Come back Evelyn, we need you!

Our family has had a lot of interesting friends over the decades, but none quite so interesting as Evelyn. My mom & her sisters met Evelyn while working in the Pentagon during World War Two. Evelyn owned a car and they pooled to work in order to qualify for gas ration stamps. She had a Ford coup that her father had modified to allow for more passengers. Evelyn had left her parents on the farm in Missouri, but they followed her to Washington, which cramped her style somewhat, but she was a good daughter and set them up in a nice house (safely) in the suburbs.
Evelyn was smart, witty, and competitive to a fault; her friends would let her win at golf, just to keep the peace. She loved all sports, had season tickets for the Redskins, and enjoyed stock-car races too; she liked to stand by the curve and let the racing soot waft over her.
She was gutsy and just a bit outrageous. After the war she bought an army surplus jeep, in order to fend off bad D.C. drivers; she didn't care if anybody hit her or not - if she had the right of way, she just kept on going.
Late in life, she suffered a stroke and was confined to a nursing home. But her mind was still sharp and she was still feisty; when the attendants proved to be a lazy bunch, she bought a police scanner to monitor the home's activities. They took it away from her, she hired a lawyer and got it back.
Evelyn stayed on with the Pentagon and eventually became big in what we now call "base realignment and closure" or BRAC for short. I heard that the officials didn't like being told what to do by a woman, but Evelyn was all business and just kept getting promoted higher and higher. The generals didn't get in her way, neither did politics, she did what was best for the army. It's said that she won all the highest awards they can give to a civilian.
Today, the latest BRAC plan seems to be turning into a real fiasco. New Jersey and its workers at Fort Monmouth are outraged and have gotten the federal government to review the thing. Harford County seems ill prepared at best & the fact that they're building on a sinking peninsula isn't inspiring much confidence either. The area around Patuxent Naval Air Station is still reeling from the last BRAC (years ago), and the plans for BRAC in Virginia have just been changed. Changed? That's not supposed to happen. How did this thing go so wrong?
It wasn't like that when Evelyn was closing bases. But she's gone now, and anyway, she wouldn't have been welcome in today's political climate. Not only was she non-partisan, she was what they called back then, an "old maid." I'm sure somebody would have asked or told by now. What that has to do with competence is beyond me, but we sure could use a little competence these days.

Evelyn (left) & friend, 1949.