Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Evans: Oh yes. And she was that kind of a person, without knowing it. She was not trying
to be that way at all, but she was a very proper person. Later, we were “ Laurene” and
“Nancy.” But always older people were “Mrs.” or “Mr.” by and large. But I wanted to be
called Nancy because I was younger.
Hughes: The times were a-changing.
Evans: Well, for the most part… And I said, “Please call me ‘Nancy,’ ” when they kept
calling me “Mrs. Evans.” It just seemed easier – and easier to talk that way somehow.
Hughes: Beyond the volunteers and good Republican cabinet wives, did you have any kind of
help in keeping up with correspondence? Like a deputy press secretary who would help you?
Evans: Well, when I first arrived there was nothing. No help of that kind. But it didn’t
Nancy examines a new cookbook.
Washington Stat Archives
take me very long to realize that I needed somebody.
I had in those days a lot of requests for recipes.
Every organization was putting together a cookbook.
We had a lot of, “What’s the governor’s favorite
whatever?”
Hughes: What was his favorite recipe?
Evans: Oh, I don’t know. But they would suggest an
area. And so I put together a fair amount of those.
But I was getting a lot of requests for use of the
Mansion, or asking me to go someplace. So finally a
woman from the governor’s staff would come over
twice a week for an hour or two. And we would sit
upstairs in a tiny little sitting room and she would take notes. That went on for a year,
maybe two years, and I thought, “This isn’t going to do it.” So I insisted that I had to have
some help. And we got, from the state, a half-time secretary. That’s just what I needed.
She ended up working pretty much full-time, but they paid for half-time. She was great. I
had two of them. But the one I had for a long, long time, Warrene Graves, was unflappable
and always worked more than her half-time pay allowed. She was very easy to work with.
Her husband was a patrolman.
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