John McEvoy, DRF Editor, Dies at 83

John McEvoy, the former editor of the Daily Racing Form, poet, and horse racing mystery author died June 10 in Evanston Hospital. He was 83.

McEvoy covered Chicago's Thoroughbred racing industry for years, with great love for the sport and the characters who populate it, before taking over as editor of the Midwest edition in 1979 just as the publication was converting from "hot type" to "cold type."  

He remained editor until the 100-year-old tradition of a Chicago-produced DRF ended in late 1994, when new owner Prime Media decided to shift operations to Phoenix. McEvoy refused to leave Chicagoland, and was reassigned as senior correspondent, during which time he profiled many local racing standouts such as trainers Jack Van Berg, Ernie Poulos, and Jumbo Gural; jockeys Early Fires and Randy Romero; and racing leaders Tommy Trotter and Dick Duchossois.

McEvoy later begin his second career as author first for the BloodHorse's Eclipse Press Legends series, in which he profiled the iconic racehorse Round Table, followed by seven books including his Jack Doyle series of horse racing mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press.

McEvoy loved the beauty of the equine athletes, his all-time favorite competitor being Graustark and later "the grey bullet of Chicago," the sprinting filly Meafara. He took delight during the DRF's Kentucky Derby (G1) editions, in sneaking into print short, mischievous mentions of some of his longtime childhood friends, such as Frier McCollister, in made up escapades only they could recognize.

While a serious published poet, McEvoy was also a wicked serial poet of rhymes, including the Horse Player's Prayer, which begins "Dear God, and you, too, Moses/don't let me get beat so many noses." It was a compulsion; after beating esophageal cancer in 2007 he wrote "Poem for Radiology Ladies."

He was a lover of jazz and in 1954 tells of using a fake ID to get into the Bee-Hive, on 55th St., for the first Chicago appearance of the Modern Jazz Quartet. He also enjoyed recounting the time he bought Sarah Vaughn a drink when she performed in Chicago at Mr. Kelly's in 1957.

For a decade, McEvoy continued his editing work on a gentler scale in his semi-retirement when he volunteered to tutor second graders in reading at Washington Elementary School in Evanston. One of his favorite encounters came when a young boy asked him how old he was. "Seventy-five," replied McEvoy. The boy looked at him wide-eyed with amazement. "Are you dead yet?" he asked, to McEvoy's amusement.

McEvoy was born in 1936 in Kenosha, Wis. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Judy, of Evanston; their three children, Michael, of Oakland, Calif., Sarah, of Urbana, Ill., and Julia, of Richmond, Calif.; 10 grandchildren, and his sisters Bernadette (Tuz) Healy, and Mary McEvoy, of Dublin, Ireland, and nieces and nephews.

The family asks that donations be made in John's name to either of the following organizations: Curts Café, which empowers at-risk youth to become productive, self-sustaining members of the Evanston community or Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, which ministers to the incarcerated.