Why did the originating members name the post what they did? Why did they name the post after a murdered US Deputy Marshal Isaac Evans? He had no military background and did not fight in the great war. Had he lived, Evans wouldn't be eligible for membership. Evans's murder was fresh in everyone'should mind and the trial of his murderer was happening as the veterans met. In a resolution passed the evening they organized, they explained it was to "honor and perpetuate the name of one whose daily life typified those ideals of Americanism fostered and sustained by the Constitution of the American Legion; a man whose unselfish devotion to duty and to the enforcement of laws order finally exacted from him the supreme sacrifice." The soldiers of the Great War recognize that - although not a military soldier U.S. Deputy Marshal Isaac Evans had been a combatant in the war of Law and Order and had given his life for his country. With the violence of 1919 on their minds, members of the Seward new American Legion Post understood that officers like Evans stood between anarchy and the rule of law. In mid-November the Seward Gateway reprinted an article from the Juneau Empire reminding citizens that three Federal officials had been murdered in Alaska during the last year. The first was 36 year old U.S. Deputy Marshal Clyde D Calhoun of Craig who had been gunned down on February 12th. Calhoun had just married a Craig schoolteacher the year before. Evans had been the second. Recently, Assistant District Attorney Reagan had been murdered. 'These men died for their country and fellow men as heroically as good soldiers on the battlefield of France,"Juneau Empire said. 'Sometimes we are apt to forget the plodding man in obscure places who goes about performing his duty from day to day. Somebody has said that the greatest hero is not the man to whom comes the opportunity do something so dramatic in its nature that it attracts the attention of many, rather it is the man who in the routine and humdrum of his daily life does his duty to his country, his community, his family, his associates his fellow men. It is a much more difficult task... Those men whose routine and humdrum jobs it is to enforce the laws the people have made for their government are consistently exposed to the caprices of the mad and vengeance of the vicious. They know it and they face it with calmness..."
Isaac Evans was a beloved man in the town and the State of Alaska, and the post remained in his name until April 1936. The name was changed to reflect the current name Seward Post 5 which brought the post name into conformance with the national regulation that a post must be named after a deceased member of the post, and although Deputy Marshal Evans was a very dedicated and brave man he was not military and the post could not keep the formal name for him. His legacy remains as an important part of Seward.
