Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

ecause she could say no. So I think we had a
real relationship that was very special. He had
a very droll sense of humor, very dry.
Hughes: What would be a classic droll thing
from Lawrence Bell?
Evans: Well, Dan was telling this story to
someone just the other day. He had asked
me to marry him. By the way, I just found
some letters that my sister had sent me when
she was very ill – letters she’d saved over the
years, a lot of them from me, but some from
my father to her. And one of his letters was
Nancy with her proud father. Evans family album
talking about this young man, Dan Evans, an
engineer who was involved in politics, asking
me to marry him. “She didn’t seem to care much about the other proposals she’d had,”
he wrote – and I had had several – “but this one seems to be special.” Well, I waited three
days to say yes to Dan so there was something going on in my mind. … At any rate, he
asked, I accepted and I told my parents. So it was all set. They were coming over to Seattle
where I was teaching school (in 1958) because my brother and sister-in-law were getting
married. They were going to meet Dan for the first time, so I had Mother and Daddy for
dinner. They come in, we meet and then my mother and I went into the kitchen. Dan
was just sitting on the sofa next to my father, his future father-in-law. And my father said,
“Well, young man, my other sons-in-law have had the courtesy to come and ask me for my
daughter’s hand in marriage.” And Dan sort of stammered, “Well sir…” But my father was
just putting him on totally. Dan was squirming. He remembers that moment so well to this
day. Now, as a matter of fact I think he didn’t ask Daddy for my hand in marriage because
they were all in Spokane and we were in Seattle. Earlier, by the way, I was dating the son of
the scion of Spokane who owned half of Spokane and both the newspapers – Bill Cowles.
We were just friends; nothing ever serious. We were dating one summer when we were
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