Sam Evans

John Samuel Evans passed away peacefully on July 17, 2026 with his wife Kathy and daughters Kathy Jean and Annie Lou at his side.

Sam was born in Norfolk, VA on March 23, 1939 and primarily grew up there. His father was a U.S. Coast Guard officer, and his family moved every few years, but there was always time in Norfolk during holiday seasons, summers, and his father’s deployments. Many summers were spent in Nags Head, NC. He had his first boat when they lived in St. Petersburg when he was 13 which was his favorite place growing up.

He finished his last two years in high school in Norfolk and then was accepted into the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut where he spent a total of three years. He finished college obtaining an engineering degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey where he met the love of his life, Kathy. They married and had two wonderful daughters who have both provided them with a great deal of help in their senior years.

Upon graduation Sam started his career as an engineer for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in Connecticut, then Ford Motor Company in New Jersey, and later a Senior Project Engineer at Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson company, also in New Jersey. He completed about three fourths of a masters degree in business and then left industry to start a construction business. He started doing home improvements, roofing and siding, and eventually building vacation homes in Saw Creek Estates in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania where Sam and Kathy became personal friends with many of their customers. But…this was a very stressful seven days a week job…a construction and business manager and an architect during the week, and on the weekends the customers wanted to see the builder. Home construction really took off rapidly and Sam Evans Construction Co. was building between fifty and fifty-five homes per year for quite a few years. There were three years in a row that Sam could only take off Christmas Day and the following Thanksgiving.

Sam’s mother and many of her family, his brother, and some of his father’s family, had all died in their forty’s and early fifty’s, so one day he said to Kathy that maybe the ought to “Stop and smell the roses.” At age forty-eight he sold the business to his friends Larry and Joan Kuzava who both were a tremendous help with Sam’s business. Larry was his construction superintendent, and Joan was Sam’s secretary and receptionist. Sam had always wanted to live in Florida again and they already had a vacation home there. Fortunately, Kathy liked Florida too, so Sam and Kathy retired to Florida and built a home, that Sam designed, in the boating community of Queens Cove, on North Hutchinson Island so that Sam could have his boats docked behind their home. A few years later both daughters and their families and Kathy’s mother moved to Florida. Life was good!

A few years after settling into retirement, his son-in-law, Marcos, asked Sam to help him start a business. Sam provided funds and cosigned notes and bought two Servpro franchises, one in Martin County and the other in Osceola County. Sam and Marcos operated the two together for several years and then Sam turned the ownership over to Marcos and all loans and notes were paid in full. Both franchises were very successful.

Sam loved boating, fishing, scuba diving, spear fishing, catching lobsters, golf, hunting, and his family. He hunted deer and wild turkeys in New Jersey and Pennsylvania during his working years using shotgun and rifle. After retirement, he hunted elk in the wilderness areas of the Colorado Rockies using a .50 caliber muzzleloader rifle, and some trips were on horseback.

They joined the Pelican Yacht Club and later the Meadowood Golf and Tennis Club. He got his U.S. Coast Guard Masters License and had several jobs delivering yachts up and down the Intra-Coastal. They always took another couple with them and instead of completing the voyage in a week or so, which is normal, they took at least two to three weeks and considered it a fantastic paid vacation. Sam also loved the many men’s boat fishing and diving trips to the Bahamas and the Keys as well as the family boat trips with Kathy. He also went to the Bahamas and Keys many times by himself. In the winter he also enjoyed the men’s small boat fishing and camping trips into the Everglades.

Fishing and diving and living from the bounty of the sea was a great adventure for Sam. Later he became an avid fly fisherman and wished he had been involved in this particular fishing earlier. He particularly enjoyed preparing family dinners using lobsters and fish that he had caught. You never had to ask Sam twice to go for a boat ride. He grew up golfing with his father and although he loved the sport, admittedly was not an expert.

Sam was also a member of the Hibiscus Monday Night Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. In his early years of AA he sponsored many new members and believes and hopes that he helped most of them. He never planned it, but on July 29, 2023 he celebrated 50 years of sobriety, achieved one day at a time.

Sam’s family is from southern Virginia and North Carolina and he has always been very proud of his Southern heritage and also the fact that he was an “Old fashioned Southern Gentleman”.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Russell and Myrtle, and his brother, Russell. Sam is survived by his wife of 61 years, Kathy, daughter, Kathleen Marsiglia and her husband Dan, granddaughter, Julia Lederer Gallagher, and great-granddaughter, Aurora Gallagher, and daughter, Anne Vallejos, and grandchildren, Marco and Guagui Vallejos.

Services will be held at Haisley Funeral Home, 3015 Okeechobee Road, Fort Pierce at 12:00 PM on Friday, July 24, 2026. Interment will be immediately afterwards in the family burial plot in the Garden of Madonna at Hillcrest Memorial Gardens, North US 1, Fort Pierce.