Dr. Evermor : Tom Every (1938-2020)
Sumpter, Wisconsin
Tom Every -- and his alter-ego Dr. Evermor -- was summoned to the celestial sphere on March 30, 2020. He was 81.
Tom was the creator of the Forevertron, a commanding mass of industrial salvage weighing 320 tons and recognized by Guinness as the "World's Largest Scrap Metal Sculpture." Tom insisted that the Forevertron was a machine as well as art, built to catapult him on a "magnetic lightning force beam" into the next realm of existence.
We first heard of Dr. Evermor in the late 1980s from art student Greg Fister, who described the Forevertron as the junkyard of The House on the Rock -- another amazing attraction filled with Tom's fantastical contraptions. Calling it a junkyard was a disservice to Tom, who transformed discarded generators, dynamos, and autoclaves into strange retro-sci-fi machines on an industrial scale. Tom was proud that all of the components of his artworks, which filled several acres of property, were still recognizable as to their original purpose. He called his art, "structures made of history."
We visited Tom several times over the years and found him to be a warmhearted, friendly guy, always willing to stop work to answer a visitor's questions ("What does that thing do?" "What's an autoclave?"). In later years he could no longer stroll the grounds though he kept working, and ultimately went into an assisted living facility.
Dr. Evermor said the Forevertron would help him "highball it to heaven," and since he always seemed to know what he was talking about, we're confident that he's rocketing along, well on his way.