Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Nancy plays the piano for a sing-a-long in 1970.
Dave Potts, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, MOHAI
to emphasize because it was very helpful to
me – reassuring. And to him, it really was
important.
Hughes: And you’re right across the street
from his office.
Evans: He would come home for lunch.
Hughes: Another good reason why it was
so important to keep that Mansion.
Evans: Yes. It was very convenient, that’s
for sure. But the other things I wanted
to mention are some things that I was
involved with. Obviously forming the
Governor’s Mansion Foundation was
probably the most significant thing that
I was involved with and the instigator of,
but I was involved with a number of other things. One was the State Capitol Museum. It
was more active then. They had more of a collection. Now some of these things are up in
Tacoma at the State History Museum. … But they were doing good things. And all the first
ladies at that time had given (the museum) their inaugural dresses, like the Smithsonian,
does with the presidents’ wives. And they were always on display. They had arts events.
We were there a lot for events. I don’t know if that still happens. I thought it was
important to have tours, and docents. They didn’t have a docent program. And I had been
involved somewhat with MOHAI (the Museum of History & Industry) here in Seattle. They
had a docent program. So I had invited a couple of friends over to the Mansion, together
with the head of docents at MOHAI, to talk to us about forming a docent group. She was
very helpful and made several trips to Olympia – in fact, all on her own, to help me. So the
three of us put together the docent program called ASCM – the Associates for the State
Capitol Museum. We wanted “Associates” because this was not a women’s thing. This
was men and women. We got a group of volunteers, and they were there at regularly
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