1983-1991 Gordon Evans

1983-1991 Gordon Evans

Board president 1989-90, attorney

By Joe Holbert | For the Juneau Empire

Gordon Evans was the post-statehood governor's press secretary and staff aide to Gov. Bill Egan. Evans had moved to Juneau from the Anchorage Daily News to cover state government for United Press International.

Egan had become ill soon after his inauguration in January 1959. Hugh J. Wade, the secretary of state (a title later changed to lieutenant governor) served as acting governor during the first session of the Alaska State Legislature.

The press room in the Egan administration - today the legislative lounge on the Capitol second floor - was off-limits, declared the exclusive turf of the Associated Press and Bob Atwood's Anchorage Times.

Evans went to the governor. He says Egan persuaded a female legislator who had an office on the second floor to use the women's rest room on the third floor so the second floor rest room could be remodeled into a new UPI office complete with private facilities.

Evans, 75, is a semiretired lawyer and lobbyist, occasionally visiting the Capitol when clients summon him from his family's summer cabin on the Inside Passage.