Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

sometimes and I would look at them. And he got an A, and I’d say, “Why did you get an
A?” And he said, “Well, that’s what they gave me.” Well, I know it was because he was Dan
Evans’ son, and he didn’t deserve an A. But Mark and Bruce went East to school, and that
was fine. The trouble is that they’re still back there.
But anyway, we came home from SeaTac. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the
Evergreen president’s house had a deck out in back overlooking the bay and Mt. Rainier.
We were having a drink, sitting out there just talking. And I remember I said, “You know,
now that the boys are gone. …” You hear these stories about families that sort of fall apart
sometimes. And I said, “Are we still going to like each other?” And Dan said, “Well, of
course.” And I said, “I don’t know, it just seems strange. What are we going to do?” It was
this deep discussion that was going on out there. But we were enjoying the sun. Finally
I said, “Well, I’ve got to go fix dinner.” And Dan says, “Why?” And I said, “Well, I don’t
know!” (laughter) So I think I sat back down and we had another drink. We went to bed
that night. And at about 11 or midnight, Dan’s brother Roger called. He said, “Have you
heard the news?” Scoop Jackson had died. Well, we had not heard the news. And the next
morning, right after these two boys had gone off to school and we had talked about “What
do we do now?” the phone started ringing. The timing of everything was incredible.
Hughes: Would Slade Gorton have been one of the first to call, or would it have been John
Spellman?
Evans: Oh no, no, not the governor. I don’t have any idea who was the first to call. The
press gets on it right away. I just have no clue about who called first. But there was
immediate speculation about whether Dan would take the U.S. Senate seat. Each state, you
know, has different laws about such things. So they had to figure out what the procedure
was and finally concluded that the governor would appoint somebody. Then the question
was, did it have to be the same party or not? Because John Spellman was a Republican and
Scoop had been a Democrat. Once they got that figured out, then the speculation really
began. But it was something that Dan never thought he wanted to do. It had come up in
the past. Did he want to run for the Senate? Well, we thought Maggie and Scoop were
going to be there forever so why think about it? But Dan just liked being governor and
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