I've been helping Mark Olson and Leah Zeldes with research on Fancyclopedia, an online encyclopedia about fandom, conventions, writers, artists and fans. We were stuck on Evelyn Gold for a bit, H. L. Gold's wife and the associate editor of Galaxy during the '50s. In many ways, she was the main public representative of the magazine since HL had agoraphobia and didn't like to leave their apartment.
Anyway, she disappeared from all public records in 1957, about the time that she and HL divorced. I've been using ancestry.com to research people, and there were only maybe four records that were about Evelyn Stein Gold, which seemed like way too few. I also wondered if she just might have died after her divorce.
ancestry.com seems to display some records almost randomly. I took another look yesterday and found a family tree that connected her to the Spencer family. Huh. Family tree data is sometimes not reliable, but I poked around a bit more and found some official records. Evelyn Gold had married Paul Donner Spencer in 1961. She later called herself Eve Paige Spencer and became an artist.
Leah Zeldes then found more about her later life, including a short YouTube video and more.
Eve had a really fascinating life. But when I found her obituary, here's all it said:
Ms. Spencer, 88, of Rancho Santa Fe, passed away May 11.
Services to be held at a later date.
To plant trees in memory, please visit our Sympathy Store.
Published by Rancho Santa Fe Record (Online) from
May 19 to Jun. 18, 2009.
I poked around more to see if there was a real obituary for her anywhere. Nothing.
And so, my rant: Write your own obituary or get a friend to write one for you. My mother was a professional obituary writer for a college magazine for about 40 years. It's not that hard. A factual obituary can help prevent you from completely disappearing from the record after you die (and we all will die one day).
Though I need to remember to update mine. I wrote my own obituary as part of a college class on death, dying & eschatology. I've done a few things since then...
Evelyn Gold/Eve Paige Spencer's Fancyclopedia entry.
