When many people her age were retiring, Eileen E. Evenhouse took a full-time job as a desk clerk at the Fox Lake Public Library. “My mother would read four or five books a week–that was her passion,” said her daughter, Patricia Buccelli. Her library job, which she started at age 60 and continued at until she was 75, allowed her to “take care of people and read in her spare time,” her daughter said. Mrs. Evenhouse, 83, died of renal failure Tuesday, Dec. 9, in the Fountains extended care facility in Crystal Lake. Born in Downstate Kinmundy, her family lived in Mattoon and Washburn before moving to Chicago when she was a teenager. She graduated in 1938 from Austin High School on the West Side then worked as an auditor for Walgreen Co. She married her high school sweetheart, Robert Evenhouse, in 1941, and they lived on the Northwest Side. Largely a stay-at-home mother, Mrs. Evenhouse worked at a dry cleaner and other jobs off and on. After their only child got married, the couple moved to Fox Lake in 1962. “My mother was my friend, and also my friends’ friend; when we ladies would go to dinner, she would come along,” her daughter said. Other survivors include a grandson and four great-grandchildren. Visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday in K.K. Hamsher Funeral Home, 12 N. Pistakee Lake Rd., Fox Lake. A service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday in the funeral home.
