Evelyn Rose Aucoin was born on May 13, 1922 in Thompson CT to French Canadian parents Arthur and Rose (Choiniere) Aucoin and was the second of nine children. Her parents moved the family to Canada for a brief spell, and then settled in Woonsocket, RI where her father worked in the mills.
When Evelyn was five years old, her older brother Robert died of complications of scarlet fever. After his death, she was the oldest in the family and was given a lot of responsibility for a young child. Expectations of her role in the family increased even more when she turned 16. This straight “A” student who loved learning was forced to quit school at the end of her sophomore year and enter the workforce as the primary wage earner in the family. She was devastated, but as the times would have it, obeyed her father and worked as a spinner in a mill. Out of the $14.37 she earned per week, she gave all of her wages, except the change, from her paycheck to support her parents and six surviving siblings.
In addition, when the war broke out, Evelyn volunteered to work an extra five hours a day, what she referred to as the “The Liberty Shift.” These were extra hours of work that women volunteered to do to fill in the workforce in the textile factories vacated by men who had left to join the armed services. Evelyn, and all these women working 13-hour days in factories, played a vital role in providing critical materials for fighting the war. She gave up her time in the mills after 14 years of very hard work and was pleased that her husband Lucien insisted he would provide for the family so she could stay home doing what she loved: being a wife, mother of Robert and Diane, and manager of the household.