Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Evans: Barbara is the oldest, then Bill, then Mary.
Hughes: They’re all gone now?
Evans: Yes, unfortunately.
Hughes: Where was your house in Spokane?
Evans: 521 Sound Ave. It was on the South Side of Spokane. In my growing up years,
Spokane was a very nice, comfortable place to be. In those days I took the bus everywhere
or rode my bike. It was a good family life even though it was, by today’s standards, very
simple and very easy, despite the financial difficulties at times.
Hughes: What are your most vivid memories of those growing up years – 1933 to 1950?
Evans: During my early childhood, my father was working at several mines in Montana.
So he would be there all summer. I’d go to visit him. Mother would put me on the train
at night. We knew all the porters, everybody who worked on the trains. It was like “the
friendly skies” but it was on rails. I’d be by myself, at age 6, and they’d put me in a sleeper.
In the morning they’d get me up and make sure I got dressed and everything. And my
father would be there to greet me at Butte, Montana. I would spend my summers over
there with Daddy. They had a house up in the
mountains, and I had a little Shetland pony that I
rode all the time. Some great memories. There was
one other family – one of my father’s assistants –
and he had two daughters. Both were a little older
than I was, so I had people to play with. It depended
on what my siblings were doing, but we spent a lot
of the summers there all together, too. My sisters
would enjoy being with all the young mining men,
the boys at the mine. My brother then started to do
some work in the mines. We went for a lot of years
until the war broke out. Those were gold mines, and
Nancy, left, and a friend enjoying a pony ride while
visiting her dad in Montana one summer in the 1930s.
Evans family album
then in the space of one day FDR shut all the gold
mines down. No more manufacturing of gold during
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