Click here to
listen to an audio file of this interview (61 minutes)
This is a complete and accurate transcript of the first oral history interview
of Miss Elizabeth Morrell Evans (CN 279, #T1) in the archives of the Billy Graham
Center. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases,
the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case "[unclear"
or "[?]" were inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as "ah" or
"um" were usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this
is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even
rule than written English.
... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
() Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber.
This transcription was by Robert Shuster and Mimi Wohlschlegel and was completed March 28, 1988.
Collection 279, #T1. Interview of Elizabeth Morrell Evans by Robert Shuster, October 8, 1984.
[beginning missing]
EVANS: ...and he preached that, that message and my father had a real experience of the inflowing of the Holy Spirit in his life. He felt that he needed to wait on the Lord just as Moody had and as Billy Sunday and other great leaders and the Lord gave him a wonderful experience of His presence. My mother always said he had a baptism of love and that was a new thing for my father because he was known to have a very quick temper. And one time when they had large plantations, tobacco plantations, in Lynchburg and Amhurst suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. And at there a man sassed him, and he started after him as though he would kill him. And the man got a hold of his glasses and, and threw them on the ground and my father in hunting around for them on the ground but the man got away, and realized that he would have killed the man if he would have gotten a hold of him. And so, it was a wonderful experience that my father had prior...after his conversion that caused him to be a man of great love, to have a tremendous love for everyone, tremendous longing to win souls to the Lord Jesus Christ and it was the one ambition of his life. He would get a mission started and then he would get it going well, and turn it over to others, and then he would go back to Lynchburg and....
SHUSTER: Lynchburg, Virginia.
EVANS: Virginia. And he would labor there. He took my mother almost as a bride down to Lynchburg, and they lived in one of the plantation homes, and they had a great many workmen on the property, people living in different homes around on the plantation. My father had turned it into a dairy farm, and Sunday nights people would come there to...to sing. My mother played the piano very, very nicely. And they'd have a wonderful time with all these tenant farmers around until finally a church was established there. My father, in the meantime, had become a Baptist minister through his own study of Greek and Hebrew and the study of the Bible. He had been, become so proficient and so scholarly in his knowledge of the Bible that he was ordained without going to a seminary.
SHUSTER: Now, when were you born?
EVANS: I was born in Lynchburg, in 1899, March 29. I was the fourth child. They had had a beautiful little boy, born Joseph Davis Evans IV in their home, but he had taken sick at about sixteen months and had died. Then they didn't have any children for quite a while, but Mother said the comfort with which the Lord comforted her, she was able to pass on to others who were in similar situations. Finally the Lord gave them a daughter, Lydia, who was a missionary for forty-eight years in Vietnam, and is now retired and living in Detroit. I was born after Clinton who was a businessman all his life and died at about sixty-four years of age sometime ago. I came along about sixteen months later. So that he and I were far from being [?] companions. [laughs]
SHUSTER: And then Kathryn was born after you?
EVANS: Kathryn was born, no, Anna was the next one. And she, too, was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. And that was my first recollection. Going across the James River in Lynchburg as an early recollection. But, I remember so clearly the birth of Anna. We had been taken over to my Aunt Anna's home there. And in the afternoon, late, my Uncle Will came and said "You have a little baby sister over at your house and she [unclear]". [laughs] He just loved that child. And he was a portly man with considerable ability. How would put her on his stomach whenever she had colic. And so she was named Anna for his wife and my sister, my mother's sister, Anna Jones. She married a man who later became a pastor, Baptist pastor, in Northern Maine and in other places in Maine and Michigan. Now they are retired, living in Arkansas.
SHUSTER: And the married name is?
EVANS: Atkinson.
SHUSTER: Atkinson.
EVANS: Yes. She earned, she earned her way through Wheaton College like I did. I was the first one to go. And later her husband earned his way through. There are four of us graduates of Wheaton College.
SHUSTER: And then after Anna, Kathryn? [Evans begins to speak and interrupts]
EVANS: And then after that we have twins born in New York City. Father was back there with another mission. I now remember that we went to this hall[?] of the Salvation Army for Sunday School because the rest of the mission did not have a sunday school at that time. And, so, we learned many of the choruses of the Salvation Army even though my father was a Baptist minister. And we have enjoyed them all our lives. Real good soldier choruses that we used to march through life many times with very little to eat but never feeling the stress of poverty. Then my father and mother gave away all they had and, and spent their lives in great devotion to the Lord in missionary work in different cities. Still, they kept a wonderful home life. My father and mother never quarreled in public. My father never said a cross word to my mother. We had a devoted home, a devoted family.
SHUSTER: Kath....
EVANS: Kathryn was the last child who lived. She was a missionary sixteen years in New England, with the New England Fellowship, and then thirty-seven years with HCJB in Quito, Ecuador.
SHUSTER: And what year was she born?
EVANS: I'm not quite sure. She's two and a half years younger than I am and you can count that for yourself. [laughs]
SHUSTER: Why do you...?
EVANS: But we were great pals, she and I.
SHUSTER: Why do you think your home life was so contented?
EVANS: Because Mother and Father loved each other, and they loved us very much. And they taught us never to quarrel with each other, never to tease each other in any serious way. My brother teased me if Mother wasn't around. But my father was especially determined that we would not be caused to be offended and hurt as children. And he was very, very loving to us. He was stict, strict. If we sassed Mother the least bit, why he, he immediately gave us the flat of his hand across our mouth. But other than that, he never touched us without great, preliminary arrangements. My father would take us on his lap, and he would tell us what we had done wrong, and he would tell us that he had to punish us. Probably to me, he sometimes read about Eli which spoke of him and how God punished him because he didn't care for his children and bring them up right. And so, he would talk to me, and he would pray and then he would spank me only with his hand. I can only remember being spanked once or twice. And then he would take us in his arms while we cried, and he would tell us that he loved us. And we would kiss him and he would hold us while we cried. It was a wonderful experience to go through childhood with the amount of love that we had. Mother was always in our home,as the...(you know what I mean by always),it was her practice never to be absent at the time we would get home from school. And there would be bread with some peanut butter and jelly or something like that for us to have right away. And then we would help with the work or we take care of the younger children while she got a good meal for us. In the evening, we had family prayer. We had to get up in the morning. At 6:30, the bell rang. Five minutes of 7, we were supposed to be at the table. Father sang the doxology, read a brief Psalm, and had a word of prayer that God would bless and help us through the day. I think that's very important for the family. We went out with a word of prayer. And since Father was a pastor and usually home in the morning, he'd call after us down the stairs quite often as we were hustling for school, "Did you say your prayers?" And Mother would call out, "Did you clean your teeth?" [laugh] Father sat at the, the head of the table or the foot or whichever you call it with the older children near him. The table was always set every meal with a good, white tablecloth and napkin and silverware. And he carried on conversations with us and watched our table manners and our conversation. And Mother sat at the other end with the younger children near her and very often the food near her. And she replenished our plate, and he replenished our mind.
SHUSTER: When did you become a Christian?
EVANS: When I was four years old. I had been living in New York City. Mother had told us never to take any money from anyone. And one day, a man put a penny in my hand as he went rushing past. I had no time to run after him and tell him I couldn't take it. So, I went in to show it to my mother and before I could say anything further, she said, "Oh, you found a penny on the street. Well, what bright eyes!" I didn't know what to do or say. So, I just let it go at that. I thought she might scold me if I tell her that a man gave it to me and not really believe me that I couldn't tell him no. So I'd rather have her think that I had bright eyes. But that night I could not sleep. I thought if the Lord Jesus came tonight, my mother and father would go to heaven, my brothers and sisters, and here I'd be all alone. I could not sleep and finally I ran and woke Mother up. And I said, "Mother, I want to tell you what happened." I asked her to forgive me for telling what I said was a lie. Of course, it was not really but we had been taught that deceiving was just the same as a lie. She said, "Did you ask Jesus to forgive you?" And I said, "Why no should I?" And she said, "Yes. The Lord Jesus died on the cross because of all your naughty ways. And He took your punishment for all of that on Himself. And so, You can ask Him to forgive you, and He will." Well, I knelt down, and I asked the Lord Jesus to forgive me. I told Him the story in brief, and I seemed to have a vision, the Lord Jesus up in the corner of the room. It wasn't really a vision but, I don't know what it really was but I seemed to see Him there, and His eyes were so sad because what I had done wrong but so loving also. And it broke my heart. And I remember that I, I cried a little. But I asked Him to forgive me, and I felt so happy. I remember jumping up and down and saying how happy I was. I've never doubted that I belonged to Him from that day to this. And I was four years old. One of my early memories. Then, when I was tweleve years old, I was attending meetings where they were talking about a deeper Christian life. It was in the mission that my mother and father had out in Des Moines, Iowa. And, I remember I sometimes like to do things that I was told not to do. [laughs] I would I loved to read for one thing. And I knew up in the attic there was some funny papers. So I went up there, and I read them. My folks never had Sunday paper, and they never let us see those funnies. The Katzenjammer Kids [a daily American comic strip], for instance, were always, always getting the best of their parents, always showing them up as pretty stupid. And Father didn't feel that sort of thing was good for us. So, he never had them in the, in the home, never let us read them. But I was fascinated with them. And I remember that was one of things that I did (if I could slip away for a few minutes, two or three times) that I knew that I should not do. I told my mother about it. But I also wanted that the Lord would really help me to really want His will. And so I went forward that day at the end of that service. And I dedicated my heart and life to the Lord. And I asked Him to help me to always want and always do His will. And I think that is a very important thing many young people wouldn't have to face a different and new decision to make over and over again about this or that if they just said "Is this the will of the Lord?" And to have purpose in their heart that they would always do what they believe is the will of the Lord for them. And I, at that time, felt I wanted to be a missionary.
SHUSTER: Why did you....
EVANS: I always wanted to be a foreign missionary of course.
SHUSTER: Why did you want to be a missionary?
EVANS: Because I felt it would be...it was a wonderful thing to give the gospel to others. And of course, we had good reason. When I was, when we were attending the Salvation Army at four years old, I saw a great big sign up in the window that said [pauses] "Self Denial Week". We came home to Mother, and we said "What's self denial? They're going to have 'Self Denial Week'." And she said, "It's doing without something you really would like to have, so that you can give the money to the Lord." "Oh we'd like to do that," we said. So mother figured what we could do, do without butter all one day a week. She didn't provide us with gravy for our potatoes nor jam on our bread. We did without butter and bread on the table and things of that sort on that day. And it never tasted so sweet as it did when we were doing without for the Lord's sake. So Mother asked us what we would like the money to go for. And she told us two or three things and one of them, widows in, in India. child widows. Would we like to have one for our own? And we said yes. And, and we asked, "May we do this right along?" And I...I was mistaken in say, saying it was one day a week because the first time it was all week, one week. Then when we wanted to keep that up, Mother said that it wouldn't be good for our health. So we decided one day a week. And for many, many years, while we were home, we did without butter for one day a week. And Mother figured out the amount and put it into a little bank and finally we were supporting a second child widow too. And she grew up as a one to...about whom we prayed every day.
SHUSTER: Because....
EVANS: Pardon me?
SHUSTER: You'd correspond with her?
EVANS: Yes. Of course, we did. Yes, we knew her name and we'd prayer for her and we received picture from time to time of this girl until she was grown and was doing Christian work. That gave us a great interest. Also, I feel that it is important for, to children in the home to have the missionaries visit in the home. Now, Mother's home was always open to missionaries.
SHUSTER: Now, speaking of missionaries your family was close to A.B. Simpson, were they not?
EVANS: I don't think you would say our family was close in the early days, but when my sister was six..., my older sister, Lydia, was sixteen years of age, my father said that we must have a home of our own, and we must have it in a community where we could have boys and girls to play with of our age and of our bringing-up, you might say. In mission work, we were in the heart of the city in a, in a apartment during all the winter months. And then in the spring, Mother would take us out to a farm in the country, so that we would have the fresh air. Otherwise, we would come home immediately after school and we wouldn't have companionship. The school would be a...a type of...it would be, you might say, slum children. And although the school was good, it wasn't good for companionship. And, it wasn't a good neighborhood. In Des Moines, Iowa, there were thre... saloons on three corners of the street like, where the mission was located. And, Mother would hurry us home immediately after school, so that if we didn't get home within fifteen minutes of the time school was out, she'd call the principal to see if we'd been kept after school. 'Cause she was very anxious that we would be safe.
SHUSTER: So, you decided to...your parents decided to buy a home.
EVANS: Yes. And they had the money that was given to them by his older sister who left it so that all of her heirs received several thousand dollars. Fifty-five heirs, I think it was. She was very well to do, and the only sister my father ever had. And he was very fond of her. And she was of him. And it provided the money that we could move to Nyack, and we could have a home just at the foot of the hill. It was a fifteen room house, and we had rooms of our own which we hadn't had previously [chuckles]. And we had home life such as we hadn't had previously. We had a family life such as I described with the morning prayer meeting and prayer. Of course, we had that all through the years. But we could expand it so much better with the piano then, there in our home and our comfortable chairs and sofas and, and have a real good time at family prayer in the evenings if there wasn't an service there, our folks were attending.
SHUSTER: And that's where you got to know Dr. Simpson?
EVANS: Yes. Dr. Simpson lived up near the institute building. My father chose Nyack because it had an academy. Helen Jaderquist Tenney attended and Merrill Tenney attended. That's when we first knew them there in the academy. And Lydia and Herbert, Lydia, pardon me, Lydia and my brother Clinton attended the academy. We attended the public school there, and the academy closed the year I was in high school. But the institute remained, and he thought, my father, that going to the academy and then to the institute would be sufficient education for all his girls. So he was very shocked when I insisted on going to college. That was uh.... We had that family life several years and attended the institute before we went to college.
SHUSTER: What did...?
EVANS: It was wonderful training. Dr. Simpson lived up on the hillside, and he loved to come down to our home. Kathryn was just four years old about that time. And he would sit in our kitchen, and he would talk to us and to Mother and oh he loved to...he loved to see us. And he would say, "Oh Bessie," which was the name by which he knew my mother, "I wish I had children like this". He was elderly by then. He had a lovely home up on the hillside, and the institute was a very large building, and the ships that came up the Hudson, Hudson River, day line and night ships [?] would point out the institute as the largest Victorian structure of its type between New York City and Albany. Very large building.
SHUSTER: What kind of personality traits came out in your mind about Dr. Simpson? What impressed you most about him?
EVANS: I didn't know Dr. Simpson too well. My father and mother had gone to...to his conventions. And they had been very much impressed with his preaching, his message of, of holy life and also, the missionary appeal. So much so that my mother put a very expensive engagement ring that she had been given by my father, into the collection. And they gave many thousands of dollars all together into...into that work and others. And, Dr. Simpson was quite elderly by the time when we would see much of him, but we would hear him preach up with the institute....
SHUSTER: What kind of preacher was he?
EVANS: Oh, he was a powerful preacher. he was the finest expositor of the word of God and would preach with a great deal of power. But when it came to the missionary vision, why, he was extraordinary because he had such a strong commitment to missions in his heart. He felt as though the world needed to be evangelized. They often said "evangelized in this generation, just as [Robert] Speer and others did at the turn of the century, and the years afterwards. We went to.... I would say it's 1912 when we moved to Nyack, and we saw him until the time of his death, from then on. And he occasionally preached and taught at the institute.
SHUSTER: How did it come about that you went away to college?
EVANS: When I graduated from high school, I wanted to go to college. I didn't say much to my father, perhaps not too much to my mother, but, I continually had it in my mind about going to college but I didn't know where to go.
SHUSTER: Why did you want to....
EVANS: About the only college that I knew anything about was Smith. That's not too far from Nyack. But I didn't like the product that I saw come back. Nice church girls that went.... And by the way, we attended the Methodist church in Nyack, it was a fairly easy walk from my home. The Baptist church was too far with younger children especially but for the others. Father was in Springfield a good deal at that time at different places. He had a penchant for bringing people together and they had him go to churches that were in bad condition, financially and spiritually. Perhaps there had been quarrels and, and the church had been broken up. They would have him go and minister there and see if he could get them together spiritually and otherwise and see that the, that there were improvements made in the buildings and things like that sort. He was in state work of that sort during those years. And if he was in Nyack, then he would walk up to the Baptist church, Sunday. But I thought it was quite big of him to think that it would be all right for all of us to join the Methodist church and attend there throughout all of our childhood. [unclear]
SHUSTER: Why did you want to go to college?
EVANS: I loved education and I felt as though I needed just as much education as possible to fit me for missionary work. And I wanted that time and the work. When I was in high school, I took the varied subjects that I thought would help me as a pioneer missionary. For instance, I took physics because I probably would have to teach the nationals how to fix my doorbell and how to put in electric lights. And so, I wanted to know that and other things. I was the only girl in the Physics class. And I took up surveying in college, surveying and trigonometry, so I could survey the product...the property also in a pioneer field. I had it in mind all through my, all through my education, I would be a pioneer missionary. And therefore, I must do everything to be prepared. They didn't have any place in the class for me to take typing. So I just took it on my own, had a typewriter tha....
SHUSTER: That was in high school?
EVANS: In high school. I took commercial law because as a pioneer missionary, I'm not about to deal with the government. So you can see the bent I had, you see, in preparation. And when the Lord called me to home missionary work, I was, I thought "Well,what a waste", but I used it even there in various things that I had leaned.
SHUSTER: When you graduated from high school, how did you wind up going to Wheaton?
EVANS: I went to the institute. Mother said if I would go there two years, then my next sister, Anne, would be old enough and would have graduated from high school. And we could go together. That appealed to me. By that time, we had used up most of the money that had been given to us. And so Mother said, "The house is large. We will take in some children from New York City and care for them. And that will enable us to earn a living and you go through the institute." I had a boyfriend at tweleve or fourteen, my first boyfriend. He came back during the war years to the institute. And he said, "Where, what are you going to do when you finish up at the institute?" I said,"I want to go to college, but I don't know where to go." I'd never heard of Wheaton College. I don't think they ever advertised except in the Sunday School Times, and I don't think I got the Sunday School Times. But there would be a little advertisement showing Dr. Blanchard's face and just a few words about Wheaton College in the Sunday School Times, but I had never seen that, nor had I heard of Wheaton. And I said, "I'll have to earn my way, but I want to go. {Both are talking at the same time} He said, "I think Wheaton would be a pretty good college for you". He had been there. He was David Newberry and his sister was still there at that time, two younger sisters and one was my age. He said, "The librarian there, the assistant librarian is graduating from the college, and I think you could get her job, if you would write right away." I said, "What is the system?" And he said, The Dewey Decimal System." And I said, "That's what they have at the library downtown. And I will find out about it." And he gave me the name of Dr. Rice to whom I should write about the, about a job. So this was in, I think, February or early March. I went down to the high school immediately, and I asked for the librarians if they would please teach me the Dewey Decimal System and everything they could about library work. How to run a library, everything. At that time, Miss Julia Blanchard was the librarian, but she had not gone to library school. It was later that she went. And therefore, they needed an assistant librarian that could, to...that could catalog the books, and could look after the library practically entirely. And this senior girl was doing that. I, I soon as I realized how easy the Dewey Decimal System was for me, I wrote right away and said I was learning that and also how to run a library. May I have the job? And of course being somewhat older, having gone to the Missionary Training Institute, I think that appealed to Professor Rice. But at any rate, on my birthday, March 29, I got a letter back saying, "You may have the job". Then I wrote saying, "May my sister have one too, in the library?" And I got word that she could. So, I immediately began to plan. But Mother said, "If you would stay for the summer and help take care of some children whose parents pay well to have them cared for, then we will give you fifty dollars a piece to go, and we will, also make some, get clothes. So, I had a very snappy wardrobe when I came. And when I reached the college, I had five dollars and eighty-seven cents in my pocket. But I had the promise of a job. And we had come a week early because Professor Rice said, "there is a lot of work needed to be done in the library. We've been closed all summer and it needed to be thoroughly dusted.
SHUSTER: You came by train?
EVANS: We came up by train, and our small suitcases fit in the back of [unclear] Carlson's [pause] automobile. Or we wouldn't have had that much when we got into Wheaton College. Later, we were given a half scholarship that cared for our rent. But aside from that, we earned all our way. In those days, you wouldn't have had government loans. Neither did you have the high tuition.
SHUSTER: Where did you live when you were going to Wheaton?
EVANS: Williston Hall. That was the only building that there was. And we were on the first floor. And my younger sister was homesick all the time, from the time we arrived until Thanksgiving. So, every night, she brought her pillow into my room and slept in the single bed with me, pushing me farther and farther till I got up and took my pillow into her bed and slept the rest of the night. I pitied her. I pity anybody that is so homesick. She had never been away from home. And I had. [chuckles] And I pitied her. She got through college and, then, later two more girls came. And they went through college, and all of us went through the institute. Five girls to the institute and four girls to Wheaton College. Now, a second generation and a third generation are here.
SHUSTER: Do you....
EVANS: So I've thanked God many, many, many times that young man came once to my home and told me about Wheaton.
SHUSTER: What was Julia Blanchard like?
EVANS: She was middle aged. She had, she was fairly tall. She had dark hair and she had charge of the college bookstore which was just a counter with candy, a few things like that the students could buy. And what a temptation that was. I spend five cents for one of those nice, big chocolate drops they had, some gooey sweet inside. And it would sort of tie me over till meal, mealtime. We sat in the dining room and had table service. That was very good because it taught us how table manners [unclear].
SHUSTER: What sticks out most in your mind about Miss Blanchard?
EVANS: That she was very fair. She usually stayed right there in that bookstore because I was supposed to...I was in back of her in the, in a room there, sort of unofficial [unclear. And I catalogued books a great deal of the time during the daytime hours, all afternoon. But, I also had charge of those in the library which was a large room just off of it. The stacks were in a room with her, with her little bookstore. And I was in the back of that cataloging books, but I had to go every so often into the library especially if I heard noisy young folks in there. The girls that sat at the desk to keep order or to...or to loan out books got fifteen cents an hour. And those who worked full time got twenty-five cents an hour. And I had the exalted salary of thirty-five cents, which was the same amount that the, the President's secretary received, who was also a student. Miss Blanchard, Miss Blanchard was very busy in what she did. She was the only one who waited on those who came or to buy school books or school supplies or anything of that sort. It was just a small counter, wasn't as large as this room hardly, not wider .
SHUSTER: And where was the library?
EVANS: It was on the second floor....
SHUSTER: In Blanchard Hall?
EVANS: Yes, just, just this side of what had been Fisher chapel. And between Fisher Chapel and the outside wall, that was a much larger room there and it was the library and the stacks. Saturday, we bound books over in the basement of what was then the academy building, that is the building that I think is the Stupe now, perhaps. We bound them by hand, and I made my hand quite raw. I'm[?] the one who used the awl to go through....
SHUSTER: Poke through and make holes for....
EVANS: Make holes. And you will see some of them still there. with red cov... red binding on the back and the red covers. We took off the advertising and bound it with a heavy muslin and Professor Rice would have a can of hot glue that would be there. We would dip into that and put this hot glue on the back and then we would put a red binding over the back. I saw some of those still there in the library when I went there a couple of years ago.
SHUSTER: Did you have much contact with Charles Blanchard, the president of the college?
EVANS: He taught ethics. I remember very distinctly he made a trip England and came back with the Scotch Presbyterian psalter. And for quite a while, we sang from the Scotch Psalter. I remember also, he went on trips [pauses] for the college and he would, he would come back and forth of every day but Sunday. He never traveled on Sunday. Once in a while he would say just a word about secret societies or something of that sort, but not, not often at all. He would give us wholesome, good, short messages from the, from the scriptures. In the chapel, he didn't often have outside speakers as President Buswell had later. I don't think speakers traveled around as they do, but we did sometimes especially missionary speakers or educational speakers. But, he was a man of great integrity, a fine appearance. That picture does not do him justice, that's of him in the Heritage room.
SHUSTER: What did he look like?
EVANS: He had,the high, broad forehead of a scholar and a very fine slender nose, aquiline nose. And fairly full lips and a good strong chin, but, not a protruding chin. He had a very, very well shaped face. He was a handsome man and tall and very stately. And he was greatly reverenced by the students. He was really very, very respected. We didn't see him a great deal, personally, to talk with him. He wasn't available. He, he didn't walk among the students the way some of these later presidents have. He was a very busy man. He had to be president and all the vice-presidents that run the college now.
SHUSTER: Rolled into one.
EVANS: And the money raiser and so forth. So we didn't have too much personal contact but he was powerful in Ethics.
SHUSTER: What kind of speaker was he?
EVANS: He was the scholarly speaker. You wouldn't call him fervent in the sense of being evangelistic. He would be he would have a [unclear] tone. He was much sought after as a conference speaker of the type of Bible teacher was more on that style. But a good speaker and an interesting speaker, and a man of clear understanding of scripture, clear exposition. You wouldn't call him particularly expositor or a preacher. He was a teacher, a great teacher.
SHUSTER: Were there any teachers on campus who made a great impression on you?
EVANS: Oh yes. Oh yes.
SHUSTER: Who were some of them?
EVANS: You couldn't, you couldn't have those people for your professors and not be terrifically impressed. And the classes were not so large, that you could know them. For instance, Miss Blaine was a Latin teacher. I hadn't had any Latin for five years, and it was very hard. She taught me the equivalent of two years and a half of high school Latin in one year. And I only had two in high school. But there were only two in the class as it happened [?]. That was the smallest class I ever attended here. Of course, Professor Straw always made an impression. We just delighted in him.
SHUSTER: Why was that?
EVANS: We had... Oh, he took off his glasses and put them on the edge of his nose and he would point the finger at us, and we'd have to stand up and recite a poem or, or [chuckles] or tell a true story or do most anything at a moments notice. He taught both rhetoric and debating and various other things. I...I was a debater. I...they had that as, a something extra. So I tried it and I liked it. But then...then of course, there was Dr. Dow. And of course, she was a terrific English teacher, English literature anything of that sort, literature teacher. And she had something [?] that we called her famous snort[?]. But she never realized that when silly naughty boy, David Newberry, told who had told me about Wheaton, was back at Wheaton, at his senior oration or whatever, he spoke about that. And she didn't have any idea what he was talking about.
SHUSTER: What was her famous snort [?]
EVANS: When she made uh of great interest, she [breathes in and out heavily] did something of that sort that was very, very impressive [both laugh]. It's unlike anything you have ever heard.
SHUSTER: Sounds like Eleanor Roosevelt.
EVANS: It was terrific. It showed, "I enjoy this thoroughly. I am[unclear] with it. I think you should appreciate it." And she didn't make a statement about it English literature, some wonderful expression of some poet or some writer, and she would [breathes in and out heavily]. And we, of course, realized that that was a certain strong point that we should pay attention to. She was a dear, dear teacher, very dignified. She had large face, long face, and a very short neck, and a very... a good figure. And she would stand for her class, for the whole period to teach. So did Dr. Straw. He always stood for the whole period. So did the president. He taught Ethics, and I think he taught one other, Philosophy or some other class. I don't know just what it was. But everybody in the school had to take the Ethics class, which was very good. I didn't take the Bible lessons because they had given me the eight credits of the Bi...of Bible from the Institute. That's all I did have then. I made up a half a year or more with two-thirds of a year, I made up. So I graduated in three years.
SHUSTER: What was the spiritual life on campus like?
EVANS: It was very good. We wouldn't be here if we weren't sincere and earnest, I don't think. Fun loving, yes, and full of activity. We found our class, I think, perhaps, had a little more sense of history than some other classes of the years before.
SHUSTER: Why was that?
EVANS: Well, I don't know exactly, perhaps, because I'm very fond of history. I remember I was interested in the, in yearbooks and things of that sort. And I found out that they had had a yearbook years before that they called the Tower. They had another smaller, much smaller one before that. I forget the name of it. But it didn't amount to very much. Then they had what you would call the Tower for a while. But it had been many years that they hadn't had a Tower at all. And so, two or three of those in our class said, "We should start one again. It's not right." I was from a school where they had some sort of a yearbook in high school, and we said "It's not right that we shouldn't have it. And we're the junior class, and the junior class is the ones that make it. So, let's do it." And there were several that took a great interest in their annual[?] and editorial committees. And so we started up that practice that has gone on ever since. I also realized that we had no band or no orchestra here, and I found in back of Fischer chapel and back of the pipe organ, I found a few old instruments and some band music. And I said, "Well, we should certainly have a band." My boyfriend had sung there. I don't think they sing now particularly. But then they had these cheers that were also singing and the class songs or something, at the games. I was too busy to attend, but I said let's have the band. So we advertised and said, "Anybody who can play any of those instruments or has any instruments for a band, why, meet with us." And so we passed out these instruments and band music, and they said, "Who will be the band master?" We couldn't find anybody that could qualify at all, and I said, "Well, I, I'll get you started." because I had a sense of rhythm, and I knew how to beat time. And so, I beat the time for these instruments to get started. And eventually, we found somebody that did have, whether it was a professor it was a professor or just what I don't know. They didn't have much in the way of music, except just a chapel singer. But at any rate, they got a band started again. They let the fad run earlier [unclear] those instruments lying there. So there were several things that we were anxious to get started here.
SHUSTER: What was the social life like here on campus?
EVANS: Well, [pauses] we had a senior at the head of the table and at the foot of the table, if they went around. But one at the head at least. And we had table conversations. And then, after that we could go in, into....This was in Williston Hall. The dining room was in back. And we could go to the front of it, and there was an open space there, and couples sat along the a benches around a little. And there was a piano in the one room. So, they, what was called a parlour I suppose, and we would sing, and anything that we wanted. And somebody who could play well, would play. We had a girl in our class Florence Watts that was a good player. And my boyfriend was a good singer, tenor singer. And some of the rest of them would stand around and sing. We weren't allowed to go out at all during the week. We had to have, we had till 7:30 for a little social life and then we head to our rooms to study. And there the bell that rang at 10:30 that we were all to have our light out.. We weren't allowed to have them on again before 6:30 in the morning, except by special permission or to study for a test or something like that. So during the week, we didn't have very much social life, but Friday night, we had the literary societies, and, and that gave us very good training. I was highly in favor of it.
SHUSTER: Which one did you belong to?
EVANS: Eels.
SHUSTER: And what was....
EVANS: Aelioians.
SHUSTER: What was a meeting of the Eels like?
EVANS: They had well, they had subjects different nights. Sometimes, we all tried to write a poem and brought it. Sometimes, we had short stories. Anybody that could write a short story. Sometimes, we'd have sort of little plays. I can remember one time when I was a man and, and Howard, Mr. Howard's, president of the Sunday School Times, daughter was my wife. And she was taller than I. And Oh we had various programs. It was very good to teach parliamentary law and Roberts Rules and things of that sort for debating and poetry and stories. good times, sometimes it would just an evening of fun. But it was good training to supervise that for, for the program. We had parties sometimes. I remember when Halloween came, they said we could have a Halloween party. I think it was two classes at least. It may have been the whole school. But two or three of us entered into it in a very lively way. I remember that we had a funeral parlors in the basement under, under Williston. And my sister was in charge of it. And she was a very quiet type really. But she got up the most horrible story imaginable. We borrowed one or two of the skeletons and had them all fixed up with phosphorus and we made uh with soaked macaroni for the intestines and we had piece of liver for the heart or something like that. We got a bone, a piece of bone down at the butcher shop. And my sister told this gory story of a man who had an automobile accident and passed these parts around. The inside of a great big eye, and so forth. And in the dark, in the dark down there, around the table, we passed around these awful things that she told about. Upstairs, we had ducking for apples and all the regular things. pasting the, putting the donkey's tail on...
SHUSTER: ...tail on the donkey.
EVANS: ... fortune telling. Just everything. Booths around the good parts of the room. So, that was quite a party. I won't tell you too much about another part of it. I walked in....[laughs]. we girls often had ideas about how to entertain. Washington, Washington party, Washington Day,
SHUSTER: Washington Banquet?
EVANS: ...was here. And we would fix up everything in great style. We didn't go to expensive places. Most of the young people couldn't have afforded to have gone to a fine place. But we would dress up, and we would have the tables beautifully decorated. And everything would have been in good shape , good [unclear].
SHUSTER: What year would that have been?
EVANS: Oh, this was.... I went...I went to 1919 to '22. I graduated...
END OF TAPE