Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

this cute little guy. Then we started getting together with the family periodically, for lunch
usually. We would take them someplace, and it was wonderful to watch because Mary, the
mother, spoke very little English. She was shy – a shy Asian woman. Colin speaks pretty
good English now, but it was very hard to understand his English back then because of his
accent. Dung, the oldest child who has taken the name Rochelle, and the other children
were the interpreters for the parents and for us. It was wonderful to see this family of six
children. I think when Rochelle came to the states with her family she was 15 or so, and
she took responsibility for the kids a lot. There was no hesitation about speaking up and
talking because everybody would listen politely to everybody. That doesn’t happen in our
family, or a lot of families, you know. People talk over people. But that did not take place
in this family. Everybody listened to everybody.
So, now we still get together. We don’t do it as often because everybody is so
busy. When we went to D.C., we did it less, obviously. But we would always do it at
Christmastime because we usually would be back here. It has just been such a joy for Dan
and me to watch this family grow and mature and become wonderful citizens. Rochelle,
the oldest, is a dentist. They all went to college. They all graduated and did very well, many
of them with post-graduate degrees. When we were in D.C., Rochelle came back because
she was taking classes at Harvard, I think, and visited us. One went to MIT, one other went
back to Harvard as well; one went to Stanford. They have just done so well academically,
but they all received their bachelor’s at the UW. They are such wonderful people, and they
have a lot of fun together. They’re a joy to be with. Our sons hate to hear this because
they say, “All you ever do is talk about the Nguyens!” They’re just joking of course. But
two of those children, Ailien and Dung/Rochelle, are dentists. And Quang has a great job.
He travels around the world. He’s married and had a new baby in March (of 2009). And
Quyen works for Scansa as a project manager for construction projects.
Hughes: How about Dan’s namesake?
Evans: Evans travels to China and all over the world. He’s worked for Fluke and now he’s
working for another company. They hired him away. He does very well. And he has a new
baby, too.
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