The orbit of retired firefighter Guy Evers' life often passed through old Fire Station 13 in south Minneapolis.
Evers, a Golden Gloves boxer. entered the ring in the basement of the station. He worked there as a firefighter, and he lived and worshipped within a few of blocks of the station. Evers, who once pulled a drowning boy from Lake Hiawatha while on duty, died of cancer June 25 at his Edina home. He was 67.
When he was a boy, Evers attended nearby St. Luke's Lutheran Church, and in retirement would provide free computer help to the church - which became El Milagro Lutheran Church - community groups and neighborhood members of any denomination.
When he was a Golden Glover, he fought in a boxing ring set up in the station house at Cedar Avenue and 42nd Street, five blocks from his boyhood home.
He wasn't a champion, but he would spar with anyone of any size, said his lifelong friend, Jerry Brown of Minneapolis, a retired Minneapolis firefighter.
After Evers graduated from Roosevelt High School, he served in the Air Force. He received a bachelor's degree in psychology and counseling from the University of Minnesota in 1965, and a master's degree in psychology from Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
After a stint as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the state of Minnesota, he knew he liked to help people, but he didn't want to be a counselor.
So he applied for a firefighting position in Minneapolis, and got the job in 1975. "He said it was the best move he ever made," he told his wife, Jean of Edina. "He loved it." During his 25-year career, he served at Station 13 from 1981 to 1991.
In March 1987, he and other firefighters answered a call about a 13-year-old boy who had fallen through thin ice on Lake Hiawatha in Minneapolis.
Evers and the others feared they would lose the boy, because they had to laboriously break through the ice as they boated to the boy as he clung to a chunk of ice, but they got the job done, saving the boy. Evers, who moved to Edina in 1978, remained a member of his boyhood church. When a Latino church and St. Luke's merged to become El Milagro Lutheran Church, he remained a member, although most of the congregants spoke Spanish and he did not.
Evers, a self-taught computer technician and whiz, repaired computers for congregants, helped set up a computer lab, established computer networks for his church and others in south Minneapolis, and taught computer classes at El Milagro. He also took discarded computers, got them working and gave them to neighborhood children, said Warren Croft, an outreach coordinator for the church.
"He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back," Croft said.
The boxer once stood up to City Hall when it was going to shut Station 13 in the 1980s, Brown said.
He gathered signatures for a petition, and fought the closing, winning a partial victory when Hennepin County leased the station to house ambulance service. It is now privately owned.
"It was gutsy to take on the city," Brown said. "He didn't back away from anything."
In addition to his wife of 21 years, he is survived by his daughter, Julie Evers of Edina, and a sister, Judy Harrington of Oakdale.
Services have been held.
