The sun rose in Winneba, Ghana as it did every day, but April 5, 1947, its rays shone more brightly with the birth of Evelyn Grace Ekua AnaisIewa Parker, affectionately known as Auntie Eve. Born to the late Anna Quaison-Sackey and the late Edward Ernest Parker in Akim, New Tafo, Ghana. Evelyn was raised with her one and only sibling, Ebo Annobil Parker, who was two years her senior.
She attended Juaben Women’s Teacher Training College in the Ashanti region from 1962 to 1966, where she received her Certificate A and began her teaching career in Accra at Kanda Primary School, from 1966 to 1970.
Evelyn met her future husband, Emmanuel Kwabena Osae-Asare, and they married traditionally in 1967 and had their first daughter, Marina (Maame Yaa), who passed away at the young age of 2. Although devastated, the couple were blessed to have a second daughter, Yaa Agyeiwa, in 1969. Shortly thereafter in 1971, the young family relocated to the U.S., where they lived in Ithaca, N.Y.
After Emmanuel graduated from Ithaca College, the family then moved to Philadelphia in 1973 and had a Christian marriage ceremony at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. It was then they had their next daughter, Awo Kensama, followed by their first born son, Kwabena Ayesu.
In 1979, Emmanuel was admitted into NYU’s Ph.D. program, and the family of five moved to Parkchester, Bronx, N.Y., where she has lived until recently.
During this time, Evelyn worked at New York University and Flushing Hospital simultaneously, until her last son, Kweku Anaisie, was born. She and her husband divorced in that following year, in 1980. She was then left to fend on her own and had become a single mother of her four children while living in the Bronx for the next 20 plus years.
Evelyn worked at Flushing Hospital for 30 years as a 1199 Union member until her retirement in 2009, at the age of 63.
Her sunset (came) at Montefiore Hospital at 6:15 a.m. April 10, 2017, after a seven-year battle with three cancers, five days after her 70th birthday.
She is survived by her brother Ebo Parker, four children (Jackie, Awo, Ayesu and Kweku), in-laws (Comfort and Stacy), three grandchildren (Jazmine, Samara and Lord) and the following families: Parker, Quaison-Sackey, Sackey, Kuntoh, Kwafo and Arthur.