Learning about family histories as one marrying into an eclectic, intriguing and provocative family often leaves you with more questions than answers. The more I delved into Uncle George’s wife, Doreen, the more I wanted to know, yet was left only asking questions with few answers.
How did she meet George? How long did she live at the Boyer YL Ranch? What was she like? Why did she marry George? That story is for another “Meet the Boyer’s.”
She was my husband’s favorite aunt. He remembers her proper British accent and how she would walk with her cats around the ranch. Jock does the same thing with our two cats, Kongo and Dobby. He said everyone loved her. She had a “way” about her, and he remembers how much she loved the ranch.
Who was she? When you “google” Doreen Evans you find many accounts of her life pre-Boyer YL Ranch days. She was born in the UK in 1916 and came from a family of motor racing enthusiasts. She was racing by the time she was only 17.
A woman race car driver in 1933? Even in today’s world female race car drivers are still an anomaly. Doreen was fierce on the track, once jumping out of her car after it had caught fire while it was moving. Doreen raced LeMans on the MG Team known as the Dancing Daughters. In 1936, she retired after her partner and fiancee, Alan Phipps, crashed their team car on the first lap. For some reason, that sentence makes me want to sit down, have a glass of wine with her and ask her exactly how she felt watching her husband crash their car on her very last day. More questions than answers.
The Phipps were an extremely wealthy family from Denver who later went on to own the Denver Broncos. Through various blogs and stories written about her, I know she had three children. Who are they? I do not know.
Doreen’s adrenalin coursing through her did not evaporate when she retired as she took up flying. To what extent? More questions.
At some point, she divorced Alan Phipps, another gutsy move for a woman married to a wealthy man in the 1950’s. Unconventional, we know. Why did she leave Phipps? Was it a desire to return to a life of adventure?
There are a few photos I have found around the ranch, one most striking is of her sitting in a race car in the mid-1930’s and a soldier in a Nazi SS uniform standing beside the car. It fell out of a notebook she kept which I haven’t begun reading. I already have too many questions.
From the stories I’ve heard from my husband and his brother, their Uncle George was slightly north of cantankerous. He was an alcoholic and had a temper. Doreen and George seem like they are from parallel universes. Was it him? Was it the ranch? Was it the adventure she loved?
She was a stunningly beautiful woman with an adventurous spirit to match. How long was she at the ranch? Sadly, I will never know her as she passed away in California in 1982, when I was a sophomore in high school in Kansas, a universe away.
If anyone knows more information about my “Aunt” Doreen, I would love to know more about her. Pictures of her are integrated into the photographic history of the ranch. One sits on our piano, another on my desk, where she inspires me daily.
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