Evelyn Bergmann of Olathe, Kansas, died July 5, 2026, after a short illness. She was 97.

Evelyn was born in Larned, Kansas, the daughter of farmer Hugh Bowman and homemaker Velma Bowman. She lived through the Depression and the Dust Bowl. She first went to a one-room schoolhouse, where the library was nothing more than a closet, and then moved to Zook, where she played basketball for three years and graduated.

While at Kansas State University, she took a summer waitress job in Thousand Islands, New York—quite the adventure for a Kansas farm girl and one she loved to talk about. She met her husband, Glenn, at the university; she seemed to think he had had a bit too much to drink when he first proposed because she asked him the next morning whether he really meant it. They married in 1949. Evelyn graduated in 1950 with a double major in journalism (her favorite classes) and home economics (not her favorite—she said she learned to cook only after getting married, but what a cook she became; her apple pie was legendary, and for years she enjoyed experimenting with new recipes constantly). She was a member of the journalism honor society for women.

Upon graduation Evelyn was offered a job by Better Homes & Garden magazine, which she turned down to instead accompany Glenn on his zigzagging career path, eventually living in 23 different homes in eight states and preparing and handling the moves for most of them because his sales and marketing jobs required travel much of the time. Evelyn liked to tell the story of the weather being so bad in November 1955 that she could not fly to their new home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, instead having to take a train from Chicago with her two small children while she was quite pregnant with her youngest daughter. That was quite a trip.

She worked for a while at a nursery school, where she was paid 50 cents per hour and toilet trained at least two children. She named her son after a boy at the school she thought was so cute.

Evelyn occasionally traveled with Glenn on business, warmly remembering the Paris Air Shows.

However, one of her fondest memories from her marriage was that of being a full-time RVer—a person whose only home is a recreational vehicle—for 3½ years, “feeling forever on vacation,” as she put it. She kept a journal of many of their travels, a habit from her journalism days. She and Glenn continued to travel in their motorhome for months at a time afterward and eventually moved back to Johnson County, Kansas, in 2004 to be closer to their families.

Known to family and friends as E, Evelyn often said she wished she had been a landscape architect so that she could have further indulged her love of gardening. She certainly had a green thumb. She first learned to garden in Tacoma, Washington, and was a member of the garden club in Leawood, Kansas, where she helped maintain a local cemetery. While living on a converted pig farm in Perry, Kansas, in the 1970s, she had a large vegetable and fruit garden, did lots of mowing, and cleaned up an old house on the property with her son, earning her a nickname of Dust. Evelyn loved to use local wildflowers and other native trees and plants, continually experimenting with different combinations. For many years she was the “plant waterer” at her retirement community. She also loved to move furniture around, even into her 90s, so things wouldn’t get “boring.”

In addition to her parents, Evelyn was preceded in death by her husband of 70 years, Glenn Bergmann; brothers Bob and Herb Bowman; daughter Trish; and daughter-in-law Katharine Rudy Bergmann. She is survived by her son, Kent, Olathe; daughter Lori (Jodi Schoeck), Lake in the Hills, Illinois; grandson Nic (Amber), Olathe; and numerous nieces and nephews, several of whom (especially Liz and Sondra) made sure to stop by from time to time to see their aunt..

A celebration of life will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28, in the chapel at Aberdeen Village, 17500 W. 119th St., Olathe. Casual dress is encouraged, as are stories about Evelyn and Glenn. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to the Harvesters Community Food Network at www.harvesters.org Home - Harvesters.