Background
Rowland Evans was born on April 28, 1921 in White Marsh, Pennsylvania, United States. He is a son of Rowl and Elizabeth Wharton (Downs) Evans.
1967
25th Avenue South and Vanderbilt Place Nashville, TN 37235
National syndicated columnist Rowland Evans Jr. is explaining some of the problems President Lyndon B. Johnson is facing as the opening speaker of Vanderbilt University's Impact Symposium at Memorial Gym April 7, 1967. (Photo by Jimmy Ellis/The Tennessean)
1984
Portrait of six American journalists as they pose together under a large chandelier, September 1984. Pictured are, back row from left, American journalists Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, James Kilpatrick, and David Broder; front row from left, Joseph Kraft and James Reston. (Photo by Arnold Newman Properties)
1958
Journalist Rowland Evans, Jr., shortly before he began his partnership with Robert Novak.
1963
Journalists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans.
1966
Publicity portrait of journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, taken outside the White House.
1967
25th Avenue South and Vanderbilt Place Nashville, TN 37235
National syndicated columnist Rowland Evans Jr. is explaining some of the problems President Lyndon B. Johnson is facing as the opening speaker of Vanderbilt University's Impact Symposium at Memorial Gym April 7, 1967. (Photo by Jimmy Ellis/The Tennessean)
1967
25th Avenue South and Vanderbilt Place Nashville, TN 37235
National syndicated columnist Rowland Evans Jr., left, waits to be introduced as the opening speaker of Vanderbilt University's Impact Symposium at Memorial Gym April 7, 1967.
1977
Journalists Robert Novak, and Rowland Evans chat with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at a party hosted by RKO to kick off their new television program, "Evans-Novak Report." Reagan was later interviewed on the program.
1977
Journalists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans in their office.
1984
Portrait of six American journalists as they pose together under a large chandelier, September 1984. Pictured are, back row from left, American journalists Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, James Kilpatrick, and David Broder; front row from left, Joseph Kraft and James Reston. (Photo by Arnold Newman Properties)
1993
Rowland Evans with Robert Novak and Jude Wanninski at Polyconomics Conference in 1993.
1994
Journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, with Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin.
Journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak interviewing Dick Cheney while he was secretary of defense.
Office of 'Trib' and paper's White House correspondent Rowland Evans. (Photo by Francis Miller)
1 Macedonia Rd, Kent, CT 06757, United States
Rowland Evans graduated from the Kent School in 1939.
New Haven, CT 06520, United States
Rowland Evans studied at Yale University.
Rowland Evans was born on April 28, 1921 in White Marsh, Pennsylvania, United States. He is a son of Rowl and Elizabeth Wharton (Downs) Evans.
Rowland Evans graduated from the Kent School in 1939, and enrolled at Yale, as at least two generations of men in his family had before him. But unlike his Yale-educated ancestors, Mr. Evans made it only through freshman year. On Dec. 8, 1941, spurred by the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant. In 1944, after serving in combat in the South Pacific, he contracted malaria and was discharged.
Medically discharged in 1944 after contracting malaria, Evans began his journalism career with the Philadelphia Bulletin before he joining the New York Herald-Tribune and working his way up to becoming the paper's Congressional correspondent. He became a Washington journalist in 1945. In 1963, Mr. Evans and Mr. Novak began writing ''Inside Report,'' an insider's view of politics that was published four times a week until Mr. Evans retired in 1993. "Inside Report" became noteworthy among syndicated political columns for being what the trade called "dope pieces" almost exclusively: inside reporting more than polemics, even though the team's conservative inclination gradually became evident. They founded the "Evans-Novak Political Report" in 1967, four years after they had launched their nationally syndicated column.
Mr. Evans and his longtime writing partner, Robert Novak, began their work as columnists in the early 1960s, a time when newspaper columnists wielded outsize influence in national politics. With Mr. Novak, Mr. Evans was a pioneer in transferring that influence to the new medium of cable television with the political discussion program ''Evans & Novak.''
By 1980, "Evans & Novak" were among the most widely syndicated columns in the United States as well as frequent guests on news-oriented radio and television talk programs.
The team was among the first to join the fledgling Cable News Network, with "Evans & Novak" becoming one of the cable network's best-watched discussion programs in 1980. In 1998 ''Evans & Novak'' became ''Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields'' when Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal and Mark Shields, a syndicated columnist, joined the program. Evans's columns celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, and he wrote extensively on the conflicts in the Middle East.
In addition, Evans - on his own and with his writing partner - contributed essays to such magazines as Harper's, The Saturday Evening Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and others, not to mention joining his partner as a Reader's Digest contributing editors.
The team also co-wrote several books, including "Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power" (1966), "Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power" (1971), and "The Reagan Revolution" (1981).
They were featured prominently in "The Boys on the Business," Timothy Crouse's memorable best-seller about the workings of the Washington press corps during the 1972 presidential campaigns.
Evans retired from the column in 1993, although he continued to appear on the television program until his death from cancer in 2001.
Although Evans voted for Democrat John F. Kennedy for president in 1960 and Lyndon B. Johnson for president in 1964, soon after they turned to conservatism.
Evans and Novak were big boosters of Republican Ronald Reagan for president, and much later made their great dislike for Democrat Bill Clinton clear in countless presentations.
Another trademark Evans-and-Novak view was their sharp criticisms of Israel. This gave them access to many Arab leaders in the Middle East.
Characterizing the two men, Los Angeles Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak said: "Evans was a conservative, very conservative, but not a screamer the way Novak is. He was the more thoughtful of the two, but he was no less hard right than Novak..."
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 1993 article, he also listed his reporting on Soviet arms-control violations and Middle East affairs.
When he was asked about his influence, Mr. Evans said: "What we did was get stories that showed the outrages in government and write them as hard as we could. The effect of that was influence."
Quotations:
"The Kennedy organization doesn't run, it purrs."
– Rowland Evans, Jr.
Colleagues described Mr. Evans as a man of contradiction. He grew up in a liberal family, yet split off and became conservative. He grew up with the comforts and customs of Main Line Philadelphia, yet enlisted in the Marine Corps and sought combat duty. He was a reporter with a keen conservative edge, yet he was close friends with President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Novak said that Kennedy had his first dinner as a president-elect with Mr. Evans.
Evans was considered by his colleagues to be the slender, fair gentleman reporter with a social pedigree.
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."
Physical Characteristics:
Marjorie Williams described Mr. Evans, as "all freckles and teeth and expensively weathered skin" in The Post on the column's 25th anniversary.
In his later years, he suffered from esophageal cancer, which was a cause of his death.
Quotes from others about the person
''Seeing combat really toughened him, I think,'' Mr. Novak once said. ''He was no longer a society boy. And he didn't want to go back to Yale after that. It had changed him and I think it changed him for life.''
''Personally he was a man of enormous contradiction,'' Mr. Shields said. ''He had a foot in all camps.''
''He was totally interested and engaged,'' Mr. Shields said. ''He was not reliant on the three sources from the Kennedy-Johnson administration, or the five cabinet members from the Nixon administration or anybody from Clinton. That tirelessness was remarkable.''
"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.
Columnist Jack Germond said then, "Evans and Novak probably had more impact on politics, particularly on conservatives, than anybody else."
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."
''I remember once going to a Christmas lunch and the host turned the tables and told the politicians to ask the reporters questions,'' Mr. Witcover said. Jack Kemp turned to Mr. Evans and, pointing out the dissimilarities between the two men, asked Mr. Evans if he had ever had Mr. Novak over to his house for as much as a drink, Mr. Witcover recalled. Mr. Evans pulled himself up proudly, and said, a wry, joking tone coloring his measured voice: ''Why yes. Of course. On Sept. 16, 1969, I had him over for a drink.''
Novak said, that he "was a great reporter of the old school who was able to get behind the scenes of what was really going on in Washington for nearly half a century."
Evans met his future wife Katherine Winton when she went to The Associated Press three days after she had arrived from her Minnesota hometown looking for a job. Seeking to impress her, Mr. Evans pretended he was the bureau chief. They married on June 18, 1949. They had two children: Rowland Winton and Sarah Warren.