John Evan was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1914, the second of seven children born to Austrian immigrant parents. Mike Evan and Marie Elavsky had first met onboard the ship bringing them to America (about 1910-11), and married shortly after their arrival. Initially, Mike Evan worked in a foundry until he developed health problems, after which he took up farming on the outskirts of Minneapolis (at Brooklyn Center), where he raised vegetables and marketed them in the city. In 1924 the Evan family moved to a 200-acre farm outside the little town of Arnold in Chippewa County, Wisconsin. They started a dairy operation with 20 Holstein milk cows and John and his three brothers...
