Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

wartime. So that was a severe blow to the family.
Hughes: Which is a perfect segue to politics. Were politics talked about in the Bell
household?
Evans: Yes. My father was not a meeting-going or church-going or “anything going” sort of
person. But we did talk politics at home. My siblings, being older, had interests that were
different than mine, but I would listen a lot to the discussions. On Election Day my mother
would be one of the people there as a Republican poll watcher. And she went to some
political meetings. Daddy didn’t. But both my sisters and my brother were all active in
one way or another in the Republican Party. And actually Bill ran some big campaigns for
candidates. He was very active in Dan’s 1964 campaign for governor. He was also an early
supporter of Gov. Stassen of Minnesota when he first ran for president (in 1944). Barbara
was a precinct committeewoman for a while.
Hughes: This was the Willkie-Dewey era in GOP politics.
Evans: Well, I don’t remember Willkie being discussed much, but Roosevelt was. My
father always pronounced it “Roose-a-velt.” And my mother would say, “It’s ‘Rose-a-velt.’
”FDR was discussed a great deal at the dinner table – with derision from my father. Dan’s
father was the same way. Daddy would be the devil’s advocate and Mother would always
be trying to placate everything, you know, “Now Lawrence.” Everybody would enter into
the discussions, so it was very much a part of our family life.
Hughes: With mom having grown up with a Methodist preacher for a dad, was going to
church a big deal in the Bell household?
Evans: It was in my mother’s household. Never in my father’s. I don’t know that he ever
went to church except to see his children baptized or married.
Hughes: Did you kids all go to Sunday school?
Evans: We all went to Sunday school. We actually went to a Congregational Church,
which we all preferred. That’s where Dan and I were married. Many of my family’s friends
went to the Episcopal Church in Spokane – St. John’s Cathedral. But it was not to our
liking because we all sort of liked something more lively. I like a good sermon, usually one
that’s provocative. And I like the music. So we really chose the Congregational Church. It
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