Remembering conservative champion M. Stanton Evans

Medford Stanton Evans, one of the most influential players in the conservative movement of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, died yesterday after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. He was 80.

Evans got involved in politics during his college days at Yale, where he was a leader of conservative students. He began working with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute after graduation, and joined the board in 1960, where he served until 2013 as a trustee and lecturer. A journalist, he was one of the early writers for National Review and became the youngest editor of a daily newspaper, at age 26, when he took the position at the Indianapolis News. He was the founder and director of the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C., where he had an impact on the lives of thousands of students.

“He was a great man, and a great friend, and just a wonderful, selfless guy,”Chris Long, president of ISI, said. “His whole life was dedicated to promoting freedom.”

Evans, along with his friend Bill Buckley, worked to promote modern conservatism in America. In the 1960s, he drafted the Sharon Statement, which served as the founding principle for Young Americans for Freedom. Long described it as “the Conservative Credo.”In it were the principles that would guide Evans throughout his years of championing the conservative cause—that freedom and tradition go together, that a truly free society must be founded on Judeo-Christian values, and that human beings have natural rights that stem from a relationship with their Creator. Conservatism, as Evans saw it, was a unifying theory of human nature.

“And the best, most articulate statement of that theory of human nature was written by Stan Evans in the Sharon Statement,”Long said.

Evans was a prolific writer, publishing articles and essays for various venues and authoring several books on conservatism.

At the low point of Ronald Reagan’s primary campaign in 1980, Evans ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign in North Carolina that was an important step in securing Reagan’s nomination.

“Stan kind of single handedly was able to rally the conservative movement of troops,”Long said.

In 2008, ISI awarded Evans the Charles H. Hoeflich Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize his work on behalf of ISI and the conservative movement.

Evans also will be remembered for the impact he had on the lives of individual people, through his work with students at the National Journalism Institute and in everyday, passing conversations.

“While others will point to some of the books he wrote, some of the work he did as a journalist, the affect he had on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election in North Carolina, I would argue his most enduring impact is the thousands of lives that he touched,”Long said.

Long met Evans while a college student at George Washington University and described him as the funniest, most engaging person he has ever met. He was willing to stay up talking to young people late into the night.

“He just had a mind that was so quick,”Long said. Despite his reputation for effectively “skewering”poor policy decisions, he was never cruel or personally offensive. “He was so fun to be around,”Long recalled. “He was always positive, he was always poking fun at the left through humor. I never saw him angry or heard him speak ill of an individual.”

Past students now working at large publications have noted Evans’ lasting legacy in their own reflections on his life and impact.

“In addition to hands-on training in the craft of journalism, you picked up a lot of wisdom about journalism and politics just hanging around Stan,” one of Evan’s previous students, Stephen Hayward, wrote.

Another, John Fund, who now writes for National Review, recalled his first interview with Evans.

“I can see you know a lot, but you are here to turn that into useful activity,” he remembered Evans saying. “You will learn how to research, how to interview, how to use facts properly, and how to organize your thoughts.”

Fund and Hayward both credit Evans with catapulting them into their successful journalistic careers.

“He had a huge, huge impact on hundreds and hundreds of students who went on to do great things themselves,”Long said.