Unseen Burdens: A Story of Quiet Resilience

One of the things we were excited to do when we launched the Towsontown Torch was to create a place where we could shine a positive light on the real people and businesses that make up the Greater Towson Community. Today, we felt that sharing this particular story was really important, and potentially an opportunity to help others gain much-needed perspective on their own lives and daily struggles. We also wanted to seize the opportunity to support members of our community when they need us most.
-Chris Forhan, Publisher

On January 3rd, 2025 at 8:30pm, Towson’s Shane Evans passed away peacefully in his sleep at St. Joseph's Hospital. He was admitted to the hospital on Christmas morning following an aortic rupture and, despite a grueling 14-hour surgery, succumbed to devastating brain damage. Originally from Crisfield, MD, Shane served his country overseas in Panama and Negril as a member of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Shane later went on to have a successful career as an IT executive and was a remarkably talented professional photographer. He leaves behind his loving wife, Ashley Carr-Evans, his daughter, Jenna Evans, and his mother, Nicki Somers-Bashor.

I never had the opportunity to meet Shane personally, but I have gotten to know his wife, Ashley Carr-Evans, pretty well over the last year. Everyone in the Baltimore area business community seems to know and adore Ashley, who does Business Development for the Owings Mills-based company Strategic Factory. On any given night, you can find Ashley out and about representing her company at various business meetups and networking events, which she sometimes attends as many as 4-5 nights a week. At these events, everyone seems to gravitate to Ashley, making instant connections and usually becoming fast friends. Ashley has a hard-to-explain aura about her that instantly makes people feel at ease talking with her, making her very good at what she does. Ironically, Ashley told me that she is an introvert by nature, which shatters any notion that only extroverts are good at sales or business development.

Meanwhile, when you meet Ashley, you would never conclude that she was carrying around such a tremendous burden beneath her bright pink hair and sunny surface. She always appears to be fully present, greeting everyone with a warm smile and grace. No doubt, Ashley has been inspired by her husband, who stoically waited eight years before publicly disclosing his health challenges.

Below is Shane's Facebook post from 2023 where he revealed his health problems, which began in 2015 when he was diagnosed with cancer, and also suffered a heart attack and a mini-stroke that same year.

We've all heard some version of the saying, "you never know what burdens people are dealing with beneath the surface," and I think Shane and Ashley provide us with a heavy-hearted, eye-opening reminder of this. However, their story can provide us with great perspective, and inspiration to those of us who try to muster up the energy and attitude to push through our own struggles on a daily basis.

If you also feel inspired, or would simply like to offer some help to Ashley and her family as they move forward in the face of such a tragedy, please consider making a donation via the GoFundMe link below to help defray some of the costs.