June's Obituary

Savannah Morning News

This will give you your first glimpse of June the butterfly in a windstorm.

June Ellen Bourgeois Evans, 54, of Savannah, Georgia, wife of The Reverend Steve Evans, died Saturday afternoon, February 10, 2007, in Monroe, North Carolina.

Born in Tucson, Arizona, she was a daughter of the late Tony Big Dad Bourgeois and Clara Mur Bourgeois.  June loved to tease, laugh, and have fun and that was such an endearing trait because those who knew her well, knew that her zest for life was but a butterfly in a windstorm. Because of a tragic event that wounded her life in her late teens, she dropped out of high school (but finished her GED later as she was always quick to remind us). Even so, everyone who met her knew that she had become educated in the ways of the Lord.

No one in pain ever found a more tender or sympathetic ear or counsel more lovingly given. In Sunday School or small groups, when she spoke (though she preferred the background!), a hush fell as people strained to keep from missing a word. You knew that what she was about to say had passed through the fires of hard trial and not just the pages of a book.

June emerged from a thirty-year depression only four years ago and loved to say she was Mrs. Rip Van Winkle having to catch up on all the technology that had been springing up while she was oblivious to it. Learning to walk in freedom from the crushing grip of inner pain became her testimony to the truths of Gods Word that had been setting her heart free and she was thrilled to see the way the Lord was using it to help other wounded people. 

Sadly, even people who walk well by long practice sometimes slip and fall. With June the pitfalls were still very prevalent and dangerous. She tripped into one of them on Saturday, when none of us were there to catch her, and slipped out of this life into the one that cannot end, and that knows no tears or sorrow. Losing her is devastating to the loved ones she left behind who now have fresh reason to yearn to be where she is and who ask for your prayers to help them run the race set before them without their chief encourager and devoted friend.