In his early childhood young Frank moved from one small Texas town to the next because of his father’s work schedule as a field geologist. Frank’s family moved to Houston in 1936, where Frank completed his elementary and junior high school education and graduated from Lamar High School in Spring 1945.
Upon graduation Frank immediately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and, after completing basic and advanced infantry training, was assigned to overseas duty with the First Marine Division in China. In 1947 he was released from active duty, and with funds provided by the G.I. Bill, Frank began his college education at the University of Houston.
Frank later transferred to the University of Texas in Austin and graduated from U.T. law school in 1951. At that time the United States was engaged in the North Korean Conflict, and Evans, who had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant, once again volunteered for active duty and was assigned to a special officer training program in Virginia. Upon completion of that program he was assigned to service as a regimental legal officer and later he served as prosecutor and as defense counsel in military court martial proceedings. In 1953, he was promoted to the rank of Captain and released from active duty.
In his first job as a Texas lawyer, Evans examined land titles and investigated property claims for Kirby Lumber Corporation, a Houston-based company with extensive land and timber holdings in East Texas. Evans then moved to Carrizo Springs, Texas where he started his career as a trial lawyer with the law firm of Petry & Dean. About the year 1955 he then moved back to Houston in order to rejoin his colleagues and legal mentors at the law firm of Fountain, Cox & Gaines, where he would become actively engaged as a trial lawyer in a wide variety of civil state and federal cases throughout South, Central, and East Texas.
In 1973, Governor Dolph Briscoe appointed Evans to serve as a justice on the First Court of (Civil) Appeals in Houston, and several years later, Governor Bill Clements elevated Evans to the position of Chief Justice of that appellate court. In 1990, Judge Evans retired from full-time judicial service and entered private practice to become the Judicial Officer of Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (J.A.M.S.) in Texas.
In 1994, Evans was named Visiting Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Legal Responsibility at South Texas College of Law in Houston, where he taught ADR-related courses such as mediation and arbitration. For several years thereafter, he was retained as “of counsel” by the law office of Haynes & Boone in Houston, and he also served as the Conference Judge for Houston’s First Court of Appeals.
Judge Frank G. Evans, a Senior Texas Judge, lives with his wife Elizabeth in Bastrop, Texas.