Thomas Owen Every (1938 - 2020)

Born 20 Sep 1938 in Madison, Dane, Wisconsin, United States

Ancestors

Died 30 Mar 2020 at age 81 in Sauk City, Sauk, Wisconsin, United States

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Biography

Thomas Owen Every, better known by his alter-ego of Dr. Evermor, was a salvager and American folk artist who was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999 as having constructed the world's largest scrap metal sculpture at the time, the Forevertron.^[1][2]

Childhood

He was born 20 Sep 1938 in Madison, Wisconsin to Edward Malcolm Every and Clarice Doane.^[3] He is descended from a family of British baronets (see Every baronets on Wikipedia and Baronets of Egginton).

He grew up on the industrial east side of wartime Madison, building things from items he had collected. The family moved back to Brooklyn, Wisconsin in Dane and Green Counties where he continued to forage and scrap, eventually ending up with a 1950 Ford truck to haul his finds for sale or trade. By 1956, at age 17, he had collected so many things that it was becoming a violation of local village ordinance against junkyards, so he was forced to retire his venture.^[3]

While working for the Evansville Salvage and Wrecking Company, he went to the Stoughton dump where his future wife Eleanor Gryttenholm would go on foraging trips there. In 1958, Every founded Eveco International, a large-scale industrial wrecker and salvager, for whom he would invest 25 years of work into. It was during this period that he met Jim Delaney of Delaney's Surplus in Sumpter, Sauk County, Wisconsin, a person who would play a large role in the creation of the Forevertron.^[3]

Military service

Also in 1958, Every's dentist and World War II vet Dr. Col Chester Cjertsen recommended Every join the military, and soon after Every enlisted.^[4] He was trained at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and found that he excelled in carpentry school building scale models for classroom instruction. Even in the military, Every would be buying and reselling things with his contacts in Oklahoma, until he was ordered to 'cease and desist' by the company commander. He would serve two years in reserve as part of the 44th Medics as a carpenter.^[3]

Entrepreneurship and family life

Returning home, he bought the Armour Condensed Milk plant in Stoughton as a new base of operations. In 1962, he married Connie Utter of Stoughton. The next year in 1963, Every worked with her brother James Shertz, a professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to build a mobile car crusher, apparently the first of its kind according to Every. They quickly applied for a patent for the machine. Every divorced from Utter in June 1964 and soon after married Eleanor Gryttenholm in Illinois, who had been living next door to his business in Stoughton and later ended up working for him.^[3]

By the 1970s, they lived on the Doane family farm owned by his mother. Tom Every and Eleanor had four children; Thayer in 1964, Treasure in 1967, Tya in 1968 and Troy in 1980.^[3]

Salvage as art

In 1972, the family relocated to a home in the Highlands district of Madison that had been scheduled for demolition. Instead Every paid $125,000 for the property and began to renovate it. This property acted as a location for him to display his first artistic creations. At this time, Every had also become a colleague of Alex Jordan of the House on the Rock after successfully selling twenty thousand whiskey barrels from a Kentucky distillery to him. The men were brought together by Sid Boyum and the deal was struck in the hospital room where Alex was recovering from an accident with a horse and his car. Every would call himself "Mr. Buildmor", foreshadowing his identity to follow. The two would work together on the House on the Rock up into the late 1970s, with Every constructing the Carousel there, but financial troubles, entanglements with the law and strain on their business relationship would end their teamwork. A Great Gatsby-themed party at the Highlands in 1979 would be one of the last highlights there. It was during this time that Every would become Dr, Evermor.^[3]

Reinvention

In the process of backing out of the turmoil surrounding House on the Rock, Every had developed the idea for the Forevertron and the lore behind his mythical 19th century ancestor/alter-ego. He returned to Sumpter in Sauk County where he had been salvaging items for the House on the Rock south of Delaney's and across from the defunct Badger Army Ammunition Depot. From 1983 to 1986, Every or a small crew would construct the 108-foot-long, 65-foot-high, and 72-foot-wide Forevertron and its components.^[3]

The late 1980s up to the mid-1990s was a period of time where his son Troy, named for the Troy weight, collaborated with him on over 200 projects and also created small scrap figures for profit. Their work together inspired Every to create the Bird Band, a series of scrap birds surrounding the Forevertron, each with their own musical instrument integrated into them. An invite by Dan Woolpert to a concert of the First Brigade Band in Baraboo led to the construction of the Director Bird (1998).^[3]

The 38-foot-tall pair of Fides Gravis or Fiddle Birds came from Doug Britton rummaging in Delaney's yard to find two discarded Hubbard tanks used for hydrotherapy for burn patients. Initially Britton thought one could be used as a hot tub for his home, and paid him for it, but Every revealed its new form as one of the birds.^[3]

In 1997, Tom and Eleanor divorced. The event would lead Every to build his Mangascar (or Mangasgar) Birds,^[5] the name inspired by a claimed 17th century ancestor of his, Henry Every (20 Aug 1659 – after 1696), who became a pirate around Madagascar.^[3][6][7]

Later projects

Attention shifted to the adjacent Badger Army Ammunition Plant site where submissions were being requested for how to clean up and reuse the site. Every submitted a proposal that would involve his Forevertron acting as the centerpiece of a 3500-foot-long sculpture in what he and artist Jake Furnald called the Mirror Eye. It would act as a memorial to munitions workers, and an education and welcome center. The Juice Bug (1998), formerly known as the Badger Clean-up Bug, the Badger Bugs and Nenime Namod birds (2000) ("eminent domain" backwards with a few letters removed) were also created during this push for awareness about the proposal.^[3]

The seven Nenime Namod birds were installed at the north gate of the plant in the early morning of April Fools' Day. Eventually the civilian base commander Tom Foreham gave Every a short-term lease to have the birds on what was still then government property, and when the lease ran out they were relocated to Goose Pond Santuary in the Town of Arlington in Columbia County, Wisconsin. In March 2001, the Reuse Committee evaluated twenty-five proposals, including Every's, and placed his in a neutral category of interest, neither high not low. As of 2008, the final decision of the site was not determined.^[3]

Every picked up an apprentice in UW-Madison student Erika Koivunen around 2000 when she began to weld butterflies. Their collaboration down in Cooksville in Rock County, where his son Thayer owns a blacksmith shop, resulted in the Bonsai Butterfly Tree. The tree would become her senior project for graduation. She would continue to weld alongside Every into 2001 for a commission by Don Warren that became the three-story-tall bird sculptures named Dreamkeepers. Legal ramifications resulted from debate as to the cost of the birds, their delivery, and who ultimately owned them. They were installed at 211 South Paterson Street in the Atwood and Williamson neighborhoods of east Madison, with a ceremony held afterward on June 11, 2003, the summer solstice.^[3]

Later life

Every had a large stroke in May 2004 that affected his left side and Eleanor took care of him. As early as September 1999, he was experiencing stroke symptoms, but continued to work. Previous surgery had been performed to increase blood flow in his neck after herbal remedies raised his blood pressure, and hip replacement surgery was performed in 2005. Amid his health ailments, Every was able to attend an exhibition of his work at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in June 2007 where he signed copies of the book Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists.^[3]

Death and burial

Tom "Dr. Evermor" Every died in a nursing home in Sauk City, Wisconsin 30 Mar 2020. He was buried in a private ceremony in Cooksville, Wisconsin. A celebration of life ceremony was to be held after.^[8][9]

Legacy

Though Dr. Evermor may have passed, his daughter Tya is working with writers to produce a science fiction show based on the Forevertron called "Evermor".^[10]

Exhibitions

Every's work had largely remained within the sculpture park until the spring of 1996, when Ann Parker invited Every to held a major retrospective at Edgewood College in Madison, titled "Dr. Evermor: Sculptures Made of History". Some of Troy's work was also present in the form of bird heads made for the exhibit. Smaller exhibits were also held in Kohler, Wisconsin (also 1996) and at the Paine Art Center in Oshkosh (2002).^[3]

Selected works

• Forevertron (1986)
• Director Bird (1998)
• Juice Bug (1998)
• Nenime Namod (2000)

Sources

1. ↑ Forevertron on Roadside America
2. ↑ Guinness has since given the title over to Gary Greff for his Geese in Flight in North Dakota. See Guinness World Records.com
3. ↑ ^{3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15} Kupsh, Tom. A Mythic Obsession: The World of Dr. Evermor. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008.
4. ↑ The Colonel would also be integrated into the lore of Dr. Evermor.
5. ↑ The spelling by Every here is intentional.
6. ↑ Henry Every's ship was the Fancy.
7. ↑ It seems that this Henry Every is not one of the Baronets of Egginton named Sir Henry Every (the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, or 9th) or if he was confused with Sir John Every, the 4th Baronet of Egginton who was a captain in the Royal Navy in the 17th century. Current information suggests that the pirate Henry Every was a cousin of the baronets, but is not proven conclusively.
8. ↑ Dr. Evermor: A metal artist, character, and Wisconsin gem dies at 81
9. ↑ Remembrance of Tom Every (1938-2020) on Roadside America
10. ↑ Geek Road Trip: Evermor, the Steampunk Sculpture Park Ascending to TV Immortality, Syfy.com, also Dr. Evermor's last public interview. January 28, 2020.