[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 28, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3049-S3050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO ROWLAND EVANS

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, today in our Nation's Capital funeral 
services were held for Rowland Evans, a lifetime journalist of 
international acclaim. This magnificently conducted service, attend by 
an extraordinary gathering of family, friends, and peers, preserved 
forever the man's extraordinary love of family, journalism, and service 
to country in the uniform of the U.S. Marines in combat operations in 
the Pacific during World War II.
  The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Jones, officiated in 
presenting the American Flag to the family to conclude this deeply 
moving service.
  Rowland Evans was an astute observer of the values of our federal 
system of government, but his great fascination was with the political 
arena--the centerpiece being those who competed for and won or lost 
elective offices.
  His partner--his close friend--for over a quarter of a century, 
Robert Novak, rose to the challenge of chronicling with sensitivity, 
humor and insight his many lifetime achievements.
  Senator Kennedy, Senator Snowe, and I were privileged to be in 
attendance at the services at Christ's Church, Georgetown. We join in 
asking unanimous consent to have printed in today's Record the 
proceedings of the U.S. Senate, a complex institution, which Rowland 
Evans keenly understood, the eulogy by Robert Novak.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       Eulogy by Mr. Robert Novak

       Having spend his life in journalism writing thousands of 
     columns and literally millions of words, Rowland Evans well 
     knew how hard it was to get things exactly right. So it was 
     with his well-meaning obituaries last Saturday.
       The AP report said he had been in poor health for years. In 
     truth, until diagnosed with cancer last summer, it could be 
     said he was the healthiest 79-year-old on the planet. Even 
     for the past nine months, he was no invalid.
       His oncologist said he had never quite seen a cancer 
     patient like Rowly Evans. Two weeks before he died he was 
     playing squash, appearing on television, climbing the 
     mountain at his place in Culpepper, even making a deal to 
     finally achieve his long-time desire to buy the top of the 
     mountain and complete ownership of it. As he entered the 
     hospital with two days of life remaining and the bleak 
     options were laid before him, he interrupted the doctor to 
     talk about his chances

[[Page S3050]]

     for presiding over the Evans-Novak political forum next week.
       The headline in the New York Times called him a 
     conservative columnist. I guess he did end up as pretty 
     conservative--this friend and ardent admirer of Jack and 
     Robert Kennedy, the son of a liberal Democratic family on the 
     conservative Philadelphia mainline who, at the behest of his 
     New Deal father, delivered a speech--in Marine uniform--for 
     Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.
       When Kay Winton told her liberal father she had fallen in 
     love with Rowly, she concluded by saying: and, daddy, he's a 
     liberal! Nearly half a century later, her husband was singing 
     the praises of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich.
       Still I can think of words more descriptive of the whole 
     man than conservative: reporter, patriot, mentor, competitor, 
     even--and here using a description by his wife of 51 years--
     rascal.
       He rejoiced in his rascality and loved to talk about it. 
     About the time as Marine recruit at Parris Island, when he 
     spotted an old buddy from the Kent School who was a Marine 
     lieutenant. They decided to have a drink together, but where 
     could an officer and an enlisted man go together? To go to 
     the Officers Club, his friend dressed Rowly as an officer. 
     All went well until Rowly spotted how own commanding officer 
     at the bar. They tiptoed out to prevent their Marine careers 
     from ending in court martial.
       Most of us know the story of how Rowly, the lowest of the 
     low in the Washington Bureau of the Associated Press, posted 
     as bureau chief to interview Katherine for a job--at 8 
     o'clock in the evening, no less.
       And Rowly said the crowning achievement of his life came 
     just a few years ago when he and his friend Woody Redmond 
     skated the frozen Potomac River before being halted--and 
     nearly arrested--by police.
       The skating incident also reflected one of the fiercest 
     competitive spirits any of us have ever seen--playing 
     competitive ice hockey until he was 40, winning squash 
     tournament after squash tournament at the Metropolitan Club 
     into his 70's and ranked nationally among senior squash 
     players, playing tennis or bridge or poker, shooting dice 
     with friends for lunch at the Metropolitan Club, just trying 
     to drive from Georgetown to Culpepper without hitting a 
     stoplight. He could recite nearly every shot of the semifinal 
     match in the National Father-and Son Tennis Tournament when 
     he was 14 years old.
       He was a happy warrior, a delight at any dinner party, 
     playing the piano, stirring up trouble. But beneath these 
     high spirits burned the heart of a patriot--the Yale freshman 
     who stood in line on December 8, 1941 to enlist in the Marine 
     Corps, exchanging the privileged life he had always known for 
     combat at Guadalcanal.
       His fierce passion for the security of his country was the 
     prism through which all his journalism passed. It guided his 
     greatest journalistic achievements--his expose of Soviet arms 
     control cheating in the 1970's that the U.S. Government 
     sought to hide, his informed forecasts of the fall of the 
     communist empire in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
       That passion embroiled Rowly in controversy when he refused 
     to accept the Government cover-up of the bombing of the 
     U.S.S. Liberty in the Six-day War. He could not let the 
     reasons for the death of fellow Americans serving their 
     country go unnoticed.
       Rowland Evans was no deskbound columnist. In the tradition 
     of his great friends the Alsop brothers, he went everywhere--
     and anywhere--for a story: China, Southeast Asia, all over 
     Eastern Europe, the Mideast, the Indian subcontinent. He 
     skirted death in incidents in Vietnam and the Six-day War. He 
     could not report on the independence movement in the Baltics 
     without actually going to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. When 
     his father died, Rowly was reporting in Iraq--awaiting a rare 
     interview with Saddam Hussein. He flew to Philadelphia for 
     the funeral, then back to Baghdad--and that interview with 
     the Iraqi dictator.
       But the heart of his reporting was here in Washington. His 
     sources were legion: the mighty of Washington and obscure 
     staffers, CIA spooks and mysterious emigres. All were 
     interrogated in the dining room of the Metropolitan Club.
       In the last week, I have been contacted by so many younger 
     people in the news business who told me how Rowly counseled 
     them, gave them a helping hand. His was what Stew Alsop 
     called the reporter's trade and he sought to pass it along to 
     a new generation.
       If I may close with a strictly personal note. On the 
     morning of Monday, December 17, 1963, returning to the 
     Washington Bureau of the Wall Street Journal after my 
     honeymoon, I found a batch of notes from a reporter form the 
     New York Herald-Tribune whom I barely knew: Rowland Evans. 
     When I called him, he asked me for lunch--not at the 
     Metropolitan Club by the way but at Blackie's House of Beef. 
     It was a lunch that changed my life and made my career.
       The upshot was the Evans-Novak column which lasted for 30 
     years until his retirement and a partnership of 38 years that 
     continued in television and our newsletter. We had a thousand 
     shouting arguments, often at the top of our voices. We never 
     fought about money, hardly ever about ideology but frequently 
     about what story to tell and how to tell it.
       Rowland Evans was the life of every party, but he ceased 
     being a society boy long ago in the crucible of combat as a 
     Marine sergeant in the Solomon Islands. He was a tough 
     Marine, an unabashed patriot, a great journalist and a 
     faithful friend and colleague. Rest in peace, Rowly.

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