A dedicated and loyal Jayhawk supporter and the wife of former Kansas University athlete Ray Evans died early Tuesday morning at her Prairie Village home.

Edith Darby Evans was 87 years old.

Her son, Ray D. Evans, is the current chairman of the KU Alumni Association’s board of directors. He said she was one of “the most genuine and nicest people I’ve known,” and recalled how she always seemed to remember everyone’s name at any kind of social event.

She enjoyed sports, too, traveling to Florida to watch the KU football team play in the Orange Bowl in 2008 at age 83.

“Ninety days later she was in San Antonio (for the 2008 Final Four), screaming for us to get out of the triangle-and-two,” her son said.

The daughter of former U.S. Sen. Harry Darby, she earned a bachelor’s degree in education from KU in 1947, and was a life member of both the KU Alumni Association and the KU Endowment Association’s Chancellor’s Club.

She married her husband, an All-American football and basketball player, in 1949, and the two were married for 50 years until his death in 1999.

She was also a member of Women Philanthropists for KU and a longtime member of the Williams Education Fund for Kansas Athletics.

“The passing of Edith Evans is a great loss to the entire KU family,” said Kevin Corbett, president of the KU Alumni Association, in a written statement. “She, along with her late husband, Ray, will forever be counted as two of the strongest KU supporters in our rich history of alumni leadership.”