Tall, smart, athletic and blessed with a compelling voice and an integrity that earned him the nickname “Straight Arrow,” former Gov. Dan Evans, who died Friday at age 98, had all the makings of a great politician but a growing distaste for one aspect of the job: politics.
Make no mistake. As Washington’s three-term Republican governor (1965-77) and one-term senator (1983-88), he reveled in honest, spirited debate. And as a campaigner, he had few peers. His failed bid to become president of his junior class at Roosevelt High School in the 1940s marked the last political battle he lost.
But as he saw politics becoming increasingly polarized and government becoming less effective, Evans could no longer contain his frustration.
“I have endured five years of bickering and prolonged paralysis,” he wrote in a 1988 New York Times Magazine article explaining his decision not to seek re-election to the Senate. “I simply cannot endure another six years of frustrating gridlock.”
For a man who had been considered a possible Republican vice presidential candidate in recent decades, stepping away from politics wasn’t easy. But he remained in public service, most notably as a trustee of the University of Washington from 1993 to 2005.
“Dad lived an exceptionally full life,” Evans’ sons Dan Jr., Mark and Bruce Evans said in a written statement. “Whether he was serving in public office, working to improve higher education, or mentoring aspiring public servants … he just kept volunteering for things right up until the very end. He touched so many lives. And he did it without sacrificing his family.”
Born on October 16, 1925, in Seattle, Daniel Jackson Evans learned early to appreciate the wilderness, climbing Silver Peak in the Cascade Mountains at age 12.
At home, the son of a former King County engineer and the grandson of a Spokane senator learned how to be informed and involved.
After graduating from Roosevelt in 1943, he joined the Navy, where he served as an ensign. After World War II, he studied engineering at the UW, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1948 and a master’s degree a year later.
In 1951, he returned to the Navy as a lieutenant during the Korean War, where he served until 1953. In 1959, he married Nancy Bell. The couple had three sons.
“They’ve been a great partnership,” Dan Evans Jr. said in an interview Saturday. “And I think my brothers and I all recognize how much he’s accomplished. He couldn’t have accomplished any of it without her and without literally hundreds of staff members who have supported him over his years in elected office. You can’t accomplish much without a great team.”
Before entering politics, he was a civil engineer and worked as a structural engineer for the City of Seattle and in the private sector.
His term began in 1956, when he was elected to the House of Representatives from Seattle’s 43rd District. He was named an outstanding freshman legislator that term, and was re-elected to the House three times.
According to some, Evans’ background in engineering contributed to his view that problems, even difficult ones, can be analyzed and solved if the right steps are taken.
The “Blueprint for Progress” he outlined in 1964 helped him become the youngest governor in the state’s history at age 39, defeating the incumbent governor, Democrat Albert D. Rosellini, who had served two terms.
Evans was seen as one of the rising stars of his party and was chosen to deliver the keynote address at the 1968 Republican Party Convention in Miami.
“Leadership burdened with the past must yield its place to the party whose hope lies in the future,” he said at the convention that would launch Richard M. Nixon’s successful bid for the White House.
It is said that Nixon would have offered Evans the vice-presidential position if Evans had supported him, but Evans preferred Nelson Rockefeller.
Evans was re-elected governor in 1968 and 1972, the latter being a rematch with former Governor Rosellini.
Education and the environment were major priorities during Evans’ long tenure. He led a massive expansion of the state’s community college system and helped strengthen the state’s four-year colleges.
He helped create North Cascades National Park and Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. In 1970, he called a special legislative session to promote environmental protection, which led to the creation of the Department of Ecology.
His embrace of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975 — amid opposition from then-California Governor Jerry Brown — became one of his lasting legacies.
“Here were people who were being pushed out of their homelands, had no place to go, and we were trying to turn them away?” Evans recalled in a 2015 interview with The Seattle Times“It wasn’t right.”
Evans sent a top adviser, Ralph Munro, who would later become secretary of state, to a camp in California to tell the newcomers that they would be welcome in Washington state. Evans ordered every state agency to help with the resettlement. He asked churches and nonprofits to contribute. He recruited families to take refugees into their homes.
Not all of Evans’ efforts ended in success. He was rebuffed in his push for a state income tax — one of the issues that put the centrist governor at odds with increasingly conservative leaders of his own party.
His name became a label: a candidate described as a “Dan Evans Republican” was someone who combined a social commitment and environmental ethic with a strong sense of financial responsibility.
In a 1982 newsletter of the National Governors Association, he was hailed as one of the ten most outstanding governors of the 20th century.
After resigning as governor, he served for six years as president of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, including rappelling off the campus bell tower in response to a dare.
In 1983, after the unexpected death of long-serving Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson, Evans was appointed by fellow Republican, Governor John Spellman, to temporarily fill the Senate seat.
Democrats complained that Spellman should have chosen someone from Jackson’s own party to succeed him, but Evans was a good choice and won the seat in a midterm election within months of his appointment.
The admiration of both parties for Evans is evident from the fact that ten years after the race, the man he had convincingly defeated, Mike Lowry, had become governor and appointed Evans to the UW Board of Directors.
In 2000, the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs was renamed the Evans School of Public Affairs. In 2015, the name was changed to the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance.
Evans’ wife, a former music teacher and librarian in the Shoreline School District, died of breast cancer in January at age 90. The Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the University of Washington was named in her honor in 2004.
The former governor loved Husky football and planned to attend Saturday’s game against Northwestern.
Evans Jr. remembers his father as someone who was always trying new things. He sewed Christmas stockings for all nine grandchildren. Evans also spent time making jams and jellies in his later years.
“I always feel like he’s done a lot, and ‘stuff’ is a pretty low-level word to use, but professionally and personally it’s pretty impressive for one person,” Evans Jr. said.
His father was an avid hiker and skier who enjoyed traveling.
“We all have fond childhood memories of hiking, skiing and traveling with Dad, which in retrospect is remarkable given the demands placed on his time,” his sons said Saturday. “His loving partnership with Mom was truly special and we know her loss was difficult for him. We appreciate all the friends and family who have taken the time to reach out to Dad in the months since her passing.”
