How did The Evergreen State College get the name of The Evergreen State College? The Jan. 25, 1968 issue of the Daily Olympian tells part of the story under the headline "Our College Gets a Colorful Name : Trustees Call Signals For Evergreen State." Notice the "Our" in there. That word would not appear in any headlines after TESC opened. Anyway, here's what the article had to say:

"The board of trustees of The Evergreen State College went at the task of picking their new name Wednesday with all the delicacy of a demolition squad disarming a time bomb. Board members, who named Dr. Garrett Heyns, Olympia, to an advisory committee to help select a president, voted unanimously for the name: The Evergreen State College, with emphasis on the word The. The word was apparently added to prevent any other institution from filching the name. 'This is the Evergreen State,' said trustee Al Saunders, Tacoma, who made the motion for it. 'It will probably be the only college with that name.'"

"Trueman (Bink) Schmidt, Olympia, chairman of the board, asked if the trustees didn't think they should at least consider some of the other names suggested. At its meeting in Spokane January 10, the board narrowed a number of suggestions down to Capitol State College, Olympia State College and Washington State College at Olympia, as well as Evergreen. 'The word capital is overdone,' Saunders said. 'There is capital this and capital that in this community. It might be thought of as a business school,' he added. Using the word Olympia, he said, might 'tie the school to the city,' thus irritating such places as Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Centralia. Schmidt said naming it Washington State College at Olympia could cause confusion with Washington State University. Trustee Halvor Halvorson, Spokane, remarked that such a name was opposed in his area. Halvorson also noted that putting Olympia in the name might confuse it with Olympic College at Bremerton."

"Mrs. Janet Tourtellotte, a trustee from Seattle, said she had at first preferred a name with historical interest. 'So many of them are used and over-used,' she said, 'while others are so little known' that she had decided against an historical name. To a suggestion she had from an Olympia resident that it be named for Charles Wilkes, who led the United States Exploration Expedition of 1841 which first charted Puget Sound, Mrs. Tourtellotte said few people had ever heard of him. Schmidt suggested that such a name might lead some to believe it was a private school. He suggested that maybe the board might want to table the name for a later meeting. But Saunders said the board was not likely to arrive at a better name and that any delay would 'hold up programs' of the college." [End of Daily Olympian article]

So where did Washington's nickname, "the Evergreen State" come from? It has been attributed to C.T. (Charles Tallmadge) Conover, a Seattle newspaper columnist and pioneer realtor. He apparently concocted the term in the late 1800s. In addition to inventing the Evergreen phrase, Conover was also instrumental in retaining the name of Mount Rainier when efforts were made to change it to Mount Tahoma or Tacoma. Mr. Conover was also a writer of local history and was a great friend to libraries (a big plus in my book, no pun intended). Something tells me he would have enjoyed knowing an innovative college carried his phrase. He almost lived long enough to see it, C.T. died just a few days short of his 99th birthday in August, 1961.

In 1979, during my final year at TESC, the "The" was very nearly dropped from the name. I'll talk about the 1978-79 school year (the year from Hell) in a future segement. For now I'll offer the opinion that the "The" might have been viewed as arrogant and pretentious in the past, but it did help the school get noticed and today it stands out as a quaint remnant of the era from which Evergroove was born. Keep the The.