Gloucester Day was celebrated Saturday to honor Gloucesters across the globe. One local couple has the privilege of calling two Gloucesters home.

Chris and David Evans of Gloucester Point moved from Gloucester, England, to Gloucester, Virginia, after David accepted a chief scientist position with Deepsea Ventures in 1975. The Evans family moved to the United States Fourth of July weekend that year, and was able to celebrate America’s bicentennial in Yorktown the following year.

The couple had difficulty finding property to buy in the area, but finally found a spec house in Gloucester Point, where they still live to this day.

“We didn’t plan to spend our whole lives here, but we did,” said Chris.

Since coming to Virginia, Chris has been employed at the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal, Yorktown Crier and the Virginia Gazette as a reporter. She also gives music lessons. David has worked at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in the physical sciences department and the College of William and Mary as a professor.

Chris was born five months into World War II in 1940 during a “terribly cold winter.” She lived in a small county outside of Gloucester, England.
Every Saturday, Chris, her sister and their mother took the bus into Gloucester to the National Westminster Bank. Chris and her sister were free to explore the city, which was situated on the Severn River (just like in Gloucester, Virginia). Chris described the city as “multi-layered” with “all sorts of Roman remains all over the city.

“As children, we had a lot of freedom,” said Chris. She and her sister were able to take the bus, visit the library and meet with the boys at the café (once they were a bit older) all by themselves.

“It was a very safe city,” said Chris.

David and Chris both went to boys-only and girls-only schools, where they wore uniforms purchased from Golden Anchor.

“We had a very good education,” said Chris.

At age 10 or 11, Chris had a teacher who came into the classroom carrying a violin and a bow one day. Most students in the class had no idea what the instrument was since televisions were not common. (Chris’s family bought a black-and-white television in 1953 in order to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II).

Her teacher asked who would like to learn how to play, and Chris shot up her hand.

“That is how I started to play the violin,” said Chris. Playing the violin has become one of the great joys of her life, Chris said. She still has the violin her parents gave her.

“She was determined there was going to be a better world than the one we were living in,” said Chris about her teacher. After World War II, Chris said the United States was well off, which was not the case in Europe at the time.

“In Europe, it was absolutely decrepit,” said Chris.

Chris’s teachers growing up were determined to show their students there was a bigger world out there.

During elementary school, there were posters hanging around the wall of different places around the world. One of these posters featured the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

“I loved that poster,” said Chris. “Little did I think I would live in Virginia.”

David and Chris have returned to England to visit over the years, with their last trip in 2019. This year, the Three Choirs Festival featured David’s photo of the Gloucester Cathedral, where this year’s festival was held, that he took in 1956 at age 16.

“The cathedral is absolutely magnificent,” said Chris.

Gloucester Cathedral was the spot where Chris and David first became interested in each other. David’s sister, Mary, was performing the Messiah for Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and David was recording the performance. Chris and her father also happened to be there, sitting in the audience. Afterwards, David approached Chris and told her he had been watching her throughout the performance. They have been married for 61 years.

Chris and David enjoy their lives in Virginia, where they are members of Abingdon Episcopal Church. “It’s just a lovely place,” said Chris.

The couple has felt welcomed since moving to Gloucester, Virginia, nearly a half century ago.

“People have been very kind to us,” said Chris.

Chris and David have camped in the Blue Ridge Mountains and driven from Virginia to Texas, where Chris remarked that the “most beautiful land we went through was Virginia.”