The life of former Denver teacher Alnetta Arlene Hammond Evans, who was 61 when she died May 8 in Naples, Fla., will be celebrated May 27 at Tupperware World Headquarters, where she worked for 23 years.
Her cremated remains will be buried later this year in Denver.
The youngest of nine children born to a farm couple in Broken Bow, Neb., she was named after the French midwife who delivered her.
Growing up on a farm schooled her in cooking and baking the Midwestern casseroles, stews, pies, cakes and jellied salads that Tupperware’s ubiquitous seal-and-burp plastic containers were designed to hold.
Prior to her Tupperware career, she worked at the Pentagon headquarters near Washington and then returned to Denver, where she worked at Martin Marietta and the Kent Country Day School.
She married Bruce Evans, a Denver hotel manager, in 1965. The Evanses and their son, Scott, moved to Orlando, Fla., in 1979, when Bruce Evans accepted a job as a resort executive at the relatively new Walt Disney World.
Shortly afterward, Alnetta Evans stopped at Tupperware World Headquarters, not far from Disney World, to drop off her résumé. She was smitten with Tupperware’s immaculate corporate campus, which includes a civic center, and its theatrical water fountain reminiscent of a dandelion with a full head of fluff.
When the company called back two weeks later and offered her a job, Alnetta Evans was elated.
Initially hired as a customer-service representative, she was soon promoted to work for the company’s vice president of public relations and eventually became the facilities director, a position she held for about 18 of her 23 years at Tupperware.
The job included organizing tours of the building, maintaining the oddly luminous collection of antique Tupperware in the company museum and traveling to New York City to buy art to hang on company walls.
Tupperware rewarded her fierce dedication with gold and diamond jewelry and other gifts. Company executives invited her to show off her dancing talent – she was a natural in chorus lines – in celebrated Jubilee shows as choreographed as a Hollywood musical.
Alnetta Evans’ devotion to Tupperware spanned both office and home. The Evanses’ kitchen was, as Bruce Evans put it, “entirely Tupperized.”
She gave Tupperware as gifts to friends and relatives. When her son got his own apartment, she provided Tupperware for his leftovers. When her two grandchildren were babies, they teethed on Tupperware toys.
Following her retirement in 2002, she remained in close touch with the Tupperware colleagues. Her former chief executive was among those insisting upon hosting a reception at Tupperware World Headquarters following her funeral service.
Besides her husband and son, both of Naples, survivors include two grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
