When Gareth Evans, pastor of St. John’s Episcopal Church, first visited Charlestown in the summer of 2003, he was immediately struck by the forest garden located behind the church and dedicated to its most famous pastor, Wolcott Cutler.
“I sat out in the garden and wondered what it would be like to be rector of the church,” he said.
A little more than a year later, Evans was named the church’s new pastor and became a resident of the Navy Yard.
Born in 1968, Evans spent his early childhood in Lancaster, England, a market town located 200 miles north of London. His father worked as a personnel manager for BICC Components, a British cable manufacturer. His mother trained as a nurse, but she abandoned her professional career after Evans and his sister Samantha, now 37, were born.
Evans had the dubious distinction of being the great-nephew of John Robson Walby, the last person to be hanged at Lancaster Castle on Aug. 13, 1964, after he was convicted of murdering a policeman. “Seeing the castle from my bedroom window as a kid certainly added an interesting dimension to getting up in the morning,” Evans said.
At age 7, his family moved to Southport, a sleepy seaside town near Liverpool populated primarily by vacationers and retirees. It was here where a retired doctor and family friend first suggested to Evans that she could see him in the pulpit. And while Evans was taken with the idea, he admits he was skeptical because the woman offering the advice was rarely sober past noon.
Evans also said that his eventual ordination helped to further solidify his and Samantha’s respective roles within their family.
“Growing up, I was always the good kid and she was always the naughty one,” he joked. “It got played out on some cosmic level.”
In 1988, Evans began college at the University of Wales, Cardiff, where he majored in religious studies. His said his decision to attend school there was prompted in part by a desire to honor his father’s Welsh roots. (Gareth means “bearer of the spears” in Welsh, Evans said).
“It was a way of understanding more fully the distinction between England and Wales,” Evans said. “While I was born in England, my temperament and way of thinking were more Celtic than anything else.”
After graduating in 1991, Evans spent a year in Alexandria, Egypt, where he divided his time between working for the Episcopal church and volunteering at an orphanage run by Mother Teresa’s sisters. He returned to Southport in 1992 and went to work at a candy factory.
“I probably put on 15 pounds because you could eat as much candy as you wanted,” Evans said. “The factory was so thick with sugar that it could rot your teeth.”
He then went on to the seminary at the University of Oxford. After he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theology and was ordained in 1996, Evans spent four years as an assistant priest at a large suburban parish in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Perhaps Evan’s fondest memory from this time was his commission and portrayal of Jesus Christ in the parish’s production of “The Northumbrian Passion Play” in 1999.
The same year that he took to the stage, Evans vacationed in New England with an old college friend. While visiting the Harvard Divinity School, he applied to the master’s program in theological studies and was subsequently accepted for admission in the fall of 2000.
As a Harvard student, Evans volunteered as an associate priest at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge’s Central Square. He was named the interim priest in 2002 after the church’s rector left. “I was the little shot in between two big shots,” Evans recalled.
In October 2004, four years after Evans came onboard at St. Peter’s, Evans relocated to Charlestown and became St. John’s first full-time rector in more than 15 years, as well as the 13th rector in the church’s history.
“Whilst I’m not particularly suspicious, I wish we could have gone from 12 to 14,” Evans deadpanned.
Evans believes that during his time as rector, he has helped the congregation revitalize St. John’s and to redefine its overall sense of purpose and mission. “It’s easy to pigeonhole Episcopalians as above the fray, but in terms of our shared leadership, we’re trying to bring our faith to the town in any way we can,” he said.
Under Evans’ guidance, the church has launched a number of new programs, including Arts for Action, a partnership with youth outreach organization MissionSAFE Charlestown that encourages at-risk kids to use art as a means of expression.
“What’s apparent to all of us is that is that there’s no quick fix to some of the social tension that we live with,” Evans said, “And that’s why it’s important that we channel our resources and energy to those whom need our help the most in town.”
And while Evans realizes that Charlestown is a community made up of different factions, he feels a kinship with both newcomers and lifelong residents.
“I see myself, to some degree, as embodying some of the class differences and tensions we see in Charlestown as a whole,” he said. “I see myself as a working-class lad who got a very good education, and in many ways, I come across as a solidly middle-class rector. At the same time, I have a deep affinity and appreciation for people who have lived here all their lives.”

Hoosac Stores Warehouse will undergo restoration soon in an effort to attract a new developer.
According to National Park Service spokesman Sean Hennessey, the agency has committed $200,000 “to button up the building while awaiting redevelopment.” Renovations, which include re-pointing of bricks and roof repairs, could begin as early as the summer. Afterwards, the Park Service plans to issue a Request for Proposals for the building or enter into negotiations with a non-profit organization, Hennessey said.
Located at 115 Constitution Road, Hoosac Stores Warehouse is a six-story brick structure that occupies 60,000 square feet and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was purchased by the National Park Service in 1980, and until the end of 2004, it served as a storage facility for materials from the USS Constitution and the Navy Yard, as well as artifacts from Boston’s Museum of African-American History (formerly the Museum of Afro-American History) and the New England Printing Museum of Andover, Mass.
In 2005, the Park Service accepted a proposal to redevelop the building from the Architectural Heritage Foundation, a Boston not-for-profit firm that renovates historic buildings for commercial purposes. As its tenant, the AHF had hoped to bring on The North Bennet Street School, a North End institute that teaches craft making and other trades. Those plan were abandoned, however, when a feasibility study determined that the building couldn’t be enlarged enough to accommodate all of the school’s programming due to preservation restrictions.
The AHF dropped out as the building’s devloper several months later, Hennessey said.

A tractor-trailer plummeted 50 feet off an 1nterstae 93 onramp Monday afternoon, leaving the driver in critical condition and injuring the drivers of two other vehicles, including a Charlestown man.
At approximately 4:40 p.m., a 2006 Mack tractor-trailer lunged off the ramp connecting the Tobin Bridge sand the outbound lanes of I-93, knocking a light pole onto a car on the ramp below before landing on a sports utility vehicle on the Leverett Connector, according to published reports. The truck driver, identified as Scott R. Ballou, 42, of Westbrook, Maine, was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital and was stilllisted in critical condition Tuesday afternoon, said an MGH spokesperson.
Rufus L. Simmons III, 39, of Charlestown was identified as the driver of the 2005 Acura TL that was struck by the light pole. He was taken to the MGH with minor injuries and treated and released on Monday. An unidentified woman in the car was uninjured, according to published reports. Simmons couldn’t be reached for comment at publication time.
The driver of the 2000 Mitsubishi Montero SUV, identified as Benjamin Hoffman, 20, of Arlington, was admitted to MGH with minor injuries and released Monday night.
A firefighter also suffered a shoulder injury as a result of the accident.
This marks the second time that a vehicle rolled off one of the city’s highway-connector ramps in just over two weeks.
On March 18, John Anderson, 20, of Manchester, N.H., died when the 1999 Toyota Camry he was a passenger in plummeted off the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, crashing through a Jersey barrier and a chain link fence. The car landed approximately 70 feet below on Boston Sand and Gravel Pit property, located only a few weeks away from the site of Monday’s accident.
Massachusetts Highway Department spokesman John Carlisle said State Police were still investigating the causes of both accidents. Investigations of this nature typically take five or six weeks, he said.

CAPTION: Left to right are Ken Stone, Steven Ozer and Jay Johnston. (Not pictured: Grace Bloodwell).

Adapting to the changing real estate market in the Internet age, four members of the Gibson Charlestown Real Estate firm have launched Net Share Realty.
“Because the industry has changed significantly due to the Internet, buyers are able to search online and narrow down what they’re looking for,” said Steven Ozer, one of the new firm’s realtors and founders. “This also means less time for the realtor.”
Ozer joins Grace Bloodwell and Jay Johnston as the principals of Net Share Realty, which is based out of an office at One Thompson Square. Ken Stone will be on hand as an associate. Gibson Charlestown Real Estate has been dissolved, and two other owners of the old firm, Rosemarie Kverek and Duncan Gillespie, are leaving the industry to pursue other interests.
Among the new incentives that Net Share Realty will offer are 25-percent rebates off the realtor’s commission for buyers and reduced listing fees for sellers. (Sellers can choose a 4-percent full-service listing agreement, as opposed to the traditional 5 or 6 percent, or a $350 flat fee-listing service).
Ozer said Net Share Realty aims to reward Internet-savvy buyers who make the realtor’s job easier and less time consuming. “Since they’re doing most of the leg work and we don’t need to spend as much time with them, we’re offering to share the commission,” he said.
This savings will also likely translate into more business.
“We fully expect to do more volume because we offer a significant savings to buyers and sellers,” Ozer said, adding that he expects the new firm will operate in markets other than Charlestown.
Still, Stone pointed out that Net Share Realty’s four principals have a total of 54 years of brokerage experience in Charlestown and can provide valuable insight into the local market.
And while the business model is drastically different than that of Gibson Real Estate, he said this doesn’t mean any reduction in services for either buyers or sellers.
“We will still do everything for buyers and sellers as we did in the past, but the need to provide these services isn’t there like it was years ago,” Stone said.
Net Share Realty can be reached at 617-242-3073, or visit www.netsharerealty.com on the Web.

Robert, Tommy and Eric Butler head down Bunker Hill Street from Plam Sunday Mass at St. Francis de Sales Church.

All of Boston is connected

Charlestown, the North End, Beacon Hill and the Back Bay are among the safest neighborhoods in the city. Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury are the most dangerous. In fact, in recent months, these vital neighborhoods, home to hundreds of thousands of people, have become the killing fields.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said last week in response to the series of deadly shootings in Dorchester and Mattapan — one young man was shot dead on a bus in front dozens of terrified onlookers just riding through the neighborhood in Dorchester –— that the city is not out of control. He added that the bad guys didn’t control the city, but rather, they control the bad headlines in the newspapers.
We were left to wonder who could have given the mayor such things to say at a time when it appears that Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury are sinking into an abyss of violent crime and public despair. What makes matters worse is that these neighborhoods are closer to all of us than we might ever imagine. Charlestown is not so far from Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury. Boston being a small city, these neighborhoods are but a stone’s throw away. Ergo, everyone living in the crime-free neighborhoods are put at risk by being in such a close proximity to the high crime neighborhoods.
Face it, it is only a matter of time before the senseless killing and violence spreads. Therefore, it must be stopped.
The sickening slaughter of young people in Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury is impossible to stop. No number of police officers sent into the street can patrol those sprawling areas of the city in such a way that there is a guarantee the violence will end.
The deadly violence is a product of poverty, ignorance, joblessness and the absence of faith in anything, let alone religion.
Mayor Menino needs to show leadership at this juncture. To stand idly by is a crime as bad as the violence going on. The mayor needs to lead marches up and down every street where a young person has died — and he must walk with black leaders, the parents of slain black young people and with the reverends like Eugene Rivers who understand the violence and the response that is needed to end it.
Force will work, but it is the force of a mob of good people taking back the blood-slicked streets from the homicidal maniacs without hearts or souls who kill for the lust of it. Led by the mayor, hundreds should march every night for the next few months to show that those of us who remain civilized will not collapse in the face of a threat to us all.
Short of that, short of a show of force, short of an enormous effort to bring blacks and whites and every kind of people together to fight the violence in the hope of stopping the killing, there is nothing else.
It is a time for all good people in Boston to stand up and be counted for the people of Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury.