Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Rowland Jr. EVANS
WASHINGTON -- Rowland Evans, 79, who with Robert Novak wrote what has been described as one of the best-known, longest-lasting and most influential political columns in American journalism, died March 23 at Georgetown University Hospital. He had cancer.
The column started as "Inside Report" in the old New York Herald Tribune and continued under both bylines for 30 years, syndicated at its peak to an estimated 300 newspapers.
Appearing six days a week at the outset, it gained a reputation for taking a conservative political position and for helping select from the hubbub of daily events the ideas and issues on which politics in Washington came to focus.
"Their column . . . can place an item on the Washington agenda," commentator Michael Kinsley said in 1993 when Mr. Evans retired from "Inside Report."
Columnist Jack Germond said then, "Evans and Novak probably had more impact on politics, particularly on conservatives, than anybody else."
Although he gave up his part in the column, Mr. Evans continued to appear regularly on the CNN show that began under the name of "Evans & Novak."
His last time on the show, which came to include other commentators, was March 10.
Among those who give opinions on such shows and in newspapers, Mr. Evans and his partner were known for particular diligence in trying to ferret out facts.
"Evans worked his sources religiously, sometimes eating two lunches a day so he could vacuum up new tidbits," Howard Kurtz wrote in The Washington Post on April 29, 1993, the day after Mr. Evans left the column. He was "the patrician half of one of the most famous double bylines in journalism," Kurtz added.
At the time, Novak told Kurtz that Mr. Evans was the better and more relentless reporter, describing him as a member of the "old school of always making the extra phone call."
Shortly after learning of his partner's death, Novak described Mr. Evans as "one of the great reporters of Washington, a lineal successor to the Alsop brothers in mixing insightful reporting with tough comment."
Students of journalism often found it tempting to delineate the degree to which the enduring partnership between Mr. Evans and Novak was a marriage of opposites. It made them something of a journalistic odd couple, in which Novak could be seen as the "bad cop" to Mr. Evans' "good cop."
Certainly, his upbringing and lifestyle seemed less characteristic of newsroom raffishness and more of what could be seen as "old-school-tie" respectability.
Mr. Evans, "all freckles and teeth and expensively weathered skin," as Marjorie Williams described him in The Post on the column's 25th anniversary, was born April 28, 1921, in White Marsh, Pa., near Philadelphia. He graduated from the private Kent School in Connecticut in 1939 before entering Yale University.
He lived in Georgetown, played ice hockey for many years and was a nationally ranked seniors squash player.
It was clear from interviews that he was in many ways steeped in traditional values. Only last year in an interview with Playboy magazine, he described the breakdown of the family as "probably the most serious crisis this country faces."
He told the magazine that television created a major child-rearing problem, preventing concentration on schoolwork. "In my family, with five kids, we had homework rules and they were followed," he said.
His days at Yale came to an abrupt halt in December 1941. On Dec. 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II. The day after the attack, Mr. Evans enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was sent to the Pacific, became a sergeant and saw combat in the Solomon Islands.
After being sent home with malaria in 1944, he made a speech in uniform at his father's instigation, in behalf of the fourth-term presidential candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Evans, who was registered as an independent, once said that Lyndon Johnson was the last Democratic presidential candidate for whom he voted.
Mr. Evans never returned to Yale. Instead, he got a job as a copy boy on the old Philadelphia Bulletin and then came to Washington in 1945 to work for the Associated Press. From 1953 to 1955, he covered the Senate. Then he left to join the Washington Bureau of the Herald Tribune, covering Congress and politics.
While a Tribune reporter, he traveled in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and Asia, writing for the newspaper and magazines.
In 1962, a strike shut down the Tribune. Editors decided to offer new features when it resumed publishing. Mr. Evans was offered a column. It was to appear six days a week and be based on reporting.
Mr. Evans recognized that meeting those demands required a partner, and the choice was Novak, then making a name with the Wall Street Journal.
The first column was published May 15, 1963. The Post was one of the newspapers that carried it from the start. In time, the number of weekly columns was reduced, to four at the time Mr. Evans left. Novak now writes three times a week.
Asked in 1993 to list his most significant scoops, Mr. Evans said that one was "our sense well before 1980 that Jack Kemp and the whole economics he preached was going to be an important part of politics." In an interview with Kurtz for the article about his retirement from the column, he also listed his reporting on Soviet arms-control violations and Middle East affairs.
Although the columnists had detractors who complained that the two sometimes got it wrong, Mr. Evans did not hesitate last year to tell the Playboy interviewer, well before the nominating process was complete, who would be the nation's next president.
"It is going to be George W., and I'll say it right out loud," Mr. Evans said.
He received the diagnosis of cancer last summer, just before going on the air from the Republican National Convention. He entered the hospital the day before he died.
When he retired from the column in 1993, he explained that at 72, someone could expect only 10 more years of good health. At 82, he said, "you can't climb the mountain. And I want to keep climbing the mountain."
That was more than metaphor. At his weekend home in Culpepper, Va., only two weeks ago, according to Novak, he was still climbing the mountain there.
Survivors include his wife, Katherine, and two children, Rowland, of Sunnyvale, Calif., and Sarah, of Barnesville, Md. Evans is survived by his wife, Katherine, and a son and daughter.
| HOME | EMAIL | SURNAMES |
Return to The Pennocks of Primitive Hall website.
The information in this database may contain errors. If you find any questionable data, or if you have something to add my findings, please feel free to e-mail me by clicking on the "E-MAIL" link above. Thank you!
Page built by Gedpage Version 2.21 ©2009 on 07 July 2020