Carol Evans, 70, escorted orphans for new families

Carol Evans was a pretty woman who could light up a room — a beauty contestant, flight attendant and volunteer who made dozens of trips escorting orphan children to newly adoptive homes in the U.S.

“She was just a blond-haired, blue-eyed, all-around girl,” said Pat Parker, a decades-long friend who lives in Gay. “She had a sweet personality and got along well with other women. We all had a good time with her.”

Enlarge this image

Family photo

Carol Evans, formerly of Atlanta, loved traveling as a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines and later Kiwi Airlines.

In high school, Ms. Evans was a majorette who twirled flaming batons. Later, she competed in beauty contests and in the early 1960s was crowned Miss Georgia Peach and Miss Fire Prevention.

“She was striking,” said her niece, Cheryl Hill-Conkle of Jonesboro.

Carol Evans, 70, of Panama City Beach, Fla., and formerly of Atlanta, died Feb. 22 of congestive heart failure at Bay Memorial Hospital in Bay County, Fla.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Ford-Stewart Funeral Home, Jonesboro/Stockbridge.

Ms. Evans was born in Douglasville. Her mother died when she was a toddler. Her father, left to fend for four small children, let the brood move in with relatives. Ms. Evans moved in with an older sister and graduated from McDonough High.

“As far as I knew, she’d always wanted to be a flight attendant,” her niece said. “She loved to travel.”

In 1959, Ms. Evans started a more-than 30-year career as a flight attendant with Eastern Airlines. She loved to travel and mixed pleasure with purpose.

Ms. Evans and other Eastern flight attendants volunteered to escort orphans from Korea to their adoptive parents in U.S. cities. They did so as part of a network that involved Eastern and an international adoption agency.

Using a flight attendant cut down on expenses for adoptive parents who also incurred travel expenses for the child.

“The adoptive parents would pay the expenses for the flight attendants to go over to Seoul, Korea. She brought back hundreds of orphans,” her niece said.

Mrs. Parker got to know Ms. Evans when they were flight attendants for Eastern and, later, Kiwi Airlines. At Eastern, they were roommates. Mrs. Parker didn’t serve as an escort, but she remembers Ms. Evans being dedicated to the cause.

“Carol was single and could do that,” she said. “She always boasted that she made 69 trips, and sometimes she [escorted] three children at a time. When she got into it, she took it to heart.”

Mrs. Parker and her niece say she may have embraced being an escort because she never had kids of her own. She had several romantic relationships, they say, and was engaged a few times. None led to marriage.

Besides, she was a jet-setter. When the flight attendants had consecutive days off, they often traveled for fun. They could always count Ms. Evans in, especially if it involved snow skiing.

Mrs. Parker’s first trip to Europe was with Ms. Evans and two other women.

“We went to Brussels [and] Spain and were in Germany during Ocktoberfest,” Mrs. Parker said. “We just had a grand time. All of us did. I have lost a real good friend.”