Libby Norman Evans, in her senior photo from the Chatham High School Class of 1965, (photo from the 1965 C.H.S. Cavalier yearbook).
Libby Norman Evans, in her senior photo from the Chatham High School Class of 1965, (photo from the 1965 C.H.S. Cavalier yearbook).
Elizabeth Swanson Norman Melton Newby Evans died July 9, 2018. She was born December 7, 1946, the daughter of the late George Halcott Norman, Jr., and Carolyn Garrett Norman, of Chatham. She was a member of the 1965 graduating class at Chatham High School. She was predeceased by her brother George Halcott Norman, III (1949–2011). Surviving family members are included in the obituary below.
Elizabeth Norman Evans, who represented the county as Miss Pittsylvania 1965, died in her sleep on July 9, 2018, in Bedford, Virginia. The daughter of George Halcott Norman, Jr., and Carolyn Garrett Norman, she grew up on her family's dairy and tobacco farm on Fairview Road near Chatham. A striking beauty, she studied dance from the age of five, and was named Miss Congeniality and a pageant finalist during the competition for the Miss Virginia USA title.
After her graduation from Chatham High School, she enrolled at Randolph-Macon Women's College on a full scholarship. The lure of travel in the glamorous commercial airline industry of the 1960s led her to interrupt her studies to serve as a stewardess for Delta Airlines. In coming years she lived in New York, France, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and northern California. She studied at the University of Bordeaux and the University of California, Berkeley, which awarded her the bachelor's degree in dance studies.
Upon returning to Virginia, Elizabeth taught ballet at Chatham Hall, a girls' preparatory school, and married Will Melton with whom she raised two sons, Cooper Norman Melton of Baltimore, and the late James McCann Melton. After their marriage ended, she moved to San Diego and married her high school sweetheart, Marine Corps Major Lance Newby, a graduate of Hargrave Military Academy. Two daughters were born to this union, Caroline Gilliland Newby of Las Vegas, Nevada, and April Garrett Newby of Lakeville, Minnesota. Eventually she returned to her home state to stay, married Bill Evans, and spent the last thirty years of her life in southern Virginia.
She loved the arts, especially classical music and dance; beaches, homegrown tomatoes, and the Blue Ridge Mountains; and the works of Henri Matisse, The Beatles, and John Grisham. Most of all, she loved her daughters and sons and her three grandchildren, Lucille, Garrett, and Elias Melton. She was fiercely independent and restless, and she possessed a keen intellect and boundless creativity. Her warm smile revealed but a fraction of her kindness and compassion. She will be deeply and profoundly missed by her family. Her funeral service will be September 29 at 10:00 AM at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 66 North Main Street, Chatham, with a reception to follow.
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