Offering a view of the rising toll of war dead

By GENE WARNER
News Staff Reporter8/8/2005

There are no flashy graphics on these signs. They're simple, almost crude, drawn with black or blue marker on pieces of white copy paper.

Joyce G. Evans just wants to tell neighbors and passers-by the blunt, unvarnished truth - about how many U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in the Iraq War.

On a recent afternoon, four signs could be seen in the window of her Lexington Avenue home on Buffalo's near West Side, between Delaware and Elmwood avenues:

"American Soldiers"

"Dead in Iraq"

"1,821.

"End This Mess."

Within a few days, that count would rise to 1,828.

Evans, a 64-year-old artist and retired teacher, is outraged by more than just the number of war dead in Iraq. She's also upset by what she considers the apathy over the casualties of war.

"I want people to be aware of it," she said of the increasing death toll. "People don't seem to be upset. There aren't the marches and protests like there were in Vietnam. People just don't seem to be bothered."

So every time Evans learns about more American soldiers being killed, she changes the number in the window.

"I had to change the count three times yesterday," she said sadly.

Evans has received little negative response. One person came to her door and gave her some homemade antiwar and anti-Bush bumper stickers. One woman and her son drive by every day to check the updated number, then say a prayer for our troops.

And one neighbor, who has a son in Iraq, told Evans she agrees with her statement against the war but wants to support her son.

"That's exactly how I feel," Evans said. "I agree with the people who say, "Support the troops, but end the war.' "

Evans doesn't mince words. She hates war. She hates killing. She's outraged over what the U.S. government is doing in the name of spreading freedom, she said.

She began the count when America had lost 973 soldiers in Iraq. She patches together the casualty figure from single pieces of paper bearing each of the digits from 0 to 9.

"I think it makes a statement to use the same numbers, even if they get dog-eared," she said.

"This is an old story. It keeps going on and on and on."

Evans is the moving force behind this effort, which she said has the full backing of her husband, Dr. James T. Evans, a trauma surgeon and retired colonel with the U.S. Army Reserve.

Evans cut her teeth in opposition to war in the late 1960s, as a young housewife living in Niagara Falls who wrote letters to then-Sen. Jacob K. Javits of New York about Vietnam. She later joined a group called Mothers for Peace.

But she's not a regular at public protests and marches.

"This is my personal statement," she said. "I don't have to dress in black or be caught up in a movement. It's my personal statement. . . . I want the impact of just the numbers and the short message."

Besides the mounting loss of American troops, Evans has posted, at times, the number of wounded soldiers and even the number of Iraqi citizens believed killed.

"Imagine a bomb dropping on Elmwood Avenue and just going about your business," she said.

"There are men and women and children who are terrified."

Evans even put up a short poem one day:

Monica Sighed Bill Lied

Nobody Died.

George Lied

Thousands Died

And Nobody Cried.

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