Legacy Builder: Evelyn Lightner
To whom much is given much is expected. Evelyn Finch Lightner embodied this idea. Born in Saint Paul in 1892, Evie (as she preferred to be called) was connected by both birth and marriage to successful, pioneering families in the city. Though she had a very comfortable upbringing—and this lifestyle continued into adulthood when she married attorney Milton Lightner—Evie always set an example of giving back for her son and daughter.
As often as one would find her on the social scene, so would one find her at the center of volunteering in the community. When her husband joined the Navy in World War I, Evie devoted herself to soldiers and their families. Through the newly-established Junior League of Saint Paul, she served coffee and sandwiches to servicemen at the Red Cross Canteen in the old Union Depot downtown. She later went on to become the organization’s president.
Evie also worked with the Red Cross’ Motor Aid Service, where she recruited women drivers to provide much-needed courier service for the organization. During World War II she served with the Red Cross again, this time in charge of knitting mittens and sweaters for their Production Program. All of her work, in Evie’s own words, was to “keep the soldiers’ families from worrying and to keep the men in uniform from worrying.”
Though she is gone now, Evie continues to help keep families from worrying—when she died in 1998 at the age of 106, she left the bulk of her estate to The Saint Paul Foundation in an Unrestricted Fund.
One of the many organizations the Milton C. and Evelyn F. Lightner Family Fund has supported is Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, helping to prevent homelessness for 200 East Metro families and individuals, and assisting them in maintaining safe and habitable housing. Her Unrestricted Fund has also helped the Green Institute open a ReUse Center in the East Metro—a place where people can find salvaged building items, and where area residents can also earn living wages and build skills in carpentry and business operations.
Thanks to Evie’s forward-thinking and giving spirit, many lives in our community will continue to be positively affected for years to come.
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Photo Caption: Evelyn Finch Lightner volunteers in the American Red Cross’ mobile canteen, circa 1942. Photo source: Minnesota Historical Society