by Laurence and Elizabeth. Cornelia has made a recent commitment to support the fund and shared this compelling tribute to her mother, Elizabeth as the motivation for her gift.
The time is 1948, the place, a crowded lecture hall at the University of Maine filled with young men only recently returned from the bloodiest of wars. These veterans in their twenties and thirties are eager to realize the American dream for which they fought so long and hard: building the future. With skills in finance, business law, and accounting, they will help create a new paradigm of power—one with an economic base.
Enter the new accounting professor: a five-foot-four, 25-year-old redhead dressed impeccably in a smart Lord and Taylor suit. The first woman ever to teach on the faculty of the department of business administration. Yes, she was nervous. But she was tough, and she was strict. She knew she had to be. Not because she was a woman in a room full of battle-worn men. Not because she was younger than most of them. But because she believed that she owed it to them. These men had served their country, and she would serve them. Her high expectations, educational training, and professional experience would ensure that they would be properly prepared to achieve the success they had put on hold for their country.
Bette Evans hadn’t planned on teaching when she graduated from the University of Maine in 1944. As one of the first women to graduate from the University with a degree in business administration, she was on a fast track within Price Waterhouse, one of the world’s largest accounting firms. She’d been one of only a handful of applicants chosen by the company to work in New York City with some of the firm’s largest clients. At 21, she was a trailblazer, living the life of a young professional woman.
She stayed on that track until 1947, when her mentor at Maine, Professor Haim Kershon, contacted her. It seemed scores of vets were going to college, and he didn’t have enough professors to fill the demand for business courses. Dr. Kershon turned to one of his best students for help.
My mother stepped off the corporate ladder and walked back into the classroom. Why? Because her alma mater needed her, her professor needed her and these young veterans needed her. Once she took that step she realized it was the right one. Teaching fulfilled her in ways she would otherwise never have discovered.
Throughout her life, Bette Evans defied convention through choices borne of ability and necessity. She paved the way for other women after her—both in the office and in the classroom. And she was, throughout her life, the best of role models, because she led by example.
Now that she is gone, I wonder where her courses may have led those students. What choices did they make with the skills she taught them? Did her example compel them to reconsider their expectations of women in the new workforce they were about to enter? From all that I know about my mother, I am sure that she challenged them just as she challenged me: never to underestimate anyone’s potential for excellence—especially one’s own.
