Benefit dinner to be held for Durwood Evans
By Steve Herring
Published in News on April 13, 2012 1:46 PM
Full Size
Submitted photo
Durwood Evans with his wife, Dorothy, and son, Luke, 10. A benefit to help offset Evans' recent medical bills will be held on Saturday at Oakland Community Church.
A fundraising chicken pastry dinner to help Durwood Evans Jr. and his family with medical bills will be held Saturday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Oakland Community Church, 921 Oakland Church Road, Princeton.
Tickets are $7 for eat-in or take-out plates. Faith Free Will Baptist Church is helping with the event, too.
Evans said he isn't sure about the "Miracle Man" nickname that family and friends have given him, but admitted there might be something to it after all.
In November, Evans, who has congenital heart problems, was attending Faith Free Will Baptist Church when he went into ventricular tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) and passed out. Nurses in the congregation administered CPR until paramedics arrived.
He was first treated at Wayne Memorial Hospital and then at Duke Medical Center where he has been treated previously for the heart problems. He returned home in early December and this past Wednesday celebrated his 45th birthday.
Evans was born with transposition of the great vessels -- a heart defect in which the two major vessels (the aorta and the pulmonary artery) that carry blood away from the heart are switched.
He first underwent surgery at age 3 to correct the problem. In 2002 he underwent surgery again to have a pacemaker implanted.
"I knew something would happen, but I did not know when," he said of his most recent attack.
While at Duke, Evans was placed in a medically induced coma
"He has done exceptionally well -- that is why we call him a miracle," said Karen Evans, his sister-in-law.