Documenting a life
Paul Eversole: Historian, adventurer

ABOVE: Paul Eversole with his wife Dorothy Eversole in earlier years of their marriage. Paul spent much of the couple's 53-year marriage researching the life of Jimmie Angel. Angel was a Native American bush pilot and explorer. Dorothy described her husband as a "determined" man with a "soft heart" that was also a "loving husband." Paul Eversole died after a six-year battle against illness. [courtesy photo] BELOW:At her home in Bluewater N.M., Dorothy Eversole pauses while speaking about her late husband, Paul Eversole who died June 16. [photo by Daniel Zollinger / Independent] ADDITIONAL PHOTO

By Helen Davis
Cibola County Bureau

BLUEWATER VILLAGE — The full story of the late Paul Ron Eversole goes back to an old Scotsman named MacCracken. It is a story about adventures with airplanes, Chinese warlords, a lost river of gold, red-headed women and the world’s tallest waterfall — the wild life of another man.

Eversole, who died at age 75 on June 16, was known in Cibola County and surrounding areas as a school teacher and principal. He taught at Bluewater Elementary for six years, after serving as a principal and teacher in Borrego Pass. He was a lifelong teacher and youth leader, but his passion was the history of Native American adventurer, explorer and pilot Jimmie Angel.

Eversole’s son, Lee Eversole, said his father’s first love was Africa, and a visit to Africa was still his ambition when he had a chance to go to Venezuela in 1964. In Venezuela, the elder Eversole became acquainted with Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall and said he wanted to write a book about the falls. But friends and advisors told him his real story was the story of the falls discoverer, James Crawford Angel, better known as “Jimmie Angel.”

Eversole became fascinated with Angel from that time on. Although he never met Angel, who died in 1956, he spent 40 years sorting fact from fiction and fantasy in the myriad stories and apparent tall tales about the legend. No man, it seemed, could have done all those things and been all those places.

The story says that Angel met John MacCracken, another adventurer, when MacCracken, weakened with malaria, believed he had found a river of gold in the Venezuelan tepui, or mesa, county and sought a bush pilot willing to fly into the imposing landscape. People told him that Angel was his man, and the pilot and MacCracken met up in Panama City then went on to locate the river in 1920. Eversole’s research supports the story so far.

No one has found the river again, although stories about finding such a river surface from time to time. Some claims say the river was really just an optical illusion caused by tinted river water or algae that turns yellow-gold in the sunlight; Lee Eversole said there is documentary evidence that Angel found gold and took some off a tepui in his plane. Lee said his father was never really certain the river in fact existed.

Other stories have Angel involved with a deposed Russian Countess in China and being chased out of that country a few steps ahead of those who would behead him. He is said to have worked with Pancho Villa and transported gold over several borders. He reportedly married a lady wing walker, familiar with Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart in the heady days of early aviation. Through interviews and documents, the elder Eversole substantiated most of the legends. Angel, half Choctaw/Cherokee and half mixed Caucasian, was indeed a daredevil’s daredevil and a lady’s-man’s lady’s man. Eversole met and interviewed both of Angel’s red-headed wives, to whom he was indeed “married” during the same period. The women supplied information to support Angel’s reputation and the big stories.

Angel’s contribution to the world’s knowledge is a matter of record. Angel’s log book from 1933 states, “Today I found me a waterfall,” Lee Eversole said. The waterfall is Angel Falls in Venezuela, the world’s tallest waterfall at 3,212 feet, or 15 times taller than Niagara Falls. The Eversoles have been able to document the date of discovery and to correct records, including the Encyclopedia Brittanica, that gave the date as 1935 or 1937, the younger Eversole said.

Eversole took his wife Dorothy to Venezuela in 1970. Dorothy fell in love with the South American country with orchids and jungles and waterfalls.

“We stayed in the ‘honeymoon hut,’” she said shortly after her husband’s death.

In 1979, Angel’s legitimate wife, Virginia, invited Eversole to interview her in Tucson, Ariz. The couple packed up the family and moved to the Arizona town to live on Virginia’s property and immerse themselves in the material and stories Angel’s wife made available. After the Tucson stay, Eversole moved the family to New Mexico, where they settled.

Dorothy still lives in Bluewater Village with her family and still helps with the huge task of organizing the accumulated records of the Eversole Collection.

The younger Eversole said he became involved in the hunt as well as speaking tours and writing for periodicals 15 years ago. His father moved away from the project in the 1980s after the death of the couple’s eldest daughter, Melanie, but had begun to pick it up again just before his death. The two men were working on sorting the massive collection of material and setting up speaking tours when the elder Eversole died, Lee said. He added that they were concentrating on speaking in Native American venues. Angel was one of the few Native Americans to make a known contribution to world discovery.

Paul Eversole documenting Angel Falls in Venezuela. Paul spent 50 years researching the life of Jimmie Angel who the falls are named after. Angel, a Native American bush pilot and explorer is credited with discovering the falls.[courtesy photo] TOP