Businessman’s Donation is Picture Perfect

By Matthew Daneman of the Democrat & Chronicle, 20 January 1999. Rediscovered by Lore Disalvo.

Hemlock NY 1950-60 as portrayed by Ruth Vaughn.

Hemlock - The artwork of Ruth Vaughn hangs in the former school building in Hemlock NY which Jack Evans gave to the town of Livonia.

The artwork shows Hemlock’s Main Street as it used to be, more than 60 years ago.

Jack Evans was growing up in Hemlock then. The piece - a gift to the town of Livonia - now hangs in the Jack Evans Community Center. The building - a former school - was his gift to the town, as well.

“Since I was brought up in the village, I had sort of an attachment,” said Evans, whose East Bloomfield business and home sit a short drive away from Sandy Bottom, a piece of land at the north end of Honeoye Lake. That, too, was a gift, donated in the 1970s to the town of Richmond.

Evans is thought of as something of a philanthropist, said Livonia Supervisor Tim Wahl.

“He’s a generous man,” Wahl said.

Evans, 80, is a 1935 graduate of Hemlock High School. His graduating class had 16 members, “perhaps the largest class the school ever had,” Evans said.

His company, Velmex Inc., bought the old school building in 1983. It had been unused for several years, he said: “We thought we might use it for manufacturing purposes. But we never did.”

Evans was born in Buffalo, but was raised in this small Livingston County community. After graduating in 1936 from Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in optic, he went into the business of manufacturing what are known as dovetail slides. Now his firm on Routes 5 K& 20 in Ontario County employs 38 people in making the slides, used by laboratories and instrument makers.

“It’s a niche business,” Evans said.

The company spent several hundred thousand dollars improving the building, such as replacing the heating system, windows and doors. It decided to donate the building to the town of Livonia in late 1996.

Part of the motivation for the gift was the cost of maintaining it.

And, Evans added, “Being a graduate ... I thought it’d be a nice gesture.”

The red brick building houses a number of offices, including the art studio of Ruth Vaughn, who made the artwork. It also servers as a community center, with the gym hosting the occasional basketball game and square dance.

The artwork donation came late last month. The piece is of a stretch of Hemlock in the 1930s. It’s fiber art based on a painting done in the late 1950s of the same stretch of town. But Evans said he had Vaughn change some details to take the scene back 20 years or so, to the Hemlock of his youth.

“I would have liked to have kept it (the artwork),” Evans said. But like the building it hangs in, he said, he ultimately decided it would be better for the whole town to appreciate it.