The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

ship shApe 185
“dastardly, barbaric act against humanity,” an outraged Jackson told reporters,
and fresh evidence that Reagan was right earlier that year when
he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Afterward, Dotzauer told
Jackson he’d never sounded better. Scoop smiled. “You know, I was pretty
good, wasn’t I?” 8
Unable to shake the cough, Jackson went to the doctor, then to bed. He
died that night of a ruptured aorta. The Gortons called Helen to offer
their condolences. Slade and Sally, together with Ritajean Butterworth,
also went to visit Scoop’s grieving staff. “He wanted to comfort them,”
Butterworth recalls, “and he wanted to tell them he’d do anything they
needed.”
The president, who’d lost a staunch supporter of his defense and foreign
policy agendas, praised Jackson as “a wise and revered statesman.”
Henry Kissinger said America had lost “a true patriot.” George Will, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist, said Scoop was a hero for
all seasons. Ted Kennedy and Bob Dole agreed that he was a giant in the
Senate. And Warren G. Magnuson, who never imagined he would outlive
his abstemious younger friend and colleague, was stunned and sorrowed.
“So much for clean living,” a former Magnuson staffer cracked with sad
irony at the reception following the funeral. 9
The new senator from Washington State would be Daniel J. Evans.
AfteR thRee teRMs As goveRnoR, Evans took on the politically challenging
job of heading The Evergreen State College in Olympia, the innovative
school he helped establish. “Greeners” designed their own degree
paths and received evaluations instead of grades. Critics, including Evans’
successor, Dixy Lee Ray, viewed it as a haven for hippies and their leftist
profs.
Evans was the perfect choice for president of the fledgling college,
deftly navigating the legislative minefield and shoring up Evergreen’s
academics. By 1983, his sixth year, the kids still had long hair, wet dogs
and wild ideas but it was rated one of the best liberal arts schools in the
West.
The week before Jackson’s stunningly unexpected death, Evans made
an appointment to meet with the chairwoman of the Evergreen trustees.
He was going to tell her he would stay on for 10 more months. He wanted
to finish the autobiography he’d been pecking at for years, then do something
else. 10
Gorton urged him to seek the appointment to Scoop’s seat. They’d be a
great team, he said, thinking back to their first meeting during Dan’s