Our Unique Stories

rev. dwayne evans

1961-2026

Life Story

The life of Reverend Dwayne Evans cannot be told through a single chapter. He was a son of Lawrence, a 4-H youth, musician, husband and father, deacon, minister, pastor, community organizer, and advocate for young people. He was also a man whose later years included serious personal struggles.

Taken together, the records of his life reveal both accomplishment and difficulty. Neither should erase the other.

Early Life and Family Roots

Dwayne Evans was born on May 22, 1961, in Newton, Mississippi, the son of Huey “Blue” Evans and Virginia Dare Whitehead Evans. The youngest of six children, he grew up in the Lawrence community of Newton County in a family deeply connected to the area’s churches, schools, and community life.

From childhood, Dwayne was surrounded by institutions that would shape much of his early and adult life—family, church, school, music, and community organizations.

The surviving newspaper record provides an unusually detailed glimpse of him as a boy. Rather than appearing in the historical record for the first time as an adult, Dwayne can be followed through many of the activities that helped shape his childhood.

Growing Up in the Lawrence Community

Dwayne became involved with 4-H while still a child. In 1971, at about ten years old, he was among eighteen young people from the Lawrence community who completed a series of activities devoted to foods and nutrition. The program taught children about nutrition, measuring ingredients, preparing foods, and setting a table.

He also participated with young people from the Lawrence and St. John 4-H clubs in county competition in Decatur. A surviving newspaper photograph captures Dwayne standing among the young contestants—a visual record of his involvement in the community as a boy.

A group of children and an adult posing for a photo, identified as participants in a 4-H contest in Decatur. They are dressed in formal attire and wearing name tags. The photo includes two rows: four boys in the front with white shirts and ties, and three individuals in the back, including a girl and a boy.

As he grew older, his 4-H activities expanded. In 1973, his swine project record received recognition in county judging. That same year, the Lawrence 4-H Club was preparing for another year of community projects. Dwayne participated in the club’s 4-H Sunday observance, reciting the 4-H Creed, while his mother, Virginia Evans, served as an assistant adult leader.

Another photograph from the period shows Dwayne and fellow club members taking part in a community clean-up effort. The club planned regular cleanups and projects to beautify the areas surrounding local mailboxes.

Group of five people participating in a clean-up tour organized by the Lawrence 4-H Club, standing behind a table outdoors, with trees in the background.

These seemingly small newspaper notices preserve something important about Dwayne’s childhood. Years before he became a minister or community organizer, he was already participating in organized service within the rural Lawrence community.

Music, School, and Church

Music was another recurring part of Dwayne’s youth.

At Jerusalem Baptist Church, he was among the children participating in a piano recital built around the theme “There Is Music in the Air.” As he grew older, music followed him into school.

At Newton High School, Dwayne played tuba in the marching band. He graduated from Newton High School in 1979.

Music would remain part of his church life as an adult. Years later, newspaper accounts would identify Deacon Dwayne Evans as a soloist during Jerusalem Baptist Church’s annual Men’s Day service.

The progression is striking: the boy appearing in a church music program eventually became one of the adults helping lead worship in the same community.

Marriage and Fatherhood

On September 15, 1979, Dwayne married Pamela McIntosh.

Their marriage produced one daughter, Romonica Renae Evans. A newspaper profile from 1992 described Dwayne as employed at La-Z-Boy, married to Pamela Evans, and the father of one daughter.

Family remained an important part of his life. When his parents, Huey and Virginia Evans, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, Dwayne—by then a deacon—and his sister Inez Cager were placed in charge of the celebration.

A Life in Jerusalem Baptist Church

Dwayne’s relationship with Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church in Lawrence stretched from childhood into adulthood.

He accepted the Christian faith at an early age and became increasingly involved in the work of the congregation. Before becoming a minister, he served Jerusalem in several capacities, including Sunday School teacher, Vacation Bible School director, choir soloist, and deacon.

Contemporary newspaper reports help document that progression. One community column identifies Deacon Dwayne Evans as Bible School director. Another records him as the featured soloist for Jerusalem’s annual Men’s Day.

These responsibilities placed Dwayne within a long tradition of lay leadership in rural Black churches, where deacons, teachers, musicians, and other members carried much of the work that sustained congregational life from one generation to another.

Confronting Problems Facing Young People

By the early 1990s, Dwayne’s concerns extended beyond the walls of his church.

In 1992, he began organizing a series of community workshops addressing problems facing young people in Newton County. The issues he identified included illegal drug use, drug trafficking, gang-like activity, teen violence, and the need for greater parental involvement.

Rather than organizing the effort solely through Jerusalem Baptist Church, Dwayne envisioned something broader. He wanted churches and community organizations to work together.

Explaining his purpose, he told The Newton Record:

“The workshop is designed to open the eyes of the people in the community to what is happening.”

The first workshop was scheduled for June 29, 1992, at the Newton High School auditorium, with Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol public information officer Prentiss Parker as keynote speaker.

Dwayne emphasized that the effort was not intended to belong to one congregation. He hoped eventually to form a committee composed of people from multiple churches and organizations.

His reasoning was straightforward:

“We are asking the community to be involved because these problems are major issues that involve all of us in one way or another.”

Helping Bring DARE to Newton County

That community work developed into Dwayne’s involvement with the Newton County DARE Association—Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

The association had been working since August 1992 to establish DARE programs in Newton County’s public elementary schools. By August 1993, Rev. Dwayne Evans was serving as vice president of the organization.

Later that year, newspaper coverage identified him as president of DARE. During Red Ribbon Week, he was scheduled to speak to students and parents in the Union Public School District about drug prevention.

A surviving newspaper photograph records another moment from this work: Dwayne receiving a $5,000 contribution from Earl Bryant, plant manager of La-Z-Boy South, to help fund the Newton County DARE program. The newspaper explained that the anti-drug initiative would benefit all three county school systems.

Dwayne Evans receives a $5,000 check from Earl Bryant, plant manager of La-Z-Boy South, for the Newton County DARE program.

This was one of the most visible periods of Dwayne’s community leadership. He was not simply preaching against problems from a pulpit. He was helping organize workshops, raising community awareness, working with schools and law enforcement, and securing financial support for prevention programs aimed at children.

The Call to Ministry

In 1993, Dwayne formally entered the ministry.

His years as a church member, teacher, deacon, musician, and community organizer had preceded that calling. As Rev. Dwayne Evans, he eventually served several congregations in central and east-central Mississippi, including Greater Rose Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Union, Saint John Missionary Baptist Church in Newton, Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Philadelphia, and New Olivet Baptist Church in Meridian.

His ministry placed him before congregations as preacher, teacher, counselor, and spiritual leader.

Alongside his religious responsibilities, Dwayne continued working in the secular workforce. His employment included La-Z-Boy and later work in retail management and sales.

A Difficult Later Chapter

Dwayne’s later life took a different course.

During the 2000s, he moved away from the active church life and pastoral ministry that had defined much of his earlier adulthood. Family knowledge remembers this period as one in which he struggled with drug addiction.

The public record provides glimpses of those difficulties, although it cannot fully explain them.

In 2004, a newspaper police report stated that Dwayne, then forty-three, had been arrested by the Mississippi Highway Patrol for DUI, first offense, and speeding.

In 2018, another public notice reported a marijuana possession case and described the matter at that time as pending court. Because the surviving clipping records a pending matter, it should not be treated as evidence of a conviction.

The difficulties continued into his final years. On February 26, 2025, Newton police arrested Dwayne, then sixty-three, on charges of possession of a controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia. The newspaper report documents the arrest and charges; without the corresponding court disposition, it does not establish the ultimate outcome of the case.

These records are painful when placed beside the work Dwayne had done three decades earlier.

In the early 1990s, he had stood before his community warning about illegal drugs and helping establish prevention programs for children. Years later, substance use became part of his own struggle.

Yet that contrast should not be reduced to hypocrisy.

The surviving records tell us what Dwayne did publicly at particular moments in his life. They cannot tell us everything that happened between those moments—when his struggles began, what circumstances contributed to them, what attempts he may have made to overcome them, or what private battles were known only to those closest to him.

What they reveal instead is something more human: a person who once worked to protect others from a problem that he would later struggle with himself.

Family and Final Years

Despite the changes and difficulties of his later life, Dwayne remained part of a large Evans and Whitehead family whose roots in Newton County stretched back generations.

His life took him at various times through Newton, Lauderdale, and Kemper counties, but Lawrence and Newton County remained central to his story.

Dwayne lived through the deaths of his parents, Huey and Virginia Evans, and brothers Herman Evans and Huey Clinton Evans. He also experienced the deaths of his niece Jessica Cager and nephew Keegan Robinson.

He remained the father of Romonica Renae Evans Jones, and his family expanded to include grandchildren Demarius Dewan Evans and Jada Jones.

Death

Rev. Dwayne Evans died at his home on March 31, 2026, at the age of sixty-four.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Huey Evans and Virginia Dare Whitehead Evans; his brothers Herman Evans and Huey Clinton Evans; his niece Jessica Cager; and his nephew Keegan Robinson.

Among those surviving him were his daughter, Romonica Renae Evans Jones and her husband, Courtney, of Walnut Grove, Mississippi; his brother Julius Evans of New Orleans, Louisiana; his sisters Minister Bobby Jean Price of Newton and Wortly Inez Cager and her husband, Levelle, of Union; sisters-in-law Annie Lee Evans of Newton and Gracie Evans of Bowling Green, Kentucky; his grandchildren Demarius Dewan Evans and Jada Jones; and numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, extended relatives, friends, and people who had known him through the church and community.

Legacy

Dwayne Evans’s life resists being reduced to either its highest achievements or its most difficult years.

The newspaper record first introduces us to a boy growing up in Lawrence—learning through 4-H, participating in community cleanups, competing with other rural children, attending church programs, and eventually playing tuba in the Newton High School band.

We next encounter the young husband and father, the Jerusalem Baptist Church member who became a teacher, Bible School director, soloist, and deacon.

Then comes Rev. Dwayne Evans: minister, pastor, community organizer, and advocate for children.

The newspaper record from the early 1990s is particularly revealing. Dwayne recognized that illegal drugs and violence were no longer problems that rural communities could regard as belonging somewhere else. He organized workshops, called churches and community organizations together, became an officer and later president of the Newton County DARE Association, spoke during Red Ribbon Week, and helped raise money to bring drug-prevention education to local children.

Then came another chapter.

The man who had once worked publicly against drug abuse eventually faced substance-related struggles of his own. That part of his story should neither be concealed nor allowed to consume everything that preceded it.

Human lives rarely follow straight lines.

Dwayne’s later struggles do not erase the children who benefited from programs he helped support. They do not erase the congregations he pastored, the sermons he preached, the songs he sang, the church programs he directed, the community meetings he organized, or the boy photographed among his fellow 4-H members in Newton County.

Likewise, remembering his years as Reverend Dwayne Evans does not require pretending that the difficult years never happened.

Perhaps the fullest way to remember him is to allow both truths to remain.

Dwayne Evans spent part of his life trying to strengthen his church and community and to steer young people away from destructive paths. Later, he encountered some of those same dangers in his own life. His story therefore becomes more than the biography of a minister. It is the story of a whole human life—of family and faith, promise and service, accomplishment and struggle, and of the complicated distance that sometimes exists between the person we hope to be and the battles we ultimately face.

Resting Place

Saint John Missionary Baptist Church Graveyard

Photos/Albums

A person wearing glasses and a graduation robe with a colorful stole, posing against a dark background with subtle light effects.

Sources

  • Family records and obituary information for Rev. Dwayne Evans. Dwayne was born May 22, 1961, in Newton, Mississippi, to Huey “Blue” Evans and Virginia Dare Whitehead Evans and was the youngest of six children.
  • “4-H Members Finish Foods Nutrition Activities Hours,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), September 1, 1971, p. 10. Dwayne was among eighteen Lawrence-area youths participating in a four-hour foods and nutrition program.
  • “Participate in Contest,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), 1971. The accompanying photograph identifies Dwayne Evans among members of the Lawrence and St. John 4-H clubs participating in county competition at Decatur.
  • “Record Winners Community 4-H Club Revealed,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), September 26, 1973, p. 5. Dwayne Evans was recognized for his swine project record in county 4-H judging.
  • Stan Burton, “Lawrence 4-H Club Meets,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), 1973. The article records Dwayne’s participation in the Lawrence 4-H Club and identifies him as presenting the 4-H Creed during the club’s 4-H Sunday observance. His mother, Mrs. Virginia Evans, served as an assistant adult leader.
  • “Short Clean-Up Tour,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), 1973. Newspaper photograph and caption identifying Dwayne Evans among Lawrence 4-H members participating in a community clean-up project following the club’s October 6 meeting.
  • “Lawrence Colored News,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), Dwayne Evans was among the students participating in a piano recital at Jerusalem Baptist Church. The program’s theme was “There Is Music in the Air.”
  • “NHS Band,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), November 10, 1976, p. 2. Dwayne Evans is listed among the tuba players in the Newton High School Marching Band.
  • Family and obituary records for Rev. Dwayne Evans. Dwayne graduated from Newton High School in 1979 and married Pamela McIntosh on September 15, 1979. Their daughter was Romonica Renae Evans.
  • “Celebrates 40th Wedding Anniversary,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi). The children of Huey and Virginia Evans celebrated their parents’ fortieth anniversary on August 21; Deacon Dwayne Evans and his sister Inez Cager were in charge of the celebration.
  • “Church Services,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi). A Jerusalem Baptist Church report identifies Deacon Dwayne Evans as Bible School director, documenting his leadership in the congregation before and/or during his ministerial career.
  • “Celebrates Annual Men’s Day,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi). The report identifies Deacon Dwayne Evans as the soloist for Jerusalem Baptist Church’s annual Men’s Day service.
  • “Workshops May Help Teens with Problems,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), June 24, 1992, p. 1. Dwayne organized a community workshop at Newton High School addressing illegal drug use, drug trafficking, gang-like activity, teen violence, and parental involvement. The article identifies him as a member of Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church.
  • Ibid. Dwayne explained the purpose of the initiative: “The workshop is designed to open the eyes of the people in the community to what is happening.” He emphasized that the program was not sponsored by a single church and envisioned participation from multiple churches and community organizations.
  • “Workshop,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), June 24, 1992, p. 3. The continuation of the article identifies Dwayne as an employee of La-Z-Boy, husband of Pamela Evans, and father of one daughter. He told the newspaper, “We are asking the community to be involved because these problems are major issues that involve all of us in one way or another.”
  • “DARE Program to Begin September,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), August 25, 1993, p. 1. The Newton County DARE Association had been working toward establishing the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program since August 1992. At the time of publication, Rev. Dwayne Evans was serving as vice president of the association.
  • “Schools Celebrate Red Ribbon Week with Special Events,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), October 20, 1993, p. 1. By October 1993, Rev. Dwayne Evans was identified as president of DARE and was scheduled to participate in a meeting for Union Public School District parents and students during Red Ribbon Week.
  • “Dwayne Evans Receives $5,000 for Newton County DARE Program,” photograph and caption, The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi). The photograph shows Dwayne receiving a $5,000 check from Earl Bryant, plant manager of La-Z-Boy South, to help fund the Newton County DARE program serving the county’s three school systems.
  • Family and obituary records for Rev. Dwayne Evans. Dwayne formally entered the ministry in 1993. His pastoral service included Greater Rose Hill Missionary Baptist Church, Union; Saint John Missionary Baptist Church, Newton; Providence Missionary Baptist Church, Philadelphia; and New Olivet Baptist Church, Meridian.
  • Family recollections concerning the later life of Rev. Dwayne Evans. Family knowledge remembers that after his years in active pastoral ministry, Dwayne experienced a prolonged period of drug addiction and separation from active church life.
  • “Dwayne Evans, 43, BM, Arrested by the Mississippi Highway Patrol,” police report, The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), August 18, 2004, p. 5. The report states that Dwayne was arrested for DUI, first offense, and speeding. The clipping documents an arrest; it does not by itself establish the final disposition of the charges.
  • Police/court report, 2018. The clipping reports Dwayne Evans in connection with possession of marijuana on June 15, 2018, with the matter described at publication as “pending court.” Because the report states that the matter was pending, it should not be cited as evidence of a conviction.
  • “Newton Police Department,” police report, 2025. The report states that Dwayne Evans, 63, of Newton, was arrested on February 26, 2025, for possession of a controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia. The clipping establishes the reported arrest and charges, not their ultimate judicial disposition.
  • Obituary/funeral record for Rev. Dwayne Evans, 2026. Dwayne died at his home on March 31, 2026, at age sixty-four.
  • Ibid. Dwayne was preceded in death by his parents, Huey Evans and Virginia Dare Whitehead Evans; brothers Herman Evans and Huey Clinton Evans; niece Jessica Cager; and nephew Keegan Robinson.
  • Ibid. Survivors included his daughter, Romonica Renae Evans Jones (Courtney) of Walnut Grove, Mississippi; brother Julius Evans of New Orleans; sisters Minister Bobby Jean Price of Newton and Wortly Inez Cager (Levelle) of Union; sisters-in-law Annie Lee Evans of Newton and Gracie Evans of Bowling Green, Kentucky; and grandchildren Demarius Dewan Evans and Jada Jones, along with extended family.

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