Evans Awards to be Presented at USU

The David W. and Beatrice C. Evans Biography Award and the Handcart Award will be presented on the Utah State University campus Friday, Sept. 28, at 2:30 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center Stevenson Ballroom. Members of the campus and local communities are invited to join the family and friends of Sandra Ailey Petree and Kenneth W. Merrell at the ceremony.

The $10,000 Evans Biography Award, established in 1983, recognizes outstanding research and writing of a biography of a person who lived in or had significant influence on the Mormon West or who was part of Mormonism’s pre-Utah history. The $1,000 Handcart Award, established in 1996, is given each year to a biography of merit, often by an author who is not an academic historian, who contributes to the understanding of the Mormon-settled West. The subjects and authors of the biographies in both categories do not need to be affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

The awards were endowed by the family of David Wooley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans, both born in 1894. The screening for the awards and their presentation are coordinated by USU’s Mountain West Center for Regional Studies.

 

The Evans Biography Award, presented in 2007, is awarded for a work published in 2006 and goes to Recollections of Past Days: The Autobiography of Patience Loader Rozsa Archer, edited by Sandra Ailey Petree. The book is the eighth volume published by Utah State University Press in the Life Writings of Frontier Women series collectively edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher.

 

Petree is an associate professor of English at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, Okla.

 

The Evans Handcart Award goes to Scottish Shepherd: The Life and Times of John Murray Murdoch, Utah Pioneer by Kenneth W. Merrell. The subject of the work is the author’s great-great grandfather.

 

Merrell is a professor of school psychology and head of the special education area in the College of Education at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

 

“These two books are not only outstanding biographies, they are also timely,” said Elaine Thatcher, Mountain West Center director. “Both touch on events of the Utah War, the sesquicentennial of which is being commemorated this year.”

 

A reception and book signing follow the award presentation. For information, contact the Mountain West Center at (435) 797-3630.

 

The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies was established at Utah State University in 1986 to advance the understanding of the Mountain West region through interdisciplinary studies and to link university expertise with regional needs and interests.

 

 

 

Contact: Elaine Thatcher (435) 797-0299, elaine.thatcher@usu.edu