Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Hughes: What was your first impression of Dan Evans?
Evans: My first impression was that he was a very nice person; very good looking; very
quiet, and shy.
Hughes: So all the things they’ve written over the years about Dan Evans being
fundamentally shy—
Evans: Absolutely true. He was very shy. As we started going out, there was something
obviously there right away, but nothing that just really turned me on. It was just that I
liked him. But every time I went out with him I learned something knew about him. He
was not one of these people who just came on the first time and you learned it all. I found
that very intriguing at the time. I loved everything I learned. He already had done a lot of
interesting things. He was an engineer, interested in politics, athletic, very competitive. He
even won some sort of a prize in Toastmasters, which he joined to improve his speaking
ability. And he had been with the Junior Chamber of Commerce, did the Boy Scout thing
and served in the Navy. There were all these things that he’d done. He’d had all these
experiences. But I learned about them over a period of time, which was very nice.
Hughes: Was he different than the other guys you’d been serious about?
Evans: Well, yes and no. He was a little older. Most of the others had been more my age,
and he had more experiences, like the war and what have you. And every time I went out
with him I liked him more. So it worked out very nicely.
Hughes: That’s an understatement. Did you meet Dan’s folks early on?
Evans: Yes, because at that time I was living in an apartment not far from here (the Evans
present home) in Laurelhurst with a college friend. And his parents lived several blocks
away. Dan had a wooden boat and we enjoyed racing it on Wednesday evenings and in
Puget Sound on some weekends. I learned to love sailing. And we would often go over to
his house and sometimes have dinner.
Hughes: What were his folks like?
Evans: Oh, they were wonderful people. Wonderful people. Dan’s father, Les, was very
quiet but very nice. He was an engineer, too. Dan looks like his father. Dan’s brother,
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