About Daniel J. Evans: Daniel Jackson Evans.
I think, like a lot of other people who have been in the service, you'd been delayed in what you were doing. You wanted to catch up and the best way to catch up was to move as fast as you could toward a degree.
But I decided I wanted more education and I had to make a choice between starting law school, which was interesting to me, and going for a graduate degree in engineering.
I was always good at math and science and physics.
I did graduate with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1948.
I think I finally chose the graduate degree in engineering primarily because it only took one year and law school took three years, and I felt the pressure of being a little behind - although I was just 22.
And then, when I went into the Navy, there was no choice. You took about half of the hours during your naval training as naval courses and the other half were engineering.
I stayed in the Navy until July of 1946.
Then I came back and restarted at the UW that fall.
I really got to a point where I thought maybe I would want to be involved politically.
Actually, as that first association continued, we got a little more legitimate. In those days, they asked Boy Scout troops to act as ushers during the football games. So we signed up and I went to many games in full Boy Scout uniform as an usher.
The only kind of movement you could make in the Navy was to be a platoon leader or one of those kinds of things as you got more senior in your Navy career.
We had a big party that night and everybody went around gathering results from various precincts and each person would get four or five precincts and then come to the house. There were no cell phones or anything to get results phoned in early.
When it came time to go to the University, it was during the war.
I didn't take very much part in activities on campus at that time.
I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money.
I got called back into the Navy during the Korean War.
