Oveta Culp Hobby: a Study of Power and Control Robert T

Home , Bell Syndicate, Charity Adams Earley, Fly Together, Genevieve Forbes Herrick, George Houston (actor), Jessie Daniel Ames

Florida State University Libraries

Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2008 Oveta Culp Hobby: A Study of Power and Control Robert T. Pando

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

OVETA CULP HOBBY:

A STUDY OF POWER AND CONTROL

ROBERT T. PANDO

A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of History In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2008

The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Robert T. Pando defended on

March 31, 2008

______Elna C. Green Professor Directing Dissertation

______Barney Warf Outside Committee Member

______Maxine D. Jones Committee Member

______Neil Jumonville Committee Member

______Jennifer Koslow Committee Member

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

for Trilla and Katy

iii

Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was the Sphinx. Oedipus said, "I want to ask one question. Why didn't I recognize my mother?" "You gave the wrong answer," said the Sphinx. "But that was what made everything possible," said Oedipus. "No," she said. "When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered, Man. You didn't say anything about woman." "When you say Man," said Oedipus, "you include women too. Everyone knows that." She said, "That's what you think."

Muriel Rukeyser “Myth”

My father taught me that I could turn the world around just as well as any of my brothers.

Oveta Culp Hobby

iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Although the Houston Post was my favorite newspaper for years, I never met its publisher. Fortunately for me, many who knew her were willing to share some of their memories with me in personal interviews. Bill Hobby, who knew her longest and best, gave me the benefit of his insight and permission to use family photographs. Diana Hobby, who knew her as only a daughter-in-law can, helped me gain a better idea of what she was like. Al Shire, a Post man for many years and the editor of the commemorative biography commissioned by Bill and Jessica Hobby and published a year after Oveta Culp Hobby’s death, went to great pains to furnish his thoughts, and materials from his personal files. Nora Shire, who knows the Spinks manuscript better than anyone else, gave me the benefit of her understanding. Delores Chambers of Hobby Communications, archivist of Hobby family records, was immensely helpful. Liz Carpenter, for at least four decades a colleague of her fellow Bell County native, provided stories from the past and analysis from the present. Together with Chandler Davidson, of Rice University, Liz personifies why there is yet hope for the Democratic Party in Texas. Isabel Brown Wilson helped me understand the relationship between Oveta Hobby and Hobby’s two best friends, Isabel’s parents. Isabel is one of a very small number of people who can describe the interior of the Lamar Hotel’s Suite 8-F. Jane Ely described the interior of the old Houston Post building, including the corridor where Oveta Hobby caught Jane saluting Hobby’s portrait. Patty Treadwell and Peggy Buchanan both described the years they spent with Hobby. Peggy was Hobby’s assistant for the final thirty-five years of her life and I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with her before her death last year. Because she was a newspaper publisher and public figure, Oveta Culp Hobby’s life generated copious documentation. At the library at Rice University, Lisa Moellering and Amanda York Focke patiently answered questions and provided materials. Phil Montgomery and Lee Pecht also contributed from their knowledge of Rice’s benefactor and former trustee. Rice University historian Melissa Kean provided valuable information about the institution and its relationship to the Hobby family.

v At the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, Valoise Armstrong, Catherine Cain, and Chalsea Millner provided much help. A research grant from the Eisenhower Foundation helped fund my labors in Abilene. In Oveta Hobby’s home county, Kenneth Gober, of the Hobby Library on the campus of Central Texas College, and Marc Gilbert, editor of the Killeen Daily Herald, allowed me to see and to photocopy materials available nowhere else. Charlotte McCann, publisher of the Texas Observer, shared her Rolodex and Observer files. Nancy Sims Pando, political scientist and political consultant, helped me understand local and state politics, and helped me locate useful information sources. I found helpful materials and helpful archivists at the Center for American History on the main campus of the University of Texas; at the adjacent Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; at the University of Houston’s M. D. Anderson Library; and at the impressive Houston Metropolitan Research Center of the Houston public library system. At Florida State University, the user-friendly Strozier Library furnished a surprising amount of research materials, considering that my topic was regional in nature – but centered on another region. Strozier’s helpful reference librarians and up-to-date information technology greatly eased my research effort. My dissertation committee recognized better than I the breadth of the topic I chose. Their suggestions helped me set necessary boundaries, and I am in their debt: Maxine Jones, Neil Jumonville, Jennifer Koslow, and Barney Warf. Elna Green, my major professor, provided timely insights and helped me place a remarkable life in proper context. Dr. Green also guided me toward a better understanding of when to stop researching and start writing. The History Department of Florida State University helped defray research costs with the award of a travel grant, for which I remain grateful. The department, personified in Debbie Perry and Chris Pignatiello, helped me avoid obstacles that could have delayed completion of my coursework and dissertation. Katy Pando, like Oveta Hobby born with special talents, applied her journalism skills to drafts of my manuscript and helped straighten out snaggled prose and snaggled logic. Her gift of an expresso machine proved useful, as well. Two scholars deserve special thanks. Florence Gould, a longtime friend associated with Southwestern

vi University in Georgetown, Texas, and Patricia Pando, my oldest friend, suggested the life of Oveta Culp Hobby as a dissertation topic. Flo and Trilla had considered collaborating on Hobby research, but generously stepped aside and allowed me to proceed. If they choose to resume their project, I hope my manuscript will be helpful.

vii TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... ix List of Figures...... x Abstract...... xi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1. 1905-1928 ...... 15 2. 1928-1941 ...... 32 3. 1942-1945 ...... 65 4. 1946-1952 ...... 124 5. 1953-1995 ...... 159 CONCLUSION...... 194 APPENDIXES ...... 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 207 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 221

viii LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Year-end strength of Black Personnel in the Women’s Army Corps, 1943-1946 ...... 97 Table 2. Year-end strength of Women’s Army Corps, 1942-1946...... 105 Table 3. Summary Timeline: 1941-1945...... 119

ix LIST OF FIGURES

1. Oveta Culp Hobby, 1909 ...... 31

2. Parliamentarian Oveta Hobby with House Speaker Fred Minor, 1931 .....31

3. Texas State Legislature Leaders, circa 1929-1931 ...... 31

4. Oveta Culp Hobby, circa 1935...... 64

5. William Pettus Hobby...... 64

6. Time, January 12, 1944 ...... 120

7. Oveta Culp Hobby sworn in as Director of WAAC ...... 121

8. Basic Training in skirts ...... 121

9. Col. O. Hobby and Maj. W. Burgoyne at the Pyramids ...... 121

10. Humor in uniform ...... 121

11. Col. Hobby and President Franklin Roosevelt...... 122

12. Col. Hobby, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Col. J. A. Hoag...... 122

13. Discharge Certificate of Oveta Culp Hobby...... 123

14. The “Hobby Team,” 1950...... 158

15. Oveta Culp Hobby, 1952 ...... 158

16. Business Week, May 16, 1953...... 189

17. Oveta Culp Hobby takes the oath of office...... 190

18. President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his Cabinet...... 190

19. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Oveta Culp Hobby ...... 191

20. President Eisenhower presents an award to Jonas Salk...... 191

21. Time, May 4, 1953 ...... 192

22. Oveta Culp Hobby on the pressroom floor of the Houston Post ...... 193

x ABSTRACT

Oveta Culp Hobby, the second child and second daughter of a country family, was born with unusual intellectual gifts. The girl’s parents permitted her to develop her gifts organically, and by early adulthood she launched herself into the world of Texas politics and business. She augmented her self-education by seeking the example and guidance of intelligent and educated women, veterans of the suffrage movement in Texas. She married her employer, a newspaper publisher and former Texas governor, and proceeded to educate herself in the minutia of the newspaper business. Over time, her efforts contributed to the financial success of the paper. While still a young adult, she concurrently pursued a second career in volunteer associations and public projects, activities in which she exhibited proficiency. The War Department drafted her to help quell a querulous public, then, recognizing her problem-solving skills, drafted her again to organize the new women’s branch of the United States Army. As head of the Women’s Army Corps from its inception to the closing days of the war, Hobby managed all phases of the start-up of the organization, then guided it through difficulties in logistics and recruitment. Following four years of service in Washington, D.C., Hobby resumed her careers in business and public life. Resuming executive responsibility for the family’s daily newspaper and associated radio station, she expanded with the purchase of her city’s first television station. In later years she acquired additional newspapers and television stations in several southern markets. A member of the commercial and professional leadership of her city and state, she turned her attention to partisan politics, supporting Dwight Eisenhower as an electable Republican alternative to Democratic presidential candidates whom she thought too liberal. Eisenhower returned the favor by naming her the first woman in the cabinet of a Republican administration. A blue-ribbon panel recommended reorganizing the nation’s executive branch. Eisenhower assigned Hobby to implement the most far-reaching of the reorganization steps, the establishment of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Successes and failures marked her tenure; some are still debated.

xi Hobby returned to her media company after her second stint of service in Washington and built it into a larger regional influence, ultimately selling the components. She lived a public life in fast-moving times: the booming 1920s, the Depression 1930s, the wartime 1940s, and the threatening 1950s. She influenced the outcomes of many events during the periods.

xii

INTRODUCTION

Senator Robert A. Taft, “Mr. Republican,” was confident he would get the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1952. The relatively late entry of General Dwight D. Eisenhower into the race might have been troubling, but Taft believed he could rely on the party apparatus to safely deliver the requisite votes at the nominating convention in Chicago. His confidence extended to many states, and Texas was one of them. In the end, in a fight that was finally settled on the convention floor, he was denied the Texas ballots. Recently I discussed the 1952 Republican campaign with Bill Hobby, former lieutenant governor of Texas. “What was the problem?” I asked. “What was Taft’s problem in Texas?” Hobby looked at me, then answered emphatically, “Taft’s problem was Mother!”1 “Mother” was Oveta Culp Hobby, a woman with clear ideas about the way things work and how things should be done. Following the Republican convention, she went to work, corralling Democrats into the Eisenhower camp and helping the general win the 1952 presidential election. Not long after, Nelson Rockefeller, Oveta Culp Hobby’s undersecretary at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, threw a Washington party, inviting all members of the new cabinet. It was the first social occasion for the group and at first, conversation was hesitant and awkward. Secretary Hobby knew what was wrong. She knew some of the guests, and she understood the personal habits of successful political figures. She walked briskly over to Nelson. “Nelson, drinks,” she said. Nelson turned to a waiter and asked him to pour a glass of wine for the secretary. “No,” said Hobby, “I don’t want wine, Nelson. I want scotch, bourbon, gin, vodka, rye. I want it for everybody and I want it right now.” Hobby smiled as she spoke to her aide, but her words were imperative. Mary Rockefeller mildly protested that dinner was about to be served. Hobby responded, “Hold dinner. Hold it until everybody has had a drink

1 Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 28, 2007. Taft’s loss to Eisenhower is described in Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 37-39. and don’t serve it until the secretary of defense has had two.” She added, “Charlie Wilson is about to die.” The Rockefellers did as they were told.2 I asked Bill Hobby what one word best described his mother. He thought, then answered firmly, “She was intimidating.” Bill Hobby’s daughter-in-law, on the day of Oveta Hobby’s funeral, questioned a funeral attendee’s description of Oveta as a feminist. If feminism is defined as the equality of women to men, Janet Hobby said, “Oveta did not consider that much of a hurdle. All she wanted was for someone to designate an objective standard for achievement, and she would dominate by sheer, dogged and undeniable merit.”3 Oveta Hobby hated bridge and hated women’s luncheons. When she walked into a party, she walked straight over to where the men were talking politics and money, and joined in. She was welcome in the huddle; she belonged there. Always perfectly coiffed and elegantly outfitted in designer or custom tailored fashions, her femininity was unquestionable. Always completely informed about business and current events, her authority was unassailable. She had close women friends; at the same time, beginning as a little girl in her father’s law office, she was comfortable in the company of men. “Oveta courted power; she courted older men,” judged one of her oldest friends. “That’s why she was close to Jesse Jones and the Browns.”4 She is described as a discreet flirt, capable of repeating a bawdy story but not a nasty one. She tossed back her share of scotch, but there is not a single hint that she ever tossed back more than her share. I doubt that she ever once overslept. As an attractive, comparatively youthful widow, she would agree to accompany single men to a reception or a dinner. But her terms were, she would meet them there. Her driver would take her to the event, and wait for her. No man ever picked her up at home and escorted her to a party – or took her home.5

2 Joan Braden, Just Enough Rope (New York: Villard Books, 1989), 64-66. Charles E. Wilson, former President of General Motors Corporation, was secretary of defense from 1953 to 1957. 3 Bill Hobby, interview; Paul Hobby, “Consistent, but Complicated,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing), xi. 4 Liz Carpenter, interview by author, Austin, TX, January 15, 2007. Jesse Jones and the Browns are described in the following chapters. 5 Isabel Brown Wilson, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 24, 2007; Peggy Buchanan, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007.

2 Hobby moved out of her twenty-seven room mansion adjacent to Rice University and offered it to the university with the proviso that the structure be preserved. While the university was considering the offer, neighbors raised a legal barrier, invoking deed restrictions barring the use of the property other than as a residence.6 Her intentions frustrated, she ordered the house demolished, then gave the land to Rice so that it could be sold, with proceeds of the sale going to the institution.7 Hobby was organized and methodical. She made out her daily schedule on four three-inch by five-inch index cards – one for her housekeepers, one for her office staff, one for her driver, and one for herself. Late in life, restricting herself to her eighth floor condominium, she had a crew of three in her storage building, taking inventory of all her possessions – silver, jewelry, sculpture, antique furniture, collectible books, first-rate paintings. She gave some of her fine art pieces to the Houston Museum of Art and the museum retains them in its collection.8 Her influence on Houston cultural life remains. Much more significantly, her influence remains on two areas of American life – the military, and federal social services. Despite her importance, Oveta Culp Hobby has been the object of surprisingly little scholarship.9 To date, there are only two other Ph.D. dissertations, each focusing on a period when she was a figure on the national stage. There are master’s theses, one of them particularly informative. No critical or popular biography exists. Short treatments of her life appear as chapters or parts of chapters in anthologies of women’s lives.10 The longest published biographical sketch is the entry in the Handbook of Texas History ascribed to her son, William P. Hobby, Jr. That account draws heavily on a biographical manuscript of Hobby’s life, a document that she worked

6 True to the city’s free-market ethos, Houston has no zoning regulations. It is the only major city in the U.S. without them. 7 Some observers thought tearing down the house was a form of retribution to neighbors opposed to Hobby’s plan. In interviews by the author, Isabel Brown Wilson and Peggy Buchanan, women personally close to Hobby, said she made her decision thoughtfully, after consideration of financial and tax consequences. 8 Buchanan, interview; Susan Johnston Barnes, Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing), 5-7. 9 Kay Bailey Hutchison, American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 250. Hutchison credits Hobby with directing Hutchinson’s career from law toward politics. As a law school graduate, Hutchison was unable to find a position in a law firm. Hobby hired her as the first woman television news reporter in Houston. 10 Hutchinson, Heroines, chapter nine; Cindy Wiegand, Texas Women in World War II (Lanham, MD: Republic of Texas Press, 2003), chapter one; Ann Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, Women in Texas (Austin: State House Press, 1992), 273-284.

3 on for years, periodically reviewing and updating it.11 In essence, the most detailed account of her life is the succinct, edited version she wrote herself.12 This dissertation is an expanded study of the political and social influence of an individual who left her mark on the twentieth century. The introduction examines Hobby-era historiography and seeks to set the stage, to establish the time and place of her exploits. Chapter one initiates this longitudinal examination – the chronology of this woman’s broad-ranging influence. The evidence shows that Hobby’s traits of personality and character were apparent from childhood. She knew, and her parents knew, that she was unusual. A teenager who reads law books is likely to be bored in a country school; this teenager sprinted past high school and college requisites, anxious to get on with real life. Looking back, it appears that Hobby was working in three cities – Austin, Dallas, and Houston – at the same time. Part of the snarl of conflicting dates and places is here untangled. The second chapter opens after Hobby left her parents’ – especially her father’s – close counsel. The suffrage movement had propelled an impressive number of smart, motivated women into political and social leadership. Hobby became the direct beneficiary of the intellectual energy and guidance of several of these remarkable members of what can be characterized as Houston’s ruling elite, notably Florence Sterling, Estelle Sharp, and Hortense Ward. As she matured, she came under the influence of two men of accomplishment – her husband, former Texas governor Will Hobby, and Jesse Jones, the most important mover and shaker in Texas during that era. Her precocity pushed her first into local prominence, then into the national spotlight in journalism and publishing circles. As the nation climbed out of the Depression and girded for war, Hobby found herself pressed into service. Chapter three follows her path into the labyrinth of the War Department, then into the assignment of

11 The manuscript, titled “Oveta Culp Hobby – biographical” and attributed to Marguerite Johnston or Marguerite Johnston Barnes is archived in the Woodson Research Center at Rice University’s Fondren Library. 12 It is standard practice in daily newspapers to keep on file obituary notices of prominent people and to periodically review the “obits” to make sure they are current. The Houston Post under Hobby’s direction kept obits ready for Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jesse H. Jones, George Brown – and for Oveta Hobby herself. Al Shire, who worked for the Houston Post for many years, confirmed in a telephone interview on February 26, 2008 that the biographical sketch identified as written by Marguerite Johnston Barnes is in actuality the newspaper’s obituary notice and was reviewed and approved by Hobby.

4 forming an American woman’s army. She faced issues that were both new and unique. The chapter singles out several, including race, recruitment, and reputation, and follows the steps she took when confronting them. A few years later Hobby created another national institution, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Between her wartime service and her achievements while in the Eisenhower administration, she expanded the family’s business enterprises. During this period, covered in chapter four, she was at the height of her influence on organizations addressing national issues of health, governance, and philanthropy. Organizing the Women’s Army Corps challenged even Hobby, the proficient problem solver. It also conditioned her for the arguably more complex challenges of reorganizing New Deal initiatives into a compartment of the federal government where they could be watched. Chapter five follows the trajectory of her service on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s cabinet. Here again, to help in assessing her leadership performance, the monograph examines several specific problems, including the challenges of the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision and the distribution of Salk polio vaccine. After her service in the president’s cabinet, Hobby’s public life entered a decades-long denouement as she poured her intelligence and energy into building her flourishing media empire. Her children, raised in the newspaper and television business, successfully pursued other career interests; she remained in control of family wealth and potential. The chapter concludes with a depiction of her life in these years of advances and achievement. A concluding chapter summarizes her long life of doing things her way. Fortunately, a large amount of material is available to help scholars assemble a more complete life story of Hobby and to aid in understanding it. She was an organized and meticulous person, so it is not surprising to find that she seemed to save almost everything having to do with her life. Not long after her death, her family donated much of this trove to Rice University, an institution she served as a director during a trying period of its history.13 Woodson Research Center, located in the Fondren Library at Rice,

13 During her lifetime Hobby donated more than her management skills to the university; she was a major financial benefactor and at one point planned to give the school the house that was for many years her home, a regal structure with grounds that extended almost to the main entry of the Rice campus. The

5 archives materials across the span of her lifetime, and is a particularly bountiful resource for all the years spent in Houston. Two periods of her life centered on Washington, DC – when she founded the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and when she organized the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). While the Woodson Research Center has much archival material from these periods, even more is available at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. The National Archives in Washington and the United States Army Women’s Museum contain still more material. In Houston, the M. D. Anderson Library at the University of Houston has materials not available elsewhere. The Houston Metropolitan Research Center, part of the Houston Public Library system, archives historical materials from the library files of both the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. In Austin, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library contains useful information about the relationship between the Johnson and Hobby families. It also holds audio tapes of telephone conversations between President Johnson and Oveta Hobby. Papers of William P. Hobby, Sr. are available at the Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin. The dearth of biographies of Oveta Hobby is matched by other biographical dearths. The only biographies of her husband, William P. Hobby, Sr. and of long-time business associate Jesse H. Jones are uncritical ones – both sponsored by their subjects. The lack of attention to Jones is particularly confounding, considering that he has been called the “second most important man in the country” during the New Deal, in recognition of his control of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the lending agency charged with the responsibility of curing the Great Depression. Jones’s power continued beyond the Depression as the RFC went on to become a major investor in war industries and Jones had the final decision on plant construction and location.14

Hobby Foundation, a major Houston philanthropy created by Will and Oveta early in their marriage, today continues its support of the university. 14 James A. Clark and Weldon Hart, The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby (New York: Random House, 1958). Jesse H. Jones and Edward Angly produced Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC (1932-1945) (New York: MacMillan, 1951), a detailed ledger of Jones’s years at the helm of the RFC and the Commerce Department. A more analytical description of the Jones’s RFC years is Walter L. Buenger, “Between Community and Corporation: The Southern Roots of Jesse H. Jones and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation” The Journal of Southern History 56, no. 3 (August 1990); another by the same author is “Jesse Jones.” Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington, Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr., Michael L. Collins, and Patrick Cox, eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 66-85.

6 Two female politicians, both important influences on Oveta, have been subjects of biographies. A child of the suffrage movement, Hobby often told the story of how she and her older sister Juanita finished canning the family’s crop of peaches while their mother was out campaigning for William P. Hobby, the pro-suffrage candidate for governor in 1918. In the mid-1920s, when Oveta Culp moved to Houston, she found herself in a stewpot of former suffragists, now broad-scale political activists. There she met two iconic women partway through their long, illustrious careers. Jessie Daniel Ames and Minnie Fisher Cunningham were Democratic women stars, and both continued their leadership roles for years to follow. Fortunately both lives have been preserved in books about their accomplishments.15 No such biographical treatment has been accorded three other women who served both as examples and as mentors to young Hobby, Florence Sterling, Estelle B. Sharp, and Hortense Ward. All three appear in “Petticoat Politics: Political Activism among Texas Women in the 1920s,” an exhaustive doctoral dissertation focusing on a lively decade in the state’s political history.16 The three women also appear in the redoubtable Handbook of Texas History.17 All accounts of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II begin with the Army’s official history, The Women’s Army Corps, written by Mattie E. Treadwell, a high-ranking WAC officer who was also a trained historian.18 Requiring four years to write and running to more than 800 pages, the book is exhaustive in detail. A more recent

15 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979, 1993). Hall describes the difficulties she had in researching Ames’s life in “Second Thoughts: On Writing a Feminist Biography,” Feminist Studies 13, no. 1 (Spring 1987). What were apparently the only extant personal documents about Ames belonged to Ames’s daughter, who had already destroyed some of them. Hall was fortunate to befriend the woman and get the documents before the rest were destroyed, and before the woman’s health gave out. She died a few years later. The recent biography of “Minnie Fish” captured regional prizes for biography. Prior to its publication, scholars were forced to piece together her story from fragments of other works. See Judith N. McArthur and Harold L. Smith, Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist’s Life in Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 16 Emma Louise Moyer Jackson, “Petticoat Politics: Political Activism among Texas Women in the 1920s” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1980). Jackson’s dissertation is encyclopedic in length and scope, a foundation study of Texas women and politics of the period. 17 Eldon Stephen Branda, Walter Prescott Webb, and Texas State Historical Association, The Handbook of Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1952-76). The Handbook of Texas is a six-volume compendium of Texas history, biography, and geography produced jointly by the Texas State Historical Association and the University of Texas library system. The current edition, with supplementary entries, is available online at http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online. Most major entries are written and signed by recognized scholars 18 Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, United States Army in World War II Series (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1954).

7 Army history is less useful than Treadwell’s, in part because the author turned to Treadwell for aid in determining what to include or exclude.19 Treadwell describes wartime WAC events dispassionately; however, revisionism was required to fill in some missing pieces. While Treadwell describes the “smear campaign” against the WAC in considerable detail, including largely baseless charges of homosexuality, she limits her discussion of the actual phenomenon of lesbianism to somewhat less than a single page, effectively dismissing it. Leisa D. Meyer, a feminist historian, researched alternative sources and discovered a preoccupation with the fear of lesbianism that led the WAC leadership to actively prosecute “offenders,” giving dishonorable discharges to some.20 Books reflecting on WAC memories inform patient readers that racial discrimination was not entirely banned from the women’s corps.21 A more scholarly work by Brenda L. Moore, To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas during World War II, provides an extensive account of a black battalion performing an important function in the European Theater of Operations.22 A biography of Mary McLeod Bethune sheds light on the role of the black leader in assuring improved treatment for African American women volunteers.23 A Ph.D. dissertation and a master’s thesis facilitated consideration of the WAC portion of this monograph. Both studies address Oveta Hobby’s management style from the perspective of “transformational leadership,” a current practice in the U.S. Army. Kelli Cardenas Walsh, an Army veteran, and Vanessa A. Crockford, a U.S. Army major at the time her master’s degree was awarded, argued that Hobby’s success in launching

19 Bettie J. Morden, The Women’s Army Corps, 1945-1978, Army Historical Series (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1990). 20 Leisa D Meyer, Creating G.I. Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women's Army Corps during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Leisa D. Meyer, "Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women's Army Corps during World War II," Feminist Studies 18, no. 3, The Lesbian Issue (Autumn, 1992). 21 Two examples are Charity Adams Earley, One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1989); and Sylvia J. Bugbee, ed., An Officer and a Lady: The World War II Letters of Lt. Col. Betty Bandel, Women’s Army Corps (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004). 22 Brenda L. Moore, To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas during World War II (New York:New York University Press, 1996). Less useful, but providing helpful details, is Martha S. Putney, When the Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women's Army Corps during World War II. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1992). 23 Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003).

8 the WAC was attributable to her use of the organizational techniques recently identified as transformational leadership.24 Cities have biographies, too, although many are written in the tradition of boosterism. Marguerite Johnston Barnes, a Houston Post columnist and Oveta Hobby’s ghost writer for many years, wrote a reliable account of the city’s history from 1836, when it was founded, through the end of the Second World War.25 Sociologist and urban critic Joe R. Feagin exploded Houston’s glittery reputation as exemplar of the capitalistic free-market system by pulling back the curtain and revealing that the city’s business elite have long manipulated local government to assure “a good business climate” and have manipulated the federal government to assure an uninterrupted stream of subsidies.26 Understanding twentieth-century partisan politics in Texas and the rest of the South begins with V. O. Key. His magnum opus, Southern Politics in State and Nation, changed the study of political science and at the same time enhanced the understanding of students of southern politics. By understanding voting patterns – essentially, by paying closer attention to the metrics of political choice – Key was able to demonstrate that the South was anything but monolithic, politically. He showed the South to be less conservative on many issues than was generally believed, leading to the conclusion that political control was concentrated in the hands of the politically active, primarily the wealthy and their consorts. It follows that the “defection” of the South from the

24 Kelli Cardenas Walsh, “Oveta Culp Hobby: A Transformational Leader from the Texas Legislature to Washington, D.C.” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2006); Vanessa A. Crockford, “Oveta Culp Hobby and her ‘Lieutenants’: Transformational Leadership in Action in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps of World War II” (master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2003). A journal article and a book by Bernard M. Bass provide background on the new management method: “From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision” Organizational Dynamics (Winter, 1990); and Transformational Leadership: Industrial, Military, and Educational Impact (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998). 25 Marguerite Johnston, Houston, the Unknown City, 1836-1945 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991). The Woodson Research Center archives the extensive files Barnes assembled when she conducted the research for this book. In addition, the Barnes collection contains material about Oveta Culp Hobby, for whom Barnes worked. 26 Joe R. Feagin, Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political-Economic Perspective (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988). Other sources that describe Washington largesse to Houston include Joseph A. Pratt and Christopher J. Castaneda, Builders: Herman and George R. Brown (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999) and Don E. Carleton, Red Scare! Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985).

9 Democratic Party cannot be attributed only to racism and social conservatism, but exhibits also the control of the ruling elite.27 Political scientists and historians have produced a large number of studies of the partisan transformation of the South, almost all grounded in Key’s work. These studies uniformly omit any mention of the part Oveta Culp Hobby played in the transformation of southern Democrats into Republicans. Granted, in a cast of characters that grew to include Strom Thurmond, John Tower, John Connally and myriad lesser turncoats, she had only a cameo role, but I argue that Hobby and the Democrats for Eisenhower campaign were significant in the 1952 election and pointed toward the much more far- reaching revolution to follow. Glenn Feldman traces southern conservative disaffection for the Democratic Party to New Deal-era flirtations with the far left, including communists.28 Richard Scher uses Key’s classification of southern Republicans as a starting point for his study of the changing South.29 The moderate Republicanism espoused by such leaders as Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Nelson Rockefeller steadily lost ground beginning in 1952 in part because of the influx of southern conservative former Democrats. Nicol C. Rae and David W. Reinhard traced the metamorphosis in their studies.30 A recent work

27 V. O. Key, Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984). The Marxism-flavored concept of the ruling elite of a city was bolstered by studies of specific cities. A study of Houston has yet to be completed, but results from other cities seem applicable. An early study of Atlanta outlines a power structure similar to that of Houston; later studies agree with the description. See Floyd Hunter, Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953) and a follow-up study, Floyd Hunter, Community Power Succession: Atlanta’s Policy-Makers Revisited (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1980). For a description of growth- coalition theory, see Harvey Molotch, “The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place,” The American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 2 (September 1976); Mark Schneider, “Undermining the Growth Machine: The Missing Link between Local Economic Development and Fiscal Payoffs,” The Journal of Politics 54, no. 1 (February 1992). Robert A. Dahl, prolific author of political science treatises, examined New Haven, CT in detail in Who Governs? Democracy and Power in and American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961 and described an older city with a power structure similar to that of Atlanta and Houston. 28 Glenn Feldman, “Beginning of the End of the New Deal Coalition,” History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie, Gordon E. Harvey, Richard D. Starnes, and Glenn Feldman, eds. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006). A Birmingham meeting in 1938, organized by a communist and including Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McLeod Bethune, C. Vann Woodward, Virginius Dabney, and Gunnar Myrdal upset the local establishment, including Theophilous Eugene “Bull” Connor, the city’s chief of police. 29 Richard K Scher, Politics in the New South: Republicanism. Race and Leadership in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997). 30 Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (New York; Oxford University Press, 1989); David W. Reinhard, The Republican Right since 1945 (Lexington:

10 by women’s historian Catherine E. Rymph followed the decades-long debate over whether Republican women would organize within the party structure or in independent women-only organizations.31 The rise of Republicanism in Texas is limned by Chandler Davidson and by Earl and Merle Black. In an interview by the author, Davidson made clear that he is an exponent of the hypothesis that the Texas electorate is not heavily tilted toward the conservative end of the political spectrum.32 Oveta Hobby’s Houston thrived on a climate of wealth and economic growth and harbored a dark anxiety that government might intrude, might impede progress. Defenders of privilege all over the country, not just in Texas, pointed to communism as the antithesis of all things bright and beautiful. Most big-city daily newspapers, Hobby’s included, participated in the crusade to keep the country on the right track and free of communism. Several studies of the anticommunist movement conclude that the federal government employed the inchoate fear of communism to further the aims of political leaders. Andrew Grossman, in Neither Dead nor Red: Civilian Defense and American Political Development during the Early Cold War, posited that the Truman administration seized on the communist threat as an excuse to extend the power of the central government.33 Truman’s successor was suspected of a similar cynicism, adapting anticommunism to the Republican Party’s benefit.34 Robert Griffith marshaled evidence to support his assertion that the Republican leadership used the public’s fear of a socialist state to help take back control of the country.35

University Press of Kentucky, 1983). Another useful study of the same theme is Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequence since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976). 31 Catherine E. Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 32 Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), see chapter three; Chandler Davidson, Race and Class in Texas Politics, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). For a complementary account of the political decline of conservative southern Democrats, see James M. Glaser, Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 33 Andrew D. Grossman, Neither Dead nor Red: Civilian Defense and American Political Development during the Early Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2001). 34 Jeff Broadwater, Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 35 Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970).

11 McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare inspired many researchers of the period to produce detailed studies. Two of the best are Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective, and Ellen Schrecker’s riveting analysis, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America.36 In Houston, the excesses of the anticommunist crusade resulted in formation of the largest chapter in the nation of the Minute Women, a militant organization determined to hold out against the perceived incursions of the Soviet threat. The best descriptions of the group and its adherents are in a journal article by Elna C. Green and a monograph by Texas historian Don Carleton.37 Ever in control of her present situation, Hobby extended control to her past. The Hobby catechism testifies to the degree of oversight she employed. The record of her WAC years was taken out of her hands by the U.S. Army – and then put in the hands of a sympathetic former subordinate officer. For her second tenure in the nation’s capital Hobby determined to influence the historical record by taking her own scribe to Washington. She chose a Houston Post reporter, Brian Spinks. Writing in terse journalistic prose, Spinks patiently divided 376 typewritten single-spaced pages into nineteen chapters covering the period from Eisenhower’s nomination for the presidency to Hobby’s resignation from the cabinet following the Salk vaccine distribution episode.38 This study does not place heavy reliance on the Spinks account, in part because newspapers and news magazines furnish contemporaneous accounts that I believe are more objective. A single Ph.D. dissertation treats Hobby’s HEW years, telegraphing its conclusions in its title, “Conservative Warrior: Oveta Culp Hobby and the Administration of America’s Health, Education, and Welfare, 1953-1955.” Debra Lynn Sutphen used her understanding of Hobby’s political philosophies in her well-argued account of the period. Sutphen’s biographical information was constrained by her resources, but because her

36 Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective, (New York:Oxford University Press, 1990); Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 37 Elna C. Green, "From Antisuffragism to Anti-Communism: The Conservative Career of Ida M. Darden," The Journal of Southern History 65, no. 2 (May, 1999); Don Carleton, Red Scare! Right-wing Hysteria. Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas, (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985). 38 Problems of the distribution of polio vaccine are discussed in chapter five.

12 focus was on a relatively short period of time, her treatment and conclusions were not adversely affected.39 The issue of “socialized medicine” was as inflammatory in the years of the Eisenhower administration as in more recent times. An extensive article in the Yale Law Review described the campaign of the American Medical Association (AMA) to protect physician’s incomes. Sociologist William A. Glaser assayed the political connections between the doctors in the AMA and the lawyers in the national legislature.40 Polio epidemics continued to be a literal threat to life and limb in the post-World War II period. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis funded development of a vaccine to prevent infection. That medical advance and the contentious disputes regarding its distribution were the subject of several studies. Also at issue was whether the Salk vaccine distribution disputes directly resulted in Hobby’s resignation from the Eisenhower cabinet.41 Secretary Hobby was Eisenhower’s choice to steer a middle way between the original objectives of the New Deal programs in the fledgling department and the conservative alternative of smothering the programs in their cribs. His view, which Hobby shared, was that the programs were in place and would be maintained, but they would not be expanded. Strict supervision was mandatory. Several scholars have parsed the political philosophies of Eisenhower, providing background for this dissertation.42

39 Debra Lynn Sutphen, “Conservative Warrior: Oveta Culp Hobby and the Administration of America’s Health, Education, and Welfare, 1953-1955,” (Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 1997); Brian Spinks, “The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,” unpublished manuscript, ca.1955, Hobby Family Papers. Spinks probably completed the manuscript in the months following Hobby’s resignation. 40 “The American Medical association: Power, Purpose, and Politics in Organized Medicine” Yale Law Journal 63, no. 7 (May, 1954); William A. Glaser, “Doctors and Politics,” American Journal of Sociology 66, no. 3 (Nov. 1969). 41 The literature of epidemiology owes much to William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Random House, 1977). An early account of Dr. Salk and his vaccine was Richard Carter, Breakthrough: The Saga of Jonas Salk (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965). Three more recent books have improved the understanding of Salk and his scientist-competitor, Albert Sabin, and of the battle of wills regarding government sponsorship of the manufactured Salk vaccine, Naomi Rogers, Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Tony Gould, A Summer Plague: Polio and its Survivors (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 42 Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical 87, no. 1 (February 1982); Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 1982); and more recently in Theodore J. Lowi, The End of the Republican Era (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995). A perspective of the inner workings of the Eisenhower

To commemorate its materfamilias, the Hobby family published a monograph shortly after her death. It begins with some fifty memoir tributes from her family, personal friends, and personal and professional employees. While all are admiring in tone, they provide a wealth of accurate anecdotal information. The volume also includes biographical materials that are identified as compiled by Marguerite Johnston and clearly bear the OCH imprimatur. A study of the Hobby family papers including those still in the family’s possession confirms almost everything recorded in the Oveta Culp Hobby catechism. The short life story is accurate, but it is not complete. This study of her life also cannot be complete; there is simply more material than can be distilled into a few hundred pages. However, the author’s objective is to present information that does not appear in the commemorative volume or in other published resources – information that adds objective breadth to the understanding of Oveta Hobby’s accomplishments. The recounted stories of “great women” are often hagiographic or celebratory; often the stories isolate the individual from the context of her life. Hobby’s life can be appreciated only in its setting, and this account ventures to provide some appreciation of her time and place.

cabinet is provided by Cary Reich, The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908-1958 (New York: Doubleday, 1996).

14 CHAPTER ONE

1905 – 1928

Killeen, Texas, is fifty miles north of Austin, close to the geographic and population centers of the state.1 Today, much of the surrounding Central Texas countryside is agriculturally unproductive; in some counties the land is useless except for hunting. Killeen is in Bell County; Bell and Coryell County, immediately north, are home to Ft. Hood Military Reservation, the huge post providing 327 square miles of training grounds for two U.S. Army armored divisions. The main gate of Ft. Hood is at the northern city limit of Killeen. Prosperity and growth came to Killeen beginning in World War II as Ft. Hood grew to be one of the Army’s largest installations. Today, the military reservation is home to 75,000 uniformed and civilian Army employees, and the city of Killeen boasts a population of more than 100,000. The fort recently saw a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Oveta Culp Hobby Soldier and Family Readiness Center, opened July 31, 2007.2 In town, Central Texas College is proud of its large Oveta Culp Hobby Library. Historical markers commemorate the Bell County native, and libraries offer collections of Hobby materials not available elsewhere.3 South of town on the meandering Lampasas River, Jim and Daurice Bowmer established the Peaceable Kingdom Retreat for Children, a facility for critically ill children. The center, which now welcomes 6,000 children annually, is blessed with a swimming pool and an activities building, both gifts of the Hobby family.4

1 U. S. Bureau of the Census, Census Bureau Geography, “Population and population centers by state: 2000. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cenpop/statecenters.txt (accessed July 26, 2007). 2 Chris Haug, “New Center Opens for Fort Hood Soldiers, Families,” Fort Hood Sentinel, August 1, 2007, http://www.forthoodsentinel.com/articles/2007/08/02/news/top_stories/top02.txt (accessed August 20, 2007). Col. Tori Bruzese, garrison commander, spoke in person; she thanked various donors to the project, including Wal-Mart. A second speaker, via videotape from Iraq, was Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, III Corps commander. 3 Unduplicated Hobby documents are found at the Oveta Culp Hobby Library, Central Texas College, Killeen, TX; Townsend Library, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton, TX; Library, Killeen Daily Herald, Killeen, TX; Library, Temple Telegram, Temple, TX. The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor was founded in 1845 as part of what is now Baylor University. The women’s division, named Baylor Female College, moved to Belton, Texas in 1886. After additional name changes it became the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in 1978. Additional information is available on the university’s web site. 4 Gerald D. Skidmore, “Hobby’s Childhood Recalled,” Killeen Daily Herald, August 17, 1995.

15 The area’s activity and population growth in recent decades stand in contrast with its past. One hundred years ago Central Texas was studded with large and small farms. Cattle and sheep ranches dominated the more arid western areas of the region. In those years an uneven prosperity could be coaxed out of the ranches and large farms. Small farms generally provided their families with little more than subsistence. Newcomers continued to migrate to Texas, drawn by the availability of tracts of land, many carved out of large land grants dating to the time Texas was part of the Mexican state of Coahuila. Landowners who had inherited these original grants were able to cash in their family inheritance.5 In the early years of the twentieth century, Killeen was a farm and ranch center, “still a rough, raw and ready western town, with few, if any, holds barred.” After a pool hall murder, vigilantes blew up the town’s pool halls. The discipline seems to have worked: no new ones were built until the coming of Ft. Hood and World War II.6 Only a few hundred souls lived in Killeen when Isaac W. Culp moved down from Coryell County in 1900. Ike, as everyone called him, soon discovered Emma Hoover, the attractive young daughter of one of the county’s leading families. Ike’s credentials were impressive. He was a newly minted lawyer, having recently passed the state bar exam; he had just finished a term as member of the Texas House of Representatives; and he was an ordained Baptist preacher.7 Ike was born on September 22, 1870, in tiny Coryell City, where he grew up and where he went to school.8 Both parents were native Texans; Ike’s father’s family had migrated from Georgia.9 He was interested in law and politics from an early age. After spending a year studying law at the University of Texas, he went back to Coryell County, continuing his legal studies by the common method of “reading law” under the tutelage

5 For a description of the Spanish land grant system in Texas, see William C. Davis, Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas (New York: Free Press, 2004), 65-68; Thomas Lloyd Miller, The Public Lands of Texas, 1519-1970 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), chapter one. 6 “Early Lawyers in Killeen Mixed Humor with Drama Of Their Professional Lives,” Killeen Daily Herald, March 5, 1972. “Vigilantes” is the term printed in the newspaper account. 7 “Early Lawyers,” Killeen Daily Herald; For an overview of Texas politics during the periods of populism and reform, see Rupert Norval Richardson, Ernest Wallace, and Adrian N. Anderson, Texas: The Lone Star State, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 377-380 8 A family Bible inscription from family files indicates 1869, but most other sources use 1870 as Ike’s date of birth. For geographical context, note that Coryell City is four miles from George W. Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch. Bible, Culp family miscellaneous folder, Hobby family papers. 9 Genealogy chart, Culp Family Miscellaneous folder, Hobby family papers.

16 of a practicing attorney. In 1892, when he was twenty-two years old, he was a delegate to the state Democratic Convention in Houston. Six years later he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, serving in the 1899 and 1900 sessions of the Twenty-sixth Legislature.10 Emma Hoover’s roots were southern as well. Her father, Andrew Jackson Hoover, was born in Tennessee where his forebears had moved from the Carolinas. He was sixteen years old when he joined Company K, Tenth Tennessee Cavalry. In July 1864 Union forces captured him at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, near Atlanta, and transported him to internment at Camp Chase, Ohio.11 Following the war, the family moved to Texas and bought land. In September 1889, A. J. Hoover purchased 640 acres of land near Killeen; his holdings eventually grew to more than 1400 acres where he raised horses and a herd of sheep reported to number 500.12 Another account places Hoover’s Bell County land holdings at 900 acres of farm and ranchland, plus 1400 acres in West Texas. By either account, he was clearly prosperous. In Killeen, he was a vice president of the First National Bank and an investor in the Killeen Independent Telephone Company.13 Ike Culp married Emma Hoover on August 21, 1901. During the next fourteen years the couple had seven children. The youngest, a son, died shortly before his second birthday. Oveta Hoover Culp was the second child and second daughter in the family, born when her older sister Juanita was two years old. Oveta was born on January 19, 1905 – Robert E. Lee’s birthday, auspicious in a southern family.14 Ike was a busy man. The month after his wedding, he paid $125 for a city lot. Two years later, most likely after construction of a house, he sold the property for $2500.15 Soon he became Killeen city attorney, a position he held for several years. By 1911, he was described as an “important and busy trial lawyer,” a realtor, and a Baptist

10 Killeen Herald and Messenger, July 29, 1910. Copy found in Oveta Culp Hobby clippings file in the offices of the Killeen Daily Herald. 11 Emma Hoover to Oveta Culp Hobby, June 1946, Emma Hoover Culp folder, Hobby family papers. There is a letter in the same file dated May 15, 1939 from Geo. H. Sheppard, Comptroller of Public Accounts of the State of Texas (recipient not shown). The letter is the official notice to Mrs. Cordelia Hoover, widow of Andrew Jackson Hoover, deceased Confederate soldier, approving Hoover’s application for a Confederate pension. 12 E. A. Limmier, Jr., ed., Story of Bell County, Texas, Vol.II (Austin: Eakin Press, 1988), 623. 13 “A. J. Hoover, One of Killeen’s Oldest and Best Citizens,” Oveta Culp Hobby clip file, Killeen Daily Herald. 14 Family Bible, Culp family miscellaneous folder, Hobby family papers. 15 Photocopies of warranty deeds, Oveta Culp Hobby clip file, Killeen Daily Herald.

17 preacher.16 He owned a drugstore in Killeen and another in Wolfe City, northeast of Dallas. Further, he had landholdings in West Texas and in the Texas Panhandle.17 With prosperity came the trappings of success – by early 1909 Ike Culp was the second person in Killeen to buy an automobile, a Rambler.18 Like many in Texas, Preacher Ike was armed. For years, he carried a small double-barreled, over-and-under Derringer for protection. He bought a matching pistol and gave it to his law partner, J. H. Evetts, who accepted it with pleasure but never carried it.19 Oveta’s father provided an example of a busy lawyer and entrepreneur, someone pragmatic and successful. While Ike Culp was busy building his career and his fortune, his second child was building her reputation as a serious and competitive student. “There is a story about a little girl who entered a spelling contest . . .” Oveta Culp Hobby, speaking softly, began her speech at the Washington Post Book Fair, held at the Statler Hotel in November 1953. The fair was organized by Philip Graham, longtime Hobby friend and, until his suicide, publisher of the Post. As Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Hobby was Graham’s featured speaker for the year’s fair. Continuing one of her favorite stories, she recounted that the prize awarded to the best speller was a book. When she told the story in Texas, as she frequently did, the book was always, more specifically, a Bible. For this speech she modified the tale, perhaps to better fit her audience in the secular city on the Potomac. The little girl in the story self-assuredly told her teacher to go ahead and inscribe it with her name, since she would doubtless win the competition. Hobby went on to finish the anecdote “ . . . I was the little girl about whom this twice-told tale is told.”20

16 He took his religion seriously. In May 1910. when Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet, Preacher Ike, mindful of the Biblical prophecy of the destruction of the earth by fire, bought all the ice available in town and stacked it around the perimeter of his house, a story his wife repeatedly confirmed in later years. “Early Lawyers In Killeen Mixed Humor With Drama Of Their Professional Lives,” Killeen Daily Herald, March 5, 1972. 17 “I. W. Culp,” A History of Central and Western Texas, Captain B. B. Paddock, ed. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1911), 607. 18 Gra’Delle Duncan. Killeen: Tale of Two Cities, 1882-1982. (Killeen, Texas: Killeen Herald, 1984), 40. 19 “Early Lawyers,” Killeen Daily Herald, March 5, 1972. The law partners got along well. In 1912, when Ike and Emma’s third son was born, Ike named him Texas Evetts Culp, in honor of his partner. 20 Oveta Culp Hobby, (speech, Children’s Book and Author’s Luncheon, Statler Hotel, Washington, DC, November 14, 1953). In fact, she told the story more than twice – she told most of the stories of her life more than twice. The spelling contest appeared in the biographical sketches she commissioned, in speeches commemorating her accomplishments, even in a short play, a theatrical production of the Communications Department of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. See J. Merritt McKinnon, “Oveta Culp Hobby: First

18 Hobby lived a long, vigorous life and she both described and explained herself by recounting a series of incidents that shaped her, both in childhood and as a young adult. As a newspaper publisher, she was able to delegate the task of burnishing her image to skilled journalists, employees who were prepared to tell her story, her way. Sometimes there would be more details or different details, but the point of the story was always clear. Young Oveta Culp demonstrated her tenacity from childhood, and her determination to control her own life. At age six, she and her Sunday school mates were presented with a Women’s Christian Temperance Union pledge, a written vow that they would forswear alcohol for life. Oveta refused to sign, later explaining that she was not sure what “temperance” meant and that she did not think she could make up her mind, at age six, not to do something later in life. Her recalcitrance angered her maternal grandmother, who felt obliged to spank such a willful child. Oveta never forgot the episode – and never regretted being obstinate about abstinence.21 Young Oveta was a quiet, thoughtful girl, and smart. Oveta’s youngest sister, Lynn, wrote “I once asked Mother, ‘What was Oveta like when she was young?’ Mother said, ‘Oh, Oveta was never young.’” Old friend and colleague Liz Carpenter in 1986 told a Killeen audience, “Everyone knew Oveta as the smartest girl in town.” Childhood friend Mrs. Ernest Norman described her as “especially brilliant,” a judgment soon borne out in Ike Culp’s law office. Other old friends characterized her as “a brilliant student” and “a super speller.”22 During a ceremony in the 1980s to place a historical marker on the lawn of Oveta’s childhood home, a grade-school classmate spoke, describing to the audience that whenever there was competition in school in Killeen, “it was an article of

Lady,” Script of theatrical production in Communications Department, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, May 1, 1997. Script found in Hobby collection, Townsend Memorial Library, University of Mary Hardin- Baylor, Special Collections. 21 Liz Carpenter (speech, historic marker ceremony, Killeen, Texas, January 19, 1986). A transcript of the speech is in the Oveta Culp Hobby clip file, Killeen Daily Herald. 22 Lynn Culp Loving, “My Sister, Oveta” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing, 1997), v; Liz Carpenter, (speech, January 19, 1986); Skidmore, “Hobby’s childhood,” Killeen Daily Herald, August 17, 1995. Liz Carpenter and her husband Les for years comprised the Washington bureau of the Houston Post and other Texas newspapers. When Lyndon Johnson became president, Liz Carpenter became press secretary and staff director for Lady Bird Johnson. In early 2008, living in Austin, she remained active in Texas Democratic Party politics at the age of 88.

19 faith in town that the battle was for second place.” No one doubted that Oveta would win, and no one seemed to resent her superiority.”23 Religion was important in Culp family life – after all, Ike was an ordained minister,24 and he and Emma were recognized as devout members of the Missionary Baptist Church.25 Oveta emulated her lay preacher father, writing sermons for him and writing and delivering her own sermons. Childhood friend Josephine Massey remembered that her grandmother’s back yard provided the venue for Oveta to gather up neighborhood children and conduct a church service, with Oveta preaching. Another friend recalled that Oveta “could preach a spellbinding sermon.” Like many youngsters of the day, Oveta thought she might grow up to be a foreign missionary.26 A family Bible records that Oveta and her older sister Juanita became “in Christ” on the same day, Friday, June 13, 1913. Then, as now, becoming “in Christ” meant declaring acceptance of Jesus Christ as one’s personal savior. In Baptist congregations, this step was concomitant with “joining the church” – both the specific congregation and Christ’s church, broadly defined. The fact that Oveta was only eight years old would not trouble many committed evangelical families. Besides, Juanita was ten, and it was common for siblings to join the church as a result of the same sermon, or in this case, the same summer revival. Three years later, in August 1916, a summertime revival scored more eager young converts when brothers I. W. Culp, Jr. and Jackson R. Culp joined the church on a successive Thursday and Friday. As their sisters had been, the boys were ten and eight years old. Baptist preachers’ children usually could be counted on to “be saved” at an early age.27 The girls, Juanita and Oveta, were intrigued by live performance. Led by Juanita, the pair developed skits that they performed on the stage of the Texas Theater, Killeen’s large movie house. Earl Massey, a neighbor of the sisters when they were growing up,

23 Paul Hobby, “Consistent, But Complicated” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing, 1997), ix. Paul Hobby, Oveta Hobby’s grandson, repeated the recollection of one of Oveta Hobby’s schoolmates. 24 Ordination was an important step in Baptist leadership. Congregation officials did not require specific educational attainment, but were cautious in elevating men to a rank they considered to be biblically inspired. Ike Hobby, like many ordained Baptist ministers, was apparently never the pastor of a congregation; however, ordination provided recognition by the congregation and allowed one to act as a lay preacher. 25 “I. W. Culp,” A History, 607. 26 Skidmore, “Hobby’s Childhood,” August 17, 1995; “Hobby’s Army,” Time, cover story, January 17, 1944, online unpaginated. Later in life, she became interested in going on the stage. 27 Bible, Culp family miscellaneous folder, Hobby family papers.

20 was entertained by the two-person skits. He remembered, “You always knew who the Culp girls were. They were active in school, pretty girls.”28 Oveta took elocution and piano lessons, doing particularly well in development of her public speaking skills.29 Killeen was left with an abiding memory of Oveta as a scholar, and particularly as a reader. She seems to have read everything she could get her hands on, including the Bible – three times. In a town with no public library and a school library that was limited, at best, where does a voracious reader find something to read? The answer was that her father had a library. A law library. After school, Oveta walked to her father’s law office, only a few minutes away, and read. He subscribed to the Congressional Record: she read it. He had shelves and shelves of legal reference works: she read them. Law, with its ins and outs, its lacunae, and overall, its logic, appealed to the young autodidact. In her early teens, she spent much of her spare time reading, even if it meant reading law books. Her passion for reading and for collecting books remained with her into her nineties.30 The Culp parents inculcated their children with a clear understanding of their responsibilities to their neighbors. Ike, and more particularly Emma, actively shared the family’s largesse with less fortunate families, organizing donations of food and funds. When Oveta was thirteen, before the Culps moved from Killeen to Temple, she helped Emma organize Killeen’s first Community Chest. The mother-daughter pair made a list of needy families, then canvassed better-off townsfolk and farmers for funds used to buy food, clothes, and fuel.31 The year 1918 was a busy one for the politically active Culp family. Ike Culp returned to the political arena. The former state legislator and former city attorney had not lost his interest in political office; he again declared himself a candidate for the state House of Representatives. In later years, the family’s account of the 1918 campaign focused not on Ike’s race for the state House, which he eventually won, but on another Democratic primary contest in Texas – the race for governor. Oveta often recounted her mother’s support of Will Hobby, the lieutenant governor who had replaced the disgraced

28 Speech, Liz Carpenter, Jan. 19, 1986 in Killeen, Texas. Transcription of speech in OCH clip file, Killeen Herald. 29 Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp to Carry Family Banner in Race,” Houston Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1930. 30 Peggy Buchanan, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. In her eighties, she sent household staff members to the library to pick up “fifteen or twenty” books at a time. E. C. “Lalo” Galaviz, Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 21. 31 Hardy, “Oveta Culp,” Houston Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1930.

21 and impeached Governor James Ferguson.32 Emma Culp joined many hundreds of women all over the state in a singular race against the calendar to register women to vote for the first time.33 Oveta remembered a mid-summer day when her mother left the house to go campaigning: “I can see her open the screen door and I remember exactly what she had on. She was wearing a pale blue suit and a white straw hat and high, laced white boots. She was pulling on her gloves and she turned to my sister and me and said, ‘Girls, you’ll have to look after the peaches. I’m going out to campaign for Will Hobby.’”34 When Emma and Oveta Culp organized Killeen’s first Community Chest, and when Emma Culp left her kitchen to encourage women to register to vote, the Culps were acting in the spirit of women all over the country. During this period of the early twentieth century women and women’s organizations took active roles in organizing the delivery of social services, and in preparing women to vote.35 Doubtless influenced by her mother, Oveta showed an early interest in clothes, especially hats: friends remembered her as a child “who had a real fancy for hats.” 36Killeen milliner Mary Dyer, called “Ma” by her customers and friends, said Oveta was one of her best hat customers, even as a child. Ma recalled a time when Oveta was twelve or thirteen years old and came to the store by herself, looking to buy a hat. She tried on

32 For more on Ferguson and Fergusonism, see Richardson, Texas, 377-380. Ferguson’s impeachment is described in Wilbourn E. Benton, Texas: Its Government and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall, 1966), 221-229. 33 Two years later, the twentieth amendment extended the franchise to American women in all elections. 34 Liz Carpenter speech, January 19, 1986. Texas women wanted the right to vote, but they wanted other rights as well. Married women had few rights regarding property and custody of their children. No woman, married or single, could serve on a jury. All had restricted access to legal procedures and were unable to influence legislation at any level of government other than by moral suasion. Issues such as taxation, prohibition, working conditions, education and more were decided by men only. A complete discussion of the legal restrictions on women is in Emma Louise Moyer Jackson, “Petticoat Politics: Political Activism among Texas Women in the 1920s” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1980). 35 For more on the role of women in social services, see Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Regarding women and the exercise of suffrage, see Nancy F. Cott, “Across the Great Divide: Women in Politics Before and After 1920.” In Louise Tilly and Patricia Gurin, eds., Women, Politics, and Change (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990). 36 James Barron, “Oveta Culp Hobby, Founder of the WACs and First Secretary of Health, Dies at 90,” New York Times, August 17, 1995. The Hobby biographical sketch and her obituary notice, included an anecdote quoting a statement by Ike Culp to Will Hobby that Hobby’s new bride did not know how to dress well. Granted that Culp probably made the comment, it was pretty clearly not accurate. In later life, Hobby consistently was mentioned in “best dressed” lists, and in all photographs from her younger years she is dressed appealingly.

22 several, of all three major styles of the era. Older women wore a turban, usually with a veil. Younger women wore straw hats featuring colorful flowers and maline, a stiffened net material. Girls under fourteen wore straw sailor hats with streamers down the back and often with an elastic band to go under the chin and hold the hat on the head. Oveta selected a turban. Ma tried to coax her out of her decision – to her, it looked too old for young Oveta. But the girl was adamant, and finally, Ma had to relent, telling Oveta to take the hat and see what her mother thought. Ma thought she had lost the sale, that the hat would come back; but Oveta proudly took the hatbox and left. The hat did not come back. Years later, as director of the Women’s Army Corps, Oveta gave a lecture in Belton and, out of curiosity about the woman she had known as a girl-customer, Ma went to hear her. The woman who had become Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby spotted her from the podium before she spoke. After her presentation, the two had a chance to speak to each other. Oveta laughed when Ma asked if she remembered buying the turban and explained that she was writing sermons for her father when she was that age and that she “just had to look a bit older – and the hat made her feel sophisticated.”37 Hobby’s old friend and journalistic colleague Liz Carpenter grew up less than twenty miles from Killeen in Salado, one of the few towns in Texas that regards itself as a “village.” Like others a few years younger than Hobby, Carpenter grew up hearing about the talents and accomplishments of her fellow Bell County neighbor. Carpenter remembers that years later, Hobby looked back at her childhood and credited Killeen with helping instill in her a sense of being grounded. She had good memories of Killeen and returned often. Carpenter remembers that whenever someone asked Oveta where she was from, she would say “Killleeeeen, Killleeeeen,” enunciating the consonants and drawing out the vowels. Says Carpenter: “She made it sound grander and more stylish and more lyrical than I can remember it being.”38 Oveta was fourteen years old in 1919 when she left her grandmother’s house and moved with the family twenty-three miles east of Killeen to Temple, a larger and more prosperous town on the other side of Bell County. Ike had won election to a two-year

37 Skidmore, “Childhood Recalled,” Killeen Daily Herald, August 17, 1995. A photocopy of Verba Toliver’s handwritten memoirs dated 1986 are in the Oveta Culp Hobby clip file, Killeen Daily Herald. 38 Liz Carpenter (speech on occasion of placing a historical marker at the birthplace of Oveta Culp Hobby, Killeen, TX, January 19, 1986). Videotape. Oveta Culp Hobby Papers, MS459, box 60, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, (hereafter cited as WRC).

23 term in the state House of Representatives, repeating his victory of two decades earlier. When the Thirty-sixth Legislature was gaveled to order in the second week of January, 1919, two Culps were in attendance: Ike, and his teenaged daughter Oveta, in Austin to attend session with him. She missed school during the weeks of session, but Ike arranged for tutors to try to keep her from falling behind. For the next two years her schooling was a combination of Temple High School, the Texas House of Representatives, and private tutors. Combined with prodigious reading, the result was a youth whose education far surpassed that of her Temple High School contemporaries. For reasons that are not apparent from the written record, she never graduated from high school.39 Throughout her life, journalists, reference-book authors, and even her own employees would ascribe educational milestones she had not, in fact, attained. Assuming her formal credentials matched her obvious education, helpful souls awarded fictional high-school diplomas, college sheepskins, and law school certificates.40 Most of the time, she corrected these inaccuracies; sometimes she did not, allowing even such vaunted fact-checking publications as U. S. News & World Report and the New York Times to print flawed curricula vitae. Her own newspaper sometimes collaborated in the fiction.41 However, an examination of documents for which she had personal responsibility, such as War Department documents and U.S. Government forms, reveals no such inaccuracies. When she filled out the forms herself, they were correct.42 Young Oveta was conscious of her speech – both her diction and her syntax. When she was five, following the death of her grandfather Hoover, she moved to her grandmother’s house nearby. Grandmère, as Oveta called her (for reasons now lost), helped the young girl mediate her country-Texas accent. Both Grandmère and Oveta’s

39 Oveta Culp’s youngest sister remembers a speech Oveta wrote during her senior year in high school. The principal read it beforehand and rejected the topic, telling the headstrong student she would have to write another speech, on another topic. Oveta, angry, walked out of Temple High School and never went back. Ike sided with his daughter and enrolled her in the preparatory program at Baylor Academy, in nearby Belton. Lynn Culp Hobby, Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 56. 40 The misinformation continues. A press release by the Texas Historical Commission on May 31, 2007 avers a law degree conferred by the University of Texas in 1925, when Hobby was twenty years old. 41 Marguerite Turner, “Houston Has Proved Herself a Great City, Says Col. Hobby,” Houston Post, December 23, 1942; Margaret Kernodle, “Dough Generalissimo,” Waterbury (CT) American, May 21, 1942; Nona Baldwin, “Mrs. Hobby Slated to Head the WAAC,” New York Times, May 15, 1942. The propriety of these resume-padding deceptions is beyond the scope of this paper, other than to note that Hobby seems not to have materially benefited from them. 42 Transcript of Military Record, AGO Form 01254, Department of the Army, photocopy in private collection of Al Shire.

24 father worked with her to overcome a childhood stammering problem. Employing a precocious talent for speaking, she excelled in debate and dramatics.43 In her high school years, Oveta was tutored in elocution. One of her declamations, “Alaska, the Brave Cowgirl,” was so polished that she won a local Chautauqua competition. Her prize included a performance contract with the regional Chautauqua organization. Oveta was excited by the prospect of going on tour, but her mother and father refused to consider letting her go on the road.44 With others her own age, she organized her own local tour for a group called “The Jolly Entertainers.” The home-grown vaudeville troupe toured towns in and around Bell County, giving benefit performances to finance church organs. Beginning early in life, with her family’s coaching, skits performed with her older sister, and then with her own road show, she worked on her theatrical skills, developing an impressive stage presence. Twenty years later, she was chosen for the starring role in the Houston Little Theater production of George Bernard Shaw’s comedy, You Never Can Tell.45 Her training in stagecraft and oration combined with her self-discipline to make Hobby an accomplished public speaker, a capability she put to good use very early in her public service career and continued to draw on through the decades of her varied careers. Overall, her stage presence – her speaking skills, her mode of dress, and her physical mannerisms – were a prominent part of her persona for the rest of her life.46 Ike Culp ran for the post of Lt. Governor in the 1920 Democratic primary, giving up his seat in the legislature in the process. When he lost, both he and daughter Oveta also lost their reason to spend time in Austin. Although lacking a high school diploma, Oveta next matriculated at Baylor Female College, attending for one or two semesters.

43 Oveta Hobby told an interviewer that she went to live with her Grandmother Hoover when Hobby was five years old, after her grandfather died, and lived with her grandmother until the family moved to Temple nine years later. Emily Newell Blair, “Woman Soldier Number One,” Liberty, August 1, 1942. 44 Peggy Buchanan, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. The Chautauqua Institution, still extant, traces its origin to Lake Chautauqua, Texas, in 1874. At the height of its popularity in the early twentieth century, hundreds of lecturers, musicians, and other performers made appearances in meeting halls and tents all over the United States. Although non-political, the loosely knit organization grew and declined with the progressive spirit of the times. The institution maintains a web site at http://www.ciweb.org/history.html. 45 Bill Taylor, Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 45. Years of elocution lessons proved their worth. The drama critic of the Post noted Hobby’s “poised and assured handling” of Shavian dialogue, adding that her performance was “notable for the finest enunciation I have ever heard in the Little Theater.” Also appearing in the play was Ray Walston, later featured on television as “My Favorite Martian.” 46 People remarked about her “presence” all through her life. Her grandson wrote that “almost anyone I have ever heard describe her . . . uses that word.” Paul W. Hobby, “Consistent, but Complicated,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., ix.

25 She was not a regular student in the college; she was not enrolled in the college’s normal school, or in the college preparatory curriculum. Along with sixteen others, she was categorized as an “Irregular” student – a group that included, among others, a man and a married woman – both unusual in a women’s college. Her attendance was evidently irregular: even though by nature inclined to participate in extracurricular activities, she was not involved in drama, the newspaper, the yearbook, or any other similar school or club activities. Nor did she belong to either the Central Texas Club or the active Bell County Club.47 The seventeen-year-old soon moved on, not much advanced by her stint in college. During her abbreviated college career she spent a brief period working at Rogers High School where she taught elocution and helped students put on plays.48 Although the student Oveta did not remain long at Mary Hardin-Baylor College, in May 1943, in the middle of her service as head of the Women’s Army Corps, she was the guest of honor at a formal banquet given at the college and attended by 500 guests. Texas governor Coke Stevenson, Fort Hood commander Major General A. D. Bruce, and Houston mayor Otis Massey spoke in tribute.49 In commencement exercises two days later at Baylor University, an institution operated in tandem with the small women’s college, she was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree, her first. In her prepared remarks at Mary Hardin-Baylor, she told the audience that she and her husband were interested in the institution because her husband’s mother was an early graduate. She said nothing about her own student days there.50 Isaac Culp’s career again intervened in Oveta’s education. He was reelected to the legislature in November 1922, resuming his seat in the regular session beginning in the following January. Oveta again accompanied him to Austin. During this period she audited classes in the University of Texas Law School and resumed being tutored. She

47 “Quarterly of Baylor College,” vol. 13, no. 2, catalogue number 1921-22, Announcements 1922-23, . Baylor College for Women, May 1922. This is the only record of Hobby’s attendance at the college. Most official records were destroyed in a flood. 48 Otis Massey (speech, recognition dinner in honor of Oveta Culp Hobby, Mary Hardin-Baylor College, May 7, 1943). Otis Massey was the mayor of Houston, TX; Hardy, “Oveta Culp,” Houston Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1930. 49 Houston Post, photo caption, Houston Post, May 7, 1943. 50 Marguerite Turner, “Hardin-Baylor College Pays Colonel Hobby Tribute,” Houston Post, May 9, 1943; “Neff Lauds W.A.A.C. as Hobby Gets Degree,” Houston Post, May 10, 1943. Oveta Culp Hobby (speech, Mary Hardin-Baylor College, May 7, 1943).

26 also became a cub reporter on the Austin Statesman, the capital’s most important newspaper. Her Ike-instilled interest in Democratic politics continued to grow. By the summer of 1924, when the Texas Democratic Convention met in San Antonio, nineteen- year-old Miss Oveta Culp was ready – well-prepared, capable, and propelled by furious ambition. In effect skipping college, she had read law and had been an eager observer of minute-by-minute deliberations of the Texas House and Senate. That summer in San Antonio the wundermädchen drew statewide attention when she successfully ran for the office of secretary of the convention. Accustomed as she was to public speaking, the new party official acknowledged her position with an address to the delegates. Within eighteen months she would become an administrative officer of the state legislature .51 By this time she had moved to Austin and would soon move from Austin to Houston, taking her library numbering 750 volumes, packed in trunks. Her book titles were impressive and included Cases of Common Law Reading, Revised Civil Statutes of the State of Texas, Millay’s A Few Figs from Thistles, The Private Papers of Colonel House, Life of Charles Culberson, Jefferson and Hamilton, Frank Kent’s Democratic 52 Party, and Robinson’s Sonnets. In 1925 the man who had been parliamentarian of the Texas House of Representatives secured a permanent post at the University of Texas, a position that did not provide the release time required to continue his episodic duties as House disciplinarian. He would be unable to serve in the called session of the Thirty-ninth Legislature set to convene in the following January.53 Years later, Oveta Culp Hobby remembered that a “dear old friend who appointed me said, ‘I’ll help you.’” The

51 Hardy, “Oveta Culp,” Houston Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1930. 52 Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp”, 3; The Private Papers of Colonel House doubtless refers to The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, published in 1926. The last five books on this list could not have been moved from her childhood home since they were published in the period from 1925 to 1928 – after Culp had moved from Bell County. The life-long bibliophile continued to add to her collection even as she transported her nascent career from one city to another. From childhood, through her years of self- education, and throughout her adult years, Hobby read intensively. Through most of her life she bought books and collected rare books. It was no surprise to anyone who knew her when in 1950 she was named a director of the Great Books Foundation, an organization headquartered at the University of Chicago that sponsored community study and discussion groups nationwide.52 53 Each two-year legislative term began with a regular session in January following the November general election. Almost always, a special, or “called,” session was convened in January of the following year. Depending on the press of legislative business, additional called sessions were convened, a pattern that continues today.

27 reference was probably to Speaker of the House Lee Satterwhite, who selected her as parliamentarian, subject to a pro forma vote of the House. In preparation for the detailed and demanding job, Culp spent some weeks, perhaps a few months, in the latter part of 1925 being trained by her predecessor. The apprentice was able to draw on years of reading legislative journals and other materials, and to draw on months of first-hand observation of parliamentarians in action. She began with a good grasp of what was required to guide the speaker through daily activities and how to impose conformation to House rules. She understood the basics of Robert’s Rules of Order and was a willing student of the more arcane details. From the speaker’s point of view, if the youngster was inadequate to the job, it would be up to the next speaker to solve the problem; Texas speakers historically served only one term. On the other hand, if, as he thought, Culp was an effective parliamentarian, she could look forward to multiple terms of service.54 When the called session convened on January 12, 1926, Speaker Satterwhite announced his choice for parliamentarian for the session and the House quickly approved his selection. Parliamentarian Culp celebrated her twenty-first birthday six days later. Satterwhite soon added to her responsibilities by appointing her secretary to the speaker, a further recognition of her competence. His judgment proved to be superb. Culp served as Parliamentarian for every regular and called session of the Texas House from January 1926 through the end of the Forty-first Legislature in early 1931. Oveta Culp’s competent performance remained in the collective memory of the House for years. When the Forty-sixth Legislature convened in January 1939 and again when the Forty-seventh Legislature convened two years later, both Speakers reached back for Oveta Culp (by this time married to William P. Hobby), pressing her into service as interim Parliamentarian for the first weeks of both sessions.55 It undoubtedly helped that in the intervening years, Hobby had written and published Mr. Chairman, a textbook designed to help young people navigate parliamentary procedure. Though the book was never highly popular, for obvious reasons, Hobby persisted in getting it adopted by the public school textbook authorities in both Texas and Louisiana.56

54 Blair, “Woman Soldier,” Liberty, August 1, 1942. 55 Blair, “Woman Soldier,” Liberty, August 1, 1942. 56 Oveta Culp Hobby, Mr. Chairman (Oklahoma City: Economy, 1936).

28 The positions of Parliamentarian and Secretary to the Speaker were not full-time jobs; the duties ended when each session ended. Adding to her Austin employment, Culp also was a clerk with the State Banking Commission. Among other duties, she traveled the state with Commission officials, and organized and codified the state’s banking laws, a codification which, she later noted, lasted for many years.57 Later in the year, Culp was named Office Executive in the Houston campaign headquarters office of Texas Attorney General Dan Moody, who was running an ultimately successful race to become governor of Texas. She also served as permanent secretary of the state convention that nominated Moody; she attended the convention as the representative of four counties.58 Moody’s primary opponent was incumbent Governor Miriam A. “Ma” Ferguson. The Ku Klux Klan had been active in recent election campaigns. In this one, the two leading candidates ran on the basis of their anti-Klan credentials, valid for both individuals. Ma Ferguson had won election two years prior in the teeth of Klan opposition to her candidacy. For his part, as district attorney in and around Austin, Moody had prosecuted Klan cases and had continued fighting the organization during his two-year term as Attorney General. Ma carried too much baggage to win this election. Her husband, Bell County native James “Farmer Jim” Ferguson (now re-christened “Pa”), had resigned the governor’s office in 1917 after impeachment for financial improprieties. After her election in 1924 (campaign slogan: “Two governors for the price of one”), Ma upset Texas voters with her open-handed policy of granting pardons, a practice many Texans believed was encouraged by bribes delivered to the governor from imprisoned felons. Moody won the primary decisively, then went on to defeat Republican candidate H. H. Haines in the general election by the huge majority typical of the time.59 Early January of the following year, 1927, found Oveta back at the Parliamentarian’s desk in Austin, this time as Parliamentarian and Secretary to Speaker

57 Blair, “Woman Soldier,” Liberty, August 1, 1942. 58 “Miss Oveta Culp Will Be One of Delegates to Demo Convention,” Temple Daily Telegram, [Ca. June 1928]. Found in Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 4, folder 4, WRC. 59 Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp”, 3; Massey (Speech, May 7, 1943); 1928 Moody campaign details are from Richard T. Fleming, “Daniel James Moody, Jr.,” Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/TT/npt1.html (accessed 9-24-07). Ma Ferguson was the second American woman to become a state governor; Nellie Ross had been installed as governor of Wyoming fifteen days earlier. See John D. Huddleston, “Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/FF/ffe6.html (accessed July 25, 2007).

29 Robert Lee Bobbitt of Laredo.60 Oveta’s power as parliamentarian in the operation of the Texas House of Representatives was significant. A few years later, in a lengthy history of the Houston Post and its key executives, the newspaper told readers that more House members went to the parliamentarian [Oveta] with questions about “actions on bills and other problems than went to the speaker himself.”61 Oveta’s influence as parliamentarian was illustrated by a story told by Frank Baldwin, editor of morning and afternoon daily newspapers in Waco. In 1927 Baldwin took his seat in the Texas House. A plainspoken man, he took with him to the legislature a propensity to provoke disputes, even lawsuits. He was hired twice by Baylor University as a lecturer and fired both times for inappropriate language. Speaking to a journalism class at Texas Tech in 1927, he heaped invective on the legislature. The House responded the following Monday by calling for his removal from office. Speaker Bobbitt, with a key ruling from Parliamentarian Culp, was able to sidetrack the resolution. Baldwin later said, “I’ve never forgiven Oveta for that. I was a cinch to be impeached – and it would have been an honor.”62 By 1928 Oveta Culp had packed many learning experiences into twenty-three years of life and into the six years since she lost patience with the idea of college. Her unusual, and unusually broad, training and reading outfitted her for her future as a business leader, military commander, and agent of political change. She had also put in place the public persona that she would utilize skillfully over the next several decades.

60 Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp”, 3; “Is Private Secretary to Speaker of House,” photograph with caption, [Houston Post-Dispatch?], January 14, 1927. Oveta Culp Hobby Papers, box 4, folder 7, WRC. The photograph is of Oveta Culp and House Speaker Bobbitt. The caption includes the information that the two occupied the same positions in the previous special session of the legislature. 61 “Chapter 32: The New Post,” Houston Post, October 20, 1940, commemorative section, 77. 62 “Editor and Ex-Legislator, Frank Baldwin, Succumbs,” Dallas Morning News, August 7, 1951.

Figure 1 Oveta Culp, 1909. Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed.

Figure 2 Parliamentarian Oveta Culp and

House Speaker Fred Minor, 1931. Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed.

Figure 3 Texas State Legislature leaders, circa 1929-31, including Gov. Dan Moody, Speaker Wingate S. Barron and Parliamentarian Oveta Culp. University of Texas, http://www.texaspolitics_laits_utexas.edu.

31 CHAPTER TWO

1928 - 1941

Oveta Culp did not make precipitous decisions. All her life she considered – planned – her next steps. She knew that moving to Houston would change her prospects. She knew she was attaching herself to a distinctive city, would apprentice herself to accomplished women, and would come under the influence of powerful men. She deliberately ensconced herself in a milieu, a peculiar environment that would shape her future. Whether or not she realized it at the time, in the future she would become one of the forces that shaped that milieu. Houston is fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico and fourteen miles from the upper reaches of Galveston Bay. The city’s center is situated on a natural drainage ditch named Buffalo Bayou. In the years just before World War I, the business and political leaders of the city directed dredging of a waterway down Buffalo Bayou and across Galveston Bay to the open ocean of the Gulf of Mexico. This canal, the Houston Ship Channel, transformed the Bayou City into a major ocean port linked by Houston’s extensive railroad connections to much of middle America. During the same period Houston was also becoming the center of the Gulf Coast oil and gas industry. The two related industries, transportation and petroleum, forced the efflorescence of what soon became a metropolis.1 Like most of the rest of the country, Texas during the 1920s was rapidly urbanizing. By 1930, forty-one percent of the state’s population lived in cities and towns, up from thirty-two percent in 1920. During the decade Houston passed both Dallas and San Antonio in total population and grew to be larger than New Orleans. Petroleum exploration and production, including refining, were burgeoning industries and because of the benefits of agglomeration, were increasingly centered in Houston.2 Oveta Culp, like many other ambitious young people, was drawn by the promise of the city.

1 Jesse H. Jones and Edward Angly, Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC (1932-1945) (New York: MacMillan, 1951), 4. 2 Norman D. Brown, “Texas in the 1920s,” Handbook of Texas History, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/npt1.html (accessed November 9, 2007).

32 Sandwiched between legislative sessions and short jobs in state government and politics, she lived for irregular periods in Houston, where she stayed at the apartment of Florence S. Sterling, a woman prominent in business and in public service in Houston. Sterling prompted Culp’s interest in the new Texas League of Women Voters. Less than five years later, Culp became state president of the organization.3 Woman suffrage in Texas traces to a first abortive attempt during the 1868 Reconstruction Convention. In 1903 Capt. J. D. Finnigan, a Texas leather merchant and investor, brought his family back to Texas from New York where his oldest daughter Annette, a Wellesley graduate, had been corresponding secretary of the New York City Equal Suffrage League. In Houston, Annette and her sisters Elizabeth and Katherine organized the Houston Equal Suffrage Association, with Annette as president. Soon the Houston group called a state conference that resulted in founding of the Texas Women’s Rights Association.4 A student of Texas politics in the early and middle twentieth century has concluded that woman suffrage leaders in the state continued their work after passage of the nineteenth amendment, pressing on a broad range of progressive issues. By the onset of the Depression, such young politically active women as Oveta Culp and Sarah T. Hughes, later a long-serving district court judge in Dallas, were prepared to take broader leadership in Texas public and political life. Moreover, the influence of women political leaders paved the way for “acceptance of federal and state programs of health, education and social welfare” that was soon to come.5 Recent scholarship supports the view that the 1920s were not a stagnant period following Progressivism and reform, preceding the transformations of the New Deal and World War II. Instead, the decade is now regarded as a time of rapid change in the U.S., when many Americans “enjoyed the fruits of the Industrial Revolution for the first time.

3 Marguerite Johnston Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby (First Draft),” 3. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC. 4 Marguerite Johnston, Houston: The Unknown City, 1856-1946 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), 137. For an overview of the suffrage movement in the South, see Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 5 A thorough analysis of the influence of suffragists on other issues is in Emma Louise Moyer Jackson, “Petticoat Politics: Political Activism among Texas Women in the 1920s” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1980).

33 Prosperity, prohibition, gangsterism, flappers, and social change all mark the decade.” The 1920s are seen as an era of boosterism and “business progressivism,” and a time when the arts – music, painting, architecture, literature, and the industrial arts – were able to fluorish.6 In the aftermath of Texas’s ratification of the nineteenth amendment in June 1920, Texas abounded with politically active women like Florence Sterling who had earned their spurs in the woman suffrage movement. Most visible and arguably most influential was Minnie Fisher Cunningham, later called “Minnie Fish,” the name Franklin D. Roosevelt happily adopted when she went to Washington in the 1930s to work for the New Deal. Born into a wealthy planter family near Houston in 1882, Cunningham was home schooled, passing the state certification test for teachers when she was sixteen years old. Her father, recognizing her interest in politics, took her with him to Walker County political meetings in Huntsville, the county seat. Minnie Fisher taught school for a year, then entered the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, earning at age nineteen one of the first pharmacy degrees granted to a woman in Texas. An unhappy marriage to Beverly Jean Cunningham, a man of means, enabled and encouraged her to become a crusader, working for woman suffrage. In 1910 she was elected president of the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association and began spreading her message around the state. By 1915 she was president of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association. Two years later she moved to Austin, taking command of the push for suffrage at the state level. Later that year William Pettus Hobby, elevated to governor by the impeachment and resignation of his anti-suffrage predecessor, signed the bill that provided for woman suffrage in state primary elections. In 1920 Hobby and Cunningham watched with satisfaction as the legislature ratified the nineteenth amendment, making Texas the first southern state to do so.7

6 Brown, “Texas in the 1920s.” For perspective on the United States economy and culture in the 1920s see Ellis W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order :A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917-1933 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), originally published in 1979. 7 Judith N. McArthur and Harold L. Smith. Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist’s Life in Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003; Patricia Ellen Cunningham, “Bonnet in the Ring: Minnie Fisher Cunningham’s Campaign for Governor of Texas in 1944,” Women and Texas History, Fane Downs and Nancy Baker Jones, eds. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1993), 102-15; Patricia Ellen Cunningham, “Minnie Fisher Cunningham,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/fcu24.html (accessed July 25, 2007); A. Elizabeth Taylor, “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas,” The Journal of Southern History 17, no. 2 (May,

34 Cunningham spent a year working at the national level to duplicate the advances in her home state, concentrating on lobbying western governors. After the federal amendment passed, she immediately turned her attention to converting the Woman Suffrage Association into the National League of Women Voters and led the organization as its executive secretary. Back in Texas in 1928 and recently widowed, the savvy politician became the first woman from Texas to become a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Her campaign organization included Jane McCallum, Anna Pennybacker, Estelle B. Sharp, and Jesse Daniel Ames, all veterans of the suffrage movement. The Klan-backed incumbent, Earle B. Mayfield, and three other candidates all racked up more votes than Cunningham, who finished fifth in a field of six. In the runoff, she threw her support to Mayfield’s run-off opponent, Thomas T. Connally, who was elected and went on to serve in the Senate for twenty-four years.8 After a stint in Washington promulgating New Deal agricultural policies, Cunningham returned to Texas to work against the Texas Regulars, a boisterous ad hoc group of conservative Democrats who in 1944 opposed Roosevelt’s re-nomination. She continued to support Democratic Party causes, and specifically liberal issues, throughout a vigorous old age. The liberal periodical Texas Observer, which she co-founded in the 1950s, survives today.9 Jessie Daniel Ames was another influential Texas woman of the period whose example touched politically conscious young women like Culp. Widowed at thirty-one, Ames joined her mother, also widowed, in the operation of a small-town telephone company in Central Texas. There, Ames had to operate a business, a “man’s type” of business, under the handicap of male prejudice. In 1916 she founded her town’s Equal Suffrage League, and by 1918 she was treasurer of the Texas Equal Suffrage League. The following year she became the first president of the Texas League of Women Voters,

1951): 204. McArthur and Smith’s book is the only biography of Cunningham. Taylor’s history of woman suffrage in Texas, drawn primarily from contemporaneous newspaper reports, remains the definitive treatment. Governor Hobby proclaimed a state holiday on the day the nineteenth amendment became effective. Raymond Brooks, “Miss Oveta Culp To Become Wife of Wm. P. Hobby,” Waco News-Tribune, February 13, 1931. For more on suffrage and Texas, see Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Women, culture, and community religion and reform in Galveston, 1880-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 8 Ann Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, Women in Texas: Their Lives, Their Experiences, Their Accomplishments (Austin: State House Press, 1992), 221. 9 Cunningham, “Cunningham.”

35 formed as the successor organization to the Equal Suffrage League.10 With the change in Texas law permitting women to vote in the primary, the new League of Women Voters needed to swing into action. Although women were exempt from the poll tax in that year, they were required to register to vote, and the registration window was very short. Up in Bell County, Oveta Culp’s mother Emma became one of hundreds of “Hobby women” who fanned out across the state, registering as many white women as possible.11 During this period, Ames and Minnie Fisher Cunningham cooperated very closely. When Ames was laid up for surgery, Cunningham took care of her three children; when Ames’ signature was required on a letter or document, Cunningham signed for her.12 Ames believed that emphasis on racial equality would improve prospects for equality for women. In 1922 she became head of the Texas Committee for Inter-Racial Cooperation, an organization that focused particularly on anti-lynching efforts. Her anti- lynching efforts intensified when in 1930 she founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, headquartered in Atlanta. By the end of the 1930s, Texas historian Lewis T. Nordyke credited Ames’ efforts with cutting in half the number of lynchings in the United States.13 In 1944, convinced that the problem of lynchings had largely been solved, Ames dissolved the organization.14 In addition to Minnie Fish, other Houston area activist women served as exemplars of political and social action, influencing the development of Oveta’s civic conscience. Ima Hogg, daughter of progressive Texas governor James Hogg, was born in the same year as Cunningham. Educated at the University of Texas and at musical academies in Berlin and Vienna, “Miss Ima” founded the Houston Symphony Orchestra and endowed medical and cultural institutions in Houston and Austin.15 The Houston

10 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979, 1993), 3. 11 Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 18. 12 Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 23. 13 Lewis T. Nordyke, "Ladies and Lynchings," Survey Graphic 28 (November 1939), 685. 14 Jon D. Swartz, “Jessie Daniel Ames,” Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/AA/fam6.html (accessed July 24, 2007). 15 Virginia Bernhard, “Ima Hogg,” Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/HH/fho16.html (accessed July 25, 2007). Bernhard is Hogg’s biographer. See Virginia Bernhard, Ima Hogg: The Governor's Daughter (New York: Brandywine

36 Symphony Orchestra was a favorite institution of Oveta Hobby; she joined the board of directors and soon was elected chairman.16 The woman who intermittently provided a Houston home for Culp, Florence M. Sterling, was an investor and career executive at Humble Oil & Refining Company, serving for a number of years in the role of corporate secretary of the organization that later morphed into Exxon Corporation. Her brother Ross Sterling, a founder of the company, became governor of Texas during the early 1930s.17 Florence Sterling was active in support of women’s rights, including serving as president of the Houston League of Women Voters and the Texas Women's Democratic League. Sterling’s home district elected her a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1920, held in San Francisco. At the convention the four at-large places reserved for women delegates went to Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Jessie Daniel Ames, and two other officials of the state League of Women Voters. This led anti-suffrage leader Joseph W. Bailey to say scornfully, “Four sisters and twelve sissies represented this great State as delegates-at- large in San Francisco.” Politics of the era was not for the faint of heart, and some said, not for women. In one Texas precinct in 1920, pro- and anti-suffrage men fought, using pocket knives and canes. A flying cuspidor seriously injured one woman.18 Sterling became president of the Houston League of Women Voters in 1924 and was proposed as a candidate for Democratic National Committeewoman from Texas, though the party apparatus selected another candidate. In the national Democratic Convention in Houston in 1928, Sterling was the only woman in Texas elected to represent her district.19 When Oveta Culp, then an ambitious political whiz kid from Central Texas, first came to Houston in 1926 and lived in Florence Sterling’s apartment, she joined other youthful apprentices learning the political ropes. Culp arrived at about

Press, 1996.) A Democrat for all her long life, Hogg died at the age of ninety-three after a traffic accident in London. 16 Oveta Hobby also became a life trustee of Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, another of Ima Hogg’s philanthropies. 17 Johnston, Houston, 128. 18 Johnston, Houston, 24-29. 19 Sterling was the only district delegate; Ames was one of twelve at-large delegates.

37 the time that Sterling’s women’s advocacy magazine, the Women’s Viewpoint, ceased publication.20 Estelle B. Sharp21 was another mentor of Oveta Culp and other young women in Houston in the late 1920s and 1930s. Her husband Walter Sharp was co-founder of Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, renamed Hughes Tool Company after Howard Hughes, Sr., bought Sharp’s interest. Sharp’s inventions and oil exploration investments proved very successful.22 In 1912, when Estelle Sharp was widowed early and found herself wealthy, she turned her attention to advocacy of socially progressive issues of the day. Elegant and educated, she organized and led discussion groups aimed at increasing the current events awareness of young women, single and married.23 In early 1928, Sharp attended a meeting of the Daughters of Jackson, a nominally non-partisan group organized to encourage women to pay the poll tax and to register to vote. Oveta Culp served as executive secretary of the organization. Although Florence Sterling presented the program, attention focused on the twenty-three-year-old Parliamentarian Culp, who also spoke, inadvertently upstaging Sterling. Hobby was well- known as the Parliamentarian of the Texas House; many delegates also knew she was a campaign advisor of Attorney General Moody in his ultimately successful race for

20 Judith N. McArthur, “Florence M. Sterling,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/fstbq.html (accessed July 26, 2007). 21 In the historical record, usually identified as Mrs. Walter B. Sharp. 22 R.C. Gano, “Walter Benona Sharp,” Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/fsh6.html (accessed July 25, 2007). 23 “Estelle Boughton Sharp,” biographical sketch, WRC http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ricewrc/00011/rice- 00011.html (accessed July 25, 2007). The League of Women Voters was only one of many women’s clubs offering middle- and upper-income women an avenue to public service. The advances made by these organizations in Houston reflected similar success across the country. A women’s reading club led directly to the establishment of the Houston Public Library System. Mothers Clubs, part of the Texas Congress of Mothers, operated in thirty-six Houston schools. The Public School Art League, a women’s group, placed reproductions of masterpieces in schoolrooms, an activity that led to the organization of the Houston Art League, which, in turn, lead to the establishment of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, today nationally recognized for its collections and programs. A prosopographic survey of women’s club members in Houston is in chapter three of Betty Trapp Chapman, Houston Women: Invisible Threads in the Tapestry, Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company, 2000. The papers of many Houston women of the era are archived at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center housed in downtown Houston in the Julia Ideson Building, named for a women’s club leader. A description of the significance of women’s clubs in Houston and other Texas cities is in Judith N. McArthur, Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women’s Progressive Culture in Texas, 1893-1918, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

38 governor. After the meeting, Sharp spoke with Culp, initiating a friendship that lasted for many years.24 In an interview years later, Oveta explained that “Mrs. Sharp opened the world to many of us . . . She organized a study group and saw to it that we learned about important national and international issues.” After Oveta Culp’s marriage in 1931 she continued to attend Sharp’s tutorials in politics and policy, complaining at one point about the amount of work involved in preparation for the sessions. Hobby later recounted that Sharp “introduced us to such matters as the League of Nations report on the invasion of Manchuria, and on the meaning of the German desire for lebensraum. She made us study hard. Every six months we started a new course.”25 Hortense Ward’s life story appealed to Hobby. A divorced mother of three, she remarried, read law with her husband, and in 1910 became the first woman to pass the Texas bar exam. Soon after, she was the first Texas woman permitted to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, and in a complex law suit, she was appointed temporary chief justice of the state. Ward and Hobby long remained friends and Hobby later remembered that Ward would call with an invitation to meet for lunch at the Rice Hotel.26

Cities are shaped by various forces. The city of Houston has been shaped by its environment – its location near water and petroleum – and by its business elite. Oveta Culp Hobby was a member of this elite class that historians and urban scholars have identified and studied.27 Besides Oveta and Will Hobby, described below, this study will describe in detail only one other member of Houston’s business elite, someone who was part of the Hobbys’ lives for forty years. Jesse Holman Jones came from a background similar to that of Oveta and Will Hobby, and similar to that of many other civic leaders in Texas. Jones was born in

24 Johnston, Houston, 275. 25 Johnston, Houston, 275; Based on the topics taken up by the group, it is apparent that Hobby participated in it for several years. The League of Nations report was published in 1933; lebensraum became a concept of concern after the English-language publication of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, also in 1933. Although the United States never joined the League of Nations, Sharp’s support of the internationalist group and her advocacy of American membership resulted in her appointment to the National Advisory Council of the League of Nations Association. 26 Oveta Culp Hobby, “That Reminds Me . . .” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing, 1997), 67. 27 Detailed lists of Houston and Texas business elites are in Jimmy Banks, Money, Marbles and Chalk: The Wondrous World of Texas Politics (Austin: Texas Publishing Company, 1971). 131-32.

39 Tennessee and into a family of means. His father had done well, growing and marketing tobacco. Part of the family had migrated to Texas where they were prospering in the lumber business. Eschewing college, Jones apprenticed to his uncle in Dallas. Jones learned fast; when he was twenty-four his uncle died and left much of his building materials business to him. Following his uncle’s example, Jones combined the lumber retailing business with finance: he loaned money to his customers, both builders and consumers.28 Jones displayed prodigious entrepreneurial skills. Adding to his success in lumber retailing he became a general contractor. Small industrial and commercial buildings led to larger structures, including office buildings in downtown Houston.29 Jones cashed in on the Panic of 1907. Whether luck or skill was responsible, he happened to be in a liquid financial position when the economic situation turned foul. Further, he had arranged lines of bank credit in advance of the sharp liquidity crunch. As projects began to fail and contractors became bankrupt, Jones was able to buy assets at a deep discount from their original value. After this master stroke, he was the biggest investor in the state and an important investor on the national scene. His holdings included real estate, partially completed construction projects, and an important stake in the Houston Chronicle, perennially the circulation leader of the city’s newspapers.30 Jones recognized that a bank failure caused by a run of depositors could result in the cascading effect of additional bank failures. He participated in a rescue plan to avoid the effects of a run on a Houston bank. The plan worked. Bank deposits were protected and bank shareholders’ investments were secure. Jones would later confront a much more serious threat to bank depositors and investors. By 1912 Jones had successfully led the campaign to dredge the Houston Ship Channel; he then helped sell ship channel bonds. When seaport construction was finished in 1914, an industrial boom followed – providentially, at the time of startup of oil and gas production in the region. Secondary manufacturing – petrochemicals – would follow. Soon after the successful construction of the port at Houston, nearby Beaumont

28 Walter L. Buenger, “Between Community and Corporation: The Southern Roots of Jesse H. Jones and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,” The Journal of Southern History 56, no. 3 (1990): 67. In the absence of a reliable biography of Jones, Buenger’s journal article is a good source of information about both Jones and Jones’s tenure as head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. 29 Buenger, “Between Community,” 70. 30 Buenger, “Between Community,” 70.

40 completed a similar dredging and port construction project led by former governor William Pettus Hobby, publisher of the city’s principal newspaper.31 Like others of his class, Jones felt called to civic and political responsibilities. Predictably a Democrat, he participated in party activities. He was associated with the House brothers (Jones was an investor in, and significant borrower from, their bank), especially Colonel Edward M. House, a close advisor of Woodrow Wilson. Through House, Wilson met Jones and came to respect his organizational abilities. During the Great World War, Wilson appointed Jones to a key logistical responsibility in the American Red Cross. After the war, the “builder-financier,” as he described himself, went on to re-structure the Red Cross, then returned to his business and political activities in Houston and other cities.32 By the 1920s Jones had constructed high-rise office buildings in Dallas, Washington, DC, and New York City, as well as in Houston; he owned many of them. His financing activities grew apace. He became a large borrower from banks in Texas and New York; by investing in Houston banks, he became an important lender as well. To his business partners and lenders, Jones was hard-driving, astute, and a good risk. To those in debt to him, he was a tough taskmaster; some questioned his scruples, regarding some of his deals as shady. A leader in Houston society as well as finance, Jones was regarded as a “wheeler-dealer.” 33 This was the man who Will and Oveta Hobby, indirectly, clandestinely, but unquestionably, worked for, for nearly a decade. And the man with whom they were required to negotiate for the purchase of the Houston Post and the financing of the transaction. Respected and feared, “Jesus H. Jones,” as Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson called him, directed much of the business and political life of Houston, and dominated the life of the Hobbys.34 Through the Depression, through the war, and for years later, Jones and Will Hobby maintained a good personal relationship, meeting for

31 Buenger, “Between Community,” 71. 32 Bascom N. Timmons, Jesse H. Jones: The Man and the Statesman (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1956), 99-110. 33 Buenger, “Between Community,” 71. 34 R. W. Apple, Jr., “A City of Surprises, Not All Big,” New York Times, February 20, 1998.

41 lunch nearly every week when Jones was in town. Will Hobby both liked and admired Jones, who reciprocated the friendship.35 Oveta Hobby did not share this bond, and she did not like Jesse Jones, even though she had to endure decades of business and personal relationship with him.36 When the Hobby’s second child was born, Will prevailed in his choice of her name: Jesse Oveta Hobby. Within two years Oveta modified the baby’s name to Jessica, a modification that remains in place today.37 Oveta Hobby’s dislike for Jones was complicated, and probably intensified, by a defamatory rumor: that Jesse Jones was Jessica’s father. The story, which persists today, stands as testimony to the damage and the endurance of such derogations. The rumor was enhanced by the choice of the baby’s name.38 Undoubtedly, it was fed by Jones’s reputation for rough dealing in business transactions. It was probably nourished by Jones’s actions leading up to his own marriage – his choice of a bride, in 1926 when he was fifty-two, was the wife of a nephew, a choice that required her divorce.39 The story was further stoked in 1954 when Jack Guinn, a former Houston Post newsroom employee, angered when he was passed over for promotion, published a roman á clef. If there was any doubt about the author’s animus, readers could take assurance from the dedication, which referred to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter nine, verse five (King James Version): “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” In Guinn’s The

35 Timmons, Jones, 160, 270. 36 “Mother couldn’t stand Jesse Jones,” is the stark assessment Bill Hobby made of his mother’s regard for Jones. Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 9, 2007. Diana Hobby remembered that “Oveta detested Jesse Jones.” Diana Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 30, 2007. The feeling was widespread. A popular author wrote “Many people, Texans as well as non-Texans, hate Jesse Jones, and hatred often snaps out of his own cold eyes.” John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (New York, Harper, 1947), 828. Despite Oveta’s personal feelings about Jones, she acknowledged to an interviewer that he was “good for the country” as head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Oveta Culp Hobby, interview by Marguerite Johnston, Houston, TX, undated, 4. Interviewer’s notes in Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC. 37 January 19 was also her mother’s and brother’s birthday. In August 1942, with Oveta Hobby very much in the public eye as head of the WAAC, Robert Ripley, in his popular syndicated newspaper feature “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” drew an artist’s sketch of Hobby in uniform, with oversized text that gave the details of the birthday coincidences. Robert Ripley, “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” Washington [DC] Times- Herald, August 28, 1942. 38 The notion requires a suspension of logic – why would a married woman name her child after a lover who was the child’s father? Why would her husband agree to such a name? For more about this rumor, see Oveta Culp Hobby FBI file, available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The rumor is mentioned repeatedly, with Hobby “rumored to have been the mistress of,” and the name redacted. The FBI accounts do not give credibility to the rumored relationship. 39 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview.

42 Caperberry Bush the protagonist is a beautiful woman newspaper publisher in a southern city married to a former U.S. Senator. The publisher has an affair with an extremely wealthy friend, a relationship that becomes a scandal when word gets out.40 Oveta Hobby, beautiful wife of a much older man, encountered other rumored liaisons in the course of her public life.41 Despite Oveta Hobby’s feelings about Jones, their paths crossed frequently in Houston before the start of World War II, and crossed frequently during the war. In Washington they were once again swimming in the same pond. They were friends, even if it was a flawed friendship; both had positions of importance in the wartime government; they shared political points of view and were members of the controlling elite in Houston; both were newspaper publishers in the same booming city; both made fine impressions on speakers’ platforms. At the annual luncheon of the Associated Press, journalism’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization, they two were photographed with other important figures from publishing circles. Jones was shown in conversation with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, and Hobby was posed with Brigadier General Clark Howell, publisher of the Atlanta

40 Jack Guinn, The Caperberry Bush (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954). The book is not unique – newspaper publishing families are vulnerable to “tell-all” fiction. Novels like The Caperberry Book, some even harsher, decorate bookshelves nationwide. Target families have included the publishers of the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Amarillo Globe-News, the Los Angeles Times, and others. Stories of Hobby family suppression of Caperberry are not true – there are copies in various libraries in the Houston area, including the Fondren Library of Rice University, a favorite Hobby family philanthropy. 41 Recently, Liz Carpenter – employee, colleague, friend of Hobby for more than forty years – spoke of rumors of a romantic relationship between the HEW Secretary and her deputy, Nelson Rockefeller. The stories are not so much a commentary on Hobby’s deportment as on Rocky’s – his reputation as a womanizer seems to have been well deserved. It was perhaps inevitable that some would link the Secretary and her handsome, affable aide. Joan Braden worked for both Hobby and Rockefeller during the first Eisenhower administration and later wrote a memoir of the period. Her book, written in “tell-all” style, recorded several inappropriate relationships and would probably have recorded an inappropriate relationship between the secretary and her deputy, if it had existed. Questions of the relationship between Dwight Eisenhower and Hobby may also have been inevitable. They knew each other and worked cooperatively. During the war, Ike was the earliest field commander to request WAC support and was a consistent advocate for women in military service. During his campaign for the presidency, Democrats for Eisenhower, Hobby’s New York-based – but South-oriented – organization helped corral the electoral votes the war hero needed. To some minds, this suggested the possibility of a closer relationship. Isabel Brown Wilson, daughter of Hobby’s two closest friends, Alice and George Brown, recently recounted the rumors and rebuffed them. Jane Ely, who spent her journalism career with the Post, specializing in political reporting, also discounted rumors of a romantic relationship between Oveta Hobby and a longtime employee. The fact that three women, all close to Hobby for most of their lives, not only rejected the hearsay but raised the issue in the first place is testimony to the readiness of the public to listen to such stories, even when they are patently unlikely. A thoughtful review of Hobby’s focused and disciplined life effectively rules out behavior that was reckless or off-target.

43 Constitution. The four were recognized by the AP convention for their government service.42 The other man in Oveta Hobby’s life, more important than Jesse Jones, was William Pettus Hobby – Will Hobby – her husband and business partner for thirty-three years.43 Edwin Hobby, Will’s father, was a native Floridian who moved to Texas, then fought for the Confederacy as a captain, commanding Texas troops. A lawyer, he served three terms in the Texas Senate after which he was elected a district judge. In 1893 he moved his family and his law practice from Livingston, Texas, to nearby Houston, where he entered into a law partnership with East Texas lumber baron John Henry Kirby.44 William Pettus Hobby, one of six children, was born on March 26, 1878 and was fifteen years old when the family arrived in Houston. Two years later, Will quit high school and went to work for the Houston Post. An intrepid reporter, he became city editor, then managing editor of the Post. In 1907 he moved to Beaumont to save the failing Beaumont Enterprise. As part of the employment offer, once the newspaper was financially healthy, he bought it.45 In Dallas on business, he joined his brother and a group of friends in the lobby of a Dallas hotel one afternoon. In the course of conversation, one of the group remembered that the filing deadline for the election to state office was at midnight. The only strong candidate for lieutenant governor was a prohibitionist; the men at the hotel were anti-

42 “Press War Heroes Honored by Cooper,” New York Times, April 20, 1943; “Publishers Urged to Seek Freedom for the World’s Press,” New York Times, April 20, 1943. 43 Will and Oveta Hobby were often referred to as the “Hobby Team.” They thought and reacted as one; a decision or conclusion by either of them carried the weight of both. This description of their compatibility is uniform among people who knew them well. Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 28, 2007; Al Shire, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007; Peggy Buchanan, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. 44 Johnston, Houston, 101. Kirby later parlayed his extensive East Texas timber holdings into extensive oil properties. Known for his support of reactionary politics, it is not clear whether or not Edwin Hobby shared his views. For more on John Henry Kirby and his support of conservative causes, see Elna C. Green, "From Antisuffragism to Anti-Communism: The Conservative Career of Ida M. Darden," The Journal of Southern History 65, no. 2 (May 1999). The connection between Kirby and the Hobby family goes further. Kirby was trained in law by S. Bronson Cooper, in Woodville, Texas, and became Cooper’s law partner. Cooper was the father of Minnie Cooper, first wife of William P. Hobby. Both Will’s and Minnie Hobby’s fathers had been Kirby’s law partner. In an editorial published when Kirby died, the Houston Post named Kirby the wealthiest man in Texas for many years. James A. Clark and Weldon Hart, The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby (New York: Random House, 1958), 165; “John Henry Kirby, Founder of Epoch in Texas Industry, State’s Benefactor,” Houston Post, November 11, 1940. Expanding on the Kirby-Hobby relationship, Clark and Hart write that “Hobby was virtually a member of the Kirby family. . . .” Clark and Hart, Texan, 94. 45 Clark and Hart, Texan, 44.

44 prohibitionists and were looking for a “wet” candidate. Will Hobby was a “wet” and the group persuaded him to run.46 To make the deadline, a messenger had to be dispatched on the last train out of town that evening.47 He was elected, and in 1914, was reelected. During 1915 he married Willie Cooper, the popular daughter of former Congressman S. Bronson Cooper. The couple divided their time between Austin and Beaumont.48 Governor James “Farmer Jim” Ferguson was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 1917 in a squabble over funding for the University of Texas. The Senate sustained ten articles of impeachment, but Ferguson resigned before the Senate could determine an appropriate sentence, and Will Hobby became governor. Woman suffrage was an important issue in Texas, as in the rest of the country. Ferguson had opposed the vote for women; Hobby was pro-suffrage and supported the successful bill to extend the vote to women in Texas primary elections.49 In 1918 Hobby ran for election, opposed by Ferguson. Women across the state were galvanized by receipt of the franchise and “Hobby Girls” flooded the state, racing a short deadline for special voter registration.50 Hobby won the primary by the largest margin yet recorded, 461,749 votes to 217,012 for Ferguson.51 The women’s vote was decisive, and made stronger by Ferguson’s financial situation, which Hobby implied was augmented by agents of Kaiser Wilhelm.52 His administration notched some positive gains: establishing regulation of oil and gas production, creating a commission to supervise the state’s highways, and introducing free textbooks. Encouraged by the

46 “Hobby Death,” Houston Post, June 7, 1964. 47 Clark and Hart, Texan, 47; “Hobby Death,” Houston Post, June 7, 1964. Will Hobby’s lengthy obituary, probably approved by Will Hobby and certainly approved by Oveta Hobby, omitted reference to the Galveston dock strike and the “purge” of the Texas Rangers. 48 Clark and Hart, Texan, 61-62. 49 In 1916, Will Hobby wrote to his father-in-law, outlining his support of woman suffrage and forecasting “a more conspicuous place in the civic and even the military affairs of the country.” Will Hobby to Judge S. B. Cooper, March 30, 1916, Texas State Library. http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/governors/personality/hobby-cooper-1.jpg (accessed February 26, 2008). 50 Principal organizers of the Hobby Girls were Minnie Fisher Cunningham and Hortense Ward. Cunningham’s contribution to woman suffrage in Texas is explained in Judith N. McArthur and Harold L. Smith. Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist’s Life in Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); that of Ward is in Janelle D. Scott, “Hortense Sparks Ward,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://tshaonline.org/handbook/online.articles/WW/fwa83_print.html (accessed February 26, 2008); “Hortense Sparks Ward,” Justices of Texas, 1836-1986, http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/justices/spct/ward.html (accessed February 26, 2008). 51 Clark and Hart, Texan, 95. 52 Clark and Hart, Texan, 89-90.

45 legislature, Hobby “purged” the Texas Rangers, cutting their number from 108 to seventy-five. At Will Hobby’s urging, the balky legislature decided federal woman suffrage was inevitable and passed enabling legislation making Texas the ninth state, and first southern state, to ratify the “Anthony Amendment.”53 More problematic was the action Hobby took to end a three months dockworker’s strike in Galveston in June 1920. Shipping companies used white strikebreakers against black longshoremen and black strikebreakers against white longshoremen. To quiet the situation, Hobby called out 1,000 National Guardsmen, including machine gun and cavalry units.54 In response to the strike, Hobby submitted to the legislature a bill he called “the open port bill,” which empowered the governor to break a transportation strike without having to declare martial law. One newspaper account called it the nation’s “first right-to-work law” and Hobby biographers traced subsequent Texas right-to-work laws to Hobby’s bill.55 Hobby did not seek reelection, returning to Beaumont and his newspaper, soon expanded by the purchase of the competitive Beaumont Journal. Perhaps bored by Beaumont and certainly attracted by the offer to run his old newspaper, Will, with Willie, moved to Houston in 1922, maintaining his ownership of the Beaumont newspapers. On January 15, 1929, Willie died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage.56 Will Hobby’s later life, including his marriage to Houston Post employee Oveta Culp, whom he had met when he was governor, are related below.

The 1928 presidential campaign was an important event in Houston history. Jesse Jones underwrote the cost of the Democratic National Convention by guaranteeing $250,000 toward the expense of the convention. The guarantee was an important inducement in the auction for the meeting site; the choice of Houston marked the first time either major party agreed to meet in a southern city. Since Houston did not have a hall large enough for the convention, Jones oversaw construction of a massive pavilion. In a nod to Billy Sunday and other popular evangelists of the time, Jones called it a

53 Johnston, Houston, 213. 54 Clark and Hart, Texan, 133-35. A more balanced account than Clark and Hart’s of the dockworkers strike is in Harry Krenek, The Power Vested: The Use of Martial Law and the National Guard in Texas Domestic Crises . . . 1919-1932 (Austin: Presidial Press, 1980), chapter four. 55 “Hobby Served as Governor during a Turbulent Period,” Houston Press, June 7, 1964; Clark and Hart, Texan, 136. 56 “Hobby Death,” Houston Post, June 7, 1964.

46 “tabernacle,” complete with huge fans to temper the summer heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast.57 Adjacent to the new convention hall, the city built a large hospitality building covering an entire city block and nearly as large as the meeting hall itself.58 The Houston Post-Dispatch had already determined to open a radio station, joining other daily newspapers nationwide trying to cash in on the booming new technology. Now, with the convention date near, Post-Dispatch employees rushed to install broadcast equipment in time for the convention opening date. Radio station KPRC went on the air for the first time on June 6, 1928, three weeks ahead of the convention deadline.59 Political activist Oveta Culp decided to move, to be closer to the action. Effective January 1, she resigned her position in the legal department of the state banking commission to take the job of Executive Secretary of the Texas Democratic Women’s Club, with 15,000 members, a political force to be reckoned with. By spring, she was elected a delegate from Harris County to the state Democratic Convention in Beaumont.60 In early June the Democratic Women’s Club urged the legislature to lower the age for free public education from seven to six years old, an action already taken by all other states in the union. The club considered endorsing a member to run for Harris County Position 1 in the state legislature expressly to advance the education issue. The Houston Post-Dispatch reported the nominee would probably be Oveta Culp. Interviewed after the meeting, Culp confirmed that she was considering entering the race and pointed out that no one had yet filed for the position. She did not run that year, but delayed her bid for a seat in the House until the next election, in 1930.61 Still concentrating on the planning for the Democratic Convention, Culp was released from her duties with the Women’s Club to free her to assist in preparations for the convention. Convention literature does not list her as among the principal organizers, partially confirming her modest assessment that she was “only a flunky,” doing what no

57 “To Houston,” Time, January 23, 1928, online unpaginated. 58 “Hospitality House Work on Schedule Is To Cover Block,” Houston Chronicle, June 10, 1928. 59 “New Station Officially on Air Tonight,” Houston Post-Dispatch, June 8, 1928. 60 Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp”, 3; “Miss Oveta Culp,” Temple Daily Telegram, Temple Daily Telegram clippings file [ca. June 1928]. Inaccuracies find their way into newspaper stories. The lengthy, largely accurate feature story includes the information that Oveta was named to be an elector in the 1928 presidential election. Another newspaper reported she was to be a delegate-at-large to the national meeting in Houston. Oveta is not named to either position in any other accounts of the 1928 presidential campaign, nor did she later claim to hold either position. 61 “Women Urge Six-Year-Old School Limit,” Houston Post-Dispatch, June 6, 1928.

47 one else wanted to do.62 Perhaps so, but one of the convention events was a roof-top breakfast at the Rice Hotel honoring Emily Newell Blair, the president of the National Democratic Women’s Club, and Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, widow of the president. Other party notables, men and women, joined the honorees. Texas Governor Dan Moody, Houston Mayor Oscar Holcombe, and favorite son candidate Jesse H. Jones prepared welcoming remarks. Oveta Culp, club secretary, was in charge of the affair.63 At the convention Jones’s name was indeed placed in nomination for the presidency. Democratic women’s organizations and their leaders were busy. In addition to the National Democratic Women’s Club breakfast organized by Oveta Culp in her role as secretary of the Texas club, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate, took charge of the balance of the convention’s program for the national Democratic Women’s Club. Presenting “the most unique feminine figure to take an official part in convention activities,” Cunningham suspended her campaign activities for the duration of the meeting.64 Florence Sterling, the woman who opened her apartment to Culp, attended the convention as a delegate. She also entertained a delegation from the National Woman’s Party, in town to urge a Democratic Party platform plank supporting a constitutional amendment assuring equal rights for women.65 The busyness and excitement of the nomination of Alfred E. Smith and Joseph T. Robinson as Democratic candidates for president and vice president was quickly supplanted by the activity of the contest for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator. Oveta Culp managed the Houston and South Texas campaign office of Thomas T. Connally, who sought successfully to defeat Earle Mayfield, incumbent senator and member of the Ku Klux Klan. Connally put Culp’s public speaking prowess to good use, sending her to campaign meetings in South Texas. After Connally won the “tantamount

62 Official program of the 1928 Democratic Party Convention, Houston, TX, found in Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC. 63 “Plans Completed for Breakfast of Women’s Dem Club,” Houston Chronicle, June 26, 1928. The convention was Jones’s party; he made sure his newspaper provided massive coverage, including repeated pictures of the publisher. 64 “Women, Dressed in Prettiest, Alert at Opening of Party Conclave; Have Planks Ready,” Houston Chronicle, June 26, 1928, 17. 65 “Women Plan Social Events Superseding Party Business As Visitors Are Welcomed,” Houston Chronicle, June 25, 1928, 1.

48 nomination,” Culp immediately began organizing campaign rallies for a candidate for mayor of Houston.66 Her candidate, Walter Monteith, won the election and rewarded the young activist with a job in his administration. She became assistant to Sam Neathery, the city attorney, with the understanding that she would be released from her duties to return to Austin during the next legislative session.67 With no elections during the off-year 1929, the parliamentarian and city attorney’s assistant and former Houston Post-Dispatch employee was able to take a breather from partisan campaigning. By the end of the year, her fourth as parliamentarian, she could look back on a total of eleven legislative sessions. Events in 1929 would soon change the shape of Oveta Culp’s future. On January 15, Mrs. William Pettus Hobby died unexpectedly. At Willie Hobby’s death, the former governor, now president of the Houston Post-Dispatch, became a widower. In October the stock market slumped, a signal of the onset of the financial panic that soon broadened and worsened into a severe economic depression. It is unclear when Oveta Culp and Will Hobby became romantically linked, and under what circumstances. Published feature stories and biographical sketches give only vague, often contradictory details.68 This account presumes that the two first met when Will was governor and Ike Culp a member of the legislature, with his daughter a regular fixture in the gallery of the House. During the Democratic Convention of 1928, Culp and Hobby worked side-by-side, figuratively and presumably literally, as very active members of the host city retinue.69 Then, in the late 1920s (perhaps as late as 1930) Culp once again became an employee of the Post-Dispatch. Nothing in the record indicates

66 Political scientists use the terms “tantamount” and “tantamount nomination” to describe the Democratic Party primaries of the era. The term confirms that nomination by the Democratic Party during the era was tantamount to election since the nominees of the Democrats almost invariably won the general election. 67 Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp,” 3. 68 Oveta’s positions and work history with the Houston Post-Dispatch have been chronicled variously: she started in the 1926 in the circulation department (in one version, for six months); she was hired as an assistant cartoonist; she did city editorial work. A newspaper story of her wedding states that she had been working for the Post-Dispatch for a year, “Miss Oveta Culp Becomes Bride of Former Governor Hobby at Quiet Wedding Here,” Temple Daily Telegram, February 24, 1931. Oveta Culp had an itinerant career path with the Post-Dispatch. What is sure is that she worked for the newspaper on more than one occasion and in more than one capacity. 69 “Widow of War President to Sign As Guest,: Houston Chronicle, 24 June 1928, 17. The reception committee included Mr. and Mrs. Jesse H. Jones; Mr. and Mrs. William P. Hobby; Miss Florence Sterling; Miss Ima Hogg, and Mrs. W.B. Sharp. Sterling, who had welcomed Culp to her apartment, was already involved in her life; the Joneses, Hobby, Hogg, and Sharp soon would be.

49 that the publisher directly supervised the precocious young employee. Given the hierarchical structure of most big-city newspapers, including the Post-Dispatch, and given the job descriptions of her various positions, it is unlikely that he did. Oveta soon involved herself again in electoral politics, working in two campaigns during the 1930 season. The first was the candidacy of Jim Young, one of eleven Democrats competing for their party’s nomination for governor. Young, a former congressman, was a friend of the Culp family and Oveta willingly went to Dallas to help in the campaign where she joined with other women campaign workers. The Jim Young struggle for the gubernatorial “tantamount” proved unsuccessful when Houston oilman Ross Sterling won the primary contest.70 Young Oveta had not been lonely in Dallas. By this time, early in 1930, old family friend Will Hobby was actively courting her, traveling to Dallas frequently, “escorting her to the opera and other events.” In later years Oveta described the beginning of their romance a little differently, saying she saw Hobby occasionally – in groups – in Houston. As she described it, the pair “just kind of struck up.” According to her story, she did not initially realize she was being courted.71 The Hobby-approved biographical monograph leads the reader to believe that Oveta and Will began dating later than was the actual case. Oveta Culp Hobby had a lifelong concern with keeping up appearances. Will was relatively recently widowed, and conventional mores needed to be kept in mind, even if not strictly observed. It is more than possible that Oveta shaped this period of her life story so that the onset of romance seemed to occur later than it did in actual fact. In any event, Will was journeying from Houston to Dallas in the first part of 1930. By June, with Oveta in the middle of her own campaign for the statehouse, a member of the Texas House extended an invitation to Oveta and to Will Hobby to come to Texas City, on Galveston Bay, for a boat ride and dinner.72 At this point, the parliamentarian of the Texas House had determined to try for an elected House seat. In 1928, the Democratic Women’s Club had considered running

70 Walter C. Hornaday, “Oveta’s Caught in a Crossfire,” in “Texas Newsmaker” feature, Dallas Morning News, February 27, 1955. 71 Hornaday, “Crossfire,” Dallas Morning News, February 27, 1955. 72 Helen Moore to Oveta Culp, June 24, 1930. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 4, folder 5, WRC.

50 Oveta for the legislature, ultimately shelving the idea. In mid-1930, with the governor’s race effectively decided, Oveta now found herself being urged to run for the Texas House of Representatives representing her Houston district. The idea was not far-fetched: Sarah Hughes, one of her co-workers in the 1930 governor’s campaign, also entered the primary campaign that year and won, going on to serve two terms in Austin.73 Oveta entered the primary race, pitching her candidacy against the incumbent, John M. Mathis, Sr. Although brief, her campaign appears to have been an impressive one. Newspapers described her platform manner as “forceful,” and her abilities “proven.”74 The campaign had its nasty aspects. Friends from the legislature speculated that Mathis supporters were spreading the rumor that Oveta was an active member of the Woman’s Klan, a ploy designed to take attention from voter concerns that Mathis himself was a current or former Klan member.75 A weekly newspaper, the Houston Mirror, declared its endorsement of Miss Culp despite the publication’s policy of not supporting political candidates. The paper explained that the whispering campaign against Oveta was so scurrilous that it felt obliged to take an editorial stance supporting the victim.76 The Mirror also carried the transcript of a radio address calling for Oveta’s only opponent to step aside, conceding the contest to her.77 The veteran Mathis defeated his young opponent in what eventually turned out to be her only election contest. Mathis received 7,026 votes compared with 4,594, or forty percent, for Culp.78 One of his campaign tactics was so memorable that Oveta incorporated it as one of the signature anecdotes of her biography.

73 Nancy Baker Jones and Ruthe Winegarten, Capitol women : Texas female legislators, 1923-1999 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000) 96-99. Hughes later became a federal judge. On November 22, 1963 she swore in her old friend Lyndon B. Johnson as President of the United States; she later ruled against the state of Texas in Roe v. Wade, the decision ultimately affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. 74 Raymond Brooks, “Miss Oveta Culp To Become Wife of Wm. P. Hobby,” Waco News-Tribune, February 13, 1931. 75 Moore to Culp, June 24, 1930. On November 2, 1981, reminiscing with the Post editorial board, Hobby remembered that her opponent was “the kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan,” a man whom she would have wanted to win, except for the fact of his Klan membership. Oveta Culp Hobby, “That Reminds Me . . .” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 71. 76 “Mirror Indorses Miss Culp,” The Mirror [ca. June 1930]. Clipping found in Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 4, folder 5, WRC. 77 “Colonel Tom Ball Praises Miss Oveta Culp in Radio Address on Tuesday Night,” The Mirror [ca. June 1930]. Clipping found in Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 4, folder 4, WRC. 78 No Hobby biographical materials contain the election results. Fortunately, the Post-Dispatch printed the precinct totals for the 134 precincts in the district. “Harris County Vote on Congressional and Legislative Races,” Houston Post-Dispatch, July 27, 1930.

51 Marguerite Johnston, Liz Carpenter, Oveta’s son Bill Hobby, and Oveta herself, over and over, related how Mathis would confide to his campaign audiences that he understood that his opponent was a parliamentarian. In some versions of the story Mathis made it worse, asserting that his opponent was “a parliamentarian and a Unitarian.”79 It is not clear from the anecdote if Mathis’s accusations were platform humor or if they were intended to disparage her experience. Oveta later maintained that Mathis made parliamentarian sound “very dark and sinister” and that he “suggested that no right- thinking man or woman would want anyone like that to represent him in the legislature.”80 Sometimes when the story was re-told, the voter answered, “Sure ‘nuff? I don’t want a woman like that representing my wife and daughter.”81 The accusation that Oveta was a Unitarian does not appear in many iterations of the story, raising several possibilities. Oveta may have added the rhyming word as a natural embellishment of her storytelling. On the other hand, she may have eliminated the word as a courtesy, to avoid giving offense. A third possibility is that Mathis was accurately linking her to the Unitarian fellowship – not a positive attribute in the Bible Belt. Oveta’s church affiliation followed a familiar trajectory for a smart, ambitious person. Raised Baptist by her mother and preacher-father, she edged away from evangelicalism after she moved to Houston, matured, then married. Her wedding ceremony was performed by a Baptist minister, certainly a courtesy to her parents and a gesture to her upbringing.82 During the 1930s she identified herself as a Unitarian on at least one occasion, but no evidence is available to confirm that she actively followed Unitarian practices.83 Her son Bill Hobby describes the Hobby family as not being especially observant; in contrast, Oveta’s brother Texas Culp made his living as a Southern Baptist pastor.84 Oveta was confirmed in the

79 Raymond Brooks, “Miss Oveta Culp To Become Wife of Wm. P. Hobby,” Waco News-Tribune, February 13, 1931. Hobby later recounted the story of her defeat, repeating what her opponent told the crowds: “She is a parliamentarian. You people know she is.” Al Shire, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. 80 Marguerite Johnston Barnes, “Career in Houston” [1939?], 3. Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC. 81 Margarite Kernoble, “Doughgirl Generalissimo,” Waterbury (CT) American, May 21, 1942. 82 “Miss Oveta Culp,” Temple Daily Telegram, February 24, 1931. 83 “Oveta Culp Hobby,” Texian Who’s Who: A Biographical Dictionary of the State of Texas (Dallas: Texian Company, 1937), 213. 84 Hobby, interview; “Miss Oveta Culp,” Temple Daily Telegram, February 24, 1931.

52 Episcopal Church in 1945 and identified herself as Episcopalian thereafter. In 1995 her funeral service was held in the old (and old-line) Palmer Memorial Chapel, an architecturally remarkable Episcopal church adjacent to the campus of Rice University.85 When Oveta first assumed the position of parliamentarian, she concentrated her attention on her legislative responsibilities. A political columnist writing at the time observed, “With her, romance is a pleasant diversion and politics an abiding passion.”86 Her feverishly active political life over the next several years bore out the assessment and Oveta’s friends naturally assumed she would continue a legal career and become a full- fledged lawyer. In late 1930 she surprised them with the announcement that she was going to marry. Soon after, she surprised them again with her news that she would resign as parliamentarian of the Texas House.87 As she later recounted the events, she intended to be married, then return to Austin to finish the parliamentarian’s term. Will had different plans. Under the influence of “old-fashioned friends” who advised against “a Hollywood marriage,” he spoke to the House Speaker, who agreed to release her and find another parliamentarian. Neither Will nor the Speaker said anything to Oveta until the night before the wedding, when Will surprised her with the news about her future. Years later, she remained angry about it.88 William Pettus Hobby, age 53, and Oveta Culp, 26, married on Monday, February 23, 1931, at 3:30 p.m. in a private service in the Bell County home of the bride’s parents. Rev. C. R. Shirar, a Baptist minister in Temple, presided over the ceremony.89 Few guests attended, but the society pages of the local newspaper described an elaborate event nevertheless, noting that the bride’s dress was designed by Jean Patou, the French

85 Oveta Culp Hobby joined the Episcopal church in 1945, after she returned from WAC service. Certificate of Confirmation, Palmer Memorial Church, Houston, Texas, September 8, 1945. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 1, folder 3, WRC. 86 W. Boyd Gatewood, “Tips on Texas Politics,” Houston Post-Dispatch, quoted in Ann Hardy, “Oveta Culp,” 3. 87 “Chapter 32: The New Post,: Houston Post, October 20, 1940, 77. 88 Barnes, “Hobby,” 5. 89 “Oveta Culp Wed to Will Hobby Monday at Parents’ Home,” [Ca. February 3, 1931] Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 4, folder 8, WRC. On January 19, 1926, Ike Culp sent a letter to Oveta commemorating her twenty-first birthday. He wrote that he hoped she would not “go through life an unmarried woman,” adding that her choice of a husband should be “equal from an intellectual standpoint.” The couple should share congeniality. Lesser attributes of the prospective groom included “distinction, wealth, and local environment.” Ike Culp to Oveta Culp, January 19, 1926. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 7, folder 3, WRC.

53 couturier. The engagement announcement had included plans of a wedding trip to Mexico; instead, the couple settled for a brief motor tour of Texas.90 The new bride was soon back at work at the newspaper, first, as a researcher and soon after, as literary editor, in charge of the Sunday book page.91 At the same time, she began studying ways the newspaper could improve. As the Depression grew worse, newspaper circulation began to sag. Like every other daily newspaper, the Houston Post (Will Hobby had restored the historical name) had to strive to hold on to its subscribers while at the same time concentrating on cost reduction. The publisher’s wife soon was promoted to assistant editor and began implementing changes. Mrs. Hobby’s public life continued: during 1931 and 1932 she served as president of the Texas League of Women Voters. This combination of employment and volunteerism is all the more remarkable considering that the young wife was pregnant for most of 1931 and delivered her first child, William Pettus Hobby, Jr., on her birthday, 19 January 1932.92 After the birth of her son she resumed horseback riding, a recreation favored by those who could afford it, and one Oveta had enjoyed as a girl. A stable and riding paths in nearby Hermann Park, out South Main from downtown Houston, made riding convenient to the young mother. Household servants took charge of the infant. One afternoon Hobby was thrown by a horse and ended up in the hospital with a broken leg and shattered wrist. She continued her duties at the Post, working from home. She also resumed her responsibilities as president of the Texas League of Women Voters.93 The Great Depression brought wrenching changes all over the country. A particular financial problem, and its solution, set in motion profound changes in the future lives of Will and Oveta Hobby. All over the United States, banks were failing as good loans turned bad and as people withdrew their savings deposits, either out of necessity or of fear. Houston was one of the cities where key bankers joined together, endeavoring to prevent a major bank failure which might have the cascading effect of bringing down all the city’s banks. Jesse Jones had organized the same type of group

90 “Certified Copy of Marriage License,” Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 1, folder 3, WRC; “Miss Oveta Culp,” Temple Daily Telegram, February 24, 1931. 91 Barnes, “Career in Houston,” 3. 92 “Chapter 32: The New Post,: Houston Post, October 20, 1940, 77. 93 Barnes, “Career in Houston,” 5. Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 5.

54 during the Panic of 1907; not all Houston banks survived that financial crunch, but most major banks did. Jones recognized it was time to rescue Houston banks again.94 On Sunday, October 27, 1931, and again on the next day, major shareholders of seven large banks joined in marathon meetings convened by Jones in his thirty-third floor offices in the Gulf Building, overlooking downtown Houston. The situation was grim – when one man threatened to jump from a window, another walked to the window and opened it for him. Jones and other wealthy Houstonians were willing to make additional capital available to those banks in danger of failure. Of course, some sort of quid pro quo, something of significant value had to be exchanged for the infusion of capital. Even the governor of Texas could not escape the requirement. In order to save his Houston National Bank, Governor Ross Sterling had to sell something of value to his savior. In this case, Sterling sold controlling interest in the Houston Post-Dispatch to – Jesse H. Jones.95 Sterling’s timing in expanding the Post-Dispatch was flawed. In 1931 he built a twenty-two story tower for the newspaper.96 Two years later, he lost the building when it was foreclosed and sold at auction.97 Jones already owned the Houston Chronicle, the other large daily newspaper in town. To obfuscate this new conflict of interest, Jones used the subterfuge of a third party who would be the putative owner and whose name would appear as publisher on the masthead of the newspaper. Jones’s choice for this deception was J. E. Josey, owner of Houston-based National Standard Life Insurance Company and brother of a close friend.98 Jones and Josey chose to leave in place the editor since 1924, former Governor William P. Hobby. This ownership and top management arrangement remained in place for eight years. Eventually, the name of the actual owner leaked out.99

94 The details of the meetings are colorfully described in 156-61. 95 Hobby, interview; Johnston, Houston, 287. 96 Johnston, Houston, 288. 97 Johnston, Houston, 291. 98 Johnston, Houston, 288. Ross Sterling’s account of the sale of the Chronicle is in Ross S. Sterling and Ed Kilman, Ross Sterling, Texan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 183. Bill Hobby suggests that one reason for the deception might be to avoid a problem with the Federal Communications Commission, which permitted an individual to hold only one broadcast license in a city. Jones held the license for radio station KTRH and the owner of the Post-Dispatch held the license for station KPRC. Bill Hobby, e-mail to author, March 19, 2008. 99 Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 9, 2007; Norman D. Brown, “Texas in the 1920s,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/TT/npt1.html (accessed July 7, 2007).

55 Although he was the active – and activist – head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation through most of the Depression and World War II, Jesse Jones never took his sight off home-state activities which, for him, were centered in his home city. Typically for Texas, the state’s centennial celebration in 1936 had to be impressive. Planners scheduled events all over the state, with one of the largest set for the dedication of the San Jacinto Monument, on the eastern outskirts of Houston. The monument, designed to be ten feet taller than the Washington Monument, remains today an impressive sight rising out of the flat, green coastal plains.100 Although RFC duties required him to be in Washington, DC much of the time, Jones headed the centennial commission. By 1936 he had appointed Oveta Hobby to the commission, a recognition of her political and civic accomplishments as well as a nod to her knack for getting things done.101 The centennial celebration included a new statue in Dallas of Robert E. Lee, dedicated in June 1936. Jones, in his role as centennial chief, chartered a single-engine airplane in Houston to transport himself, his secretary, Joe Toomey, and Oveta and Will Hobby to Dallas for the ceremony. Shortly after take-off on the return flight, the pilots smelled gasoline. Almost immediately, fire broke out in the engine compartment, spreading to the cockpit. Closing the door to the passenger compartment, the pilots put the plane into a high-speed dive, then crash-landed in a field. Jones and the other passengers pulled the pilots from the cockpit; the plane was quickly destroyed by the fire. The only passenger injured was Will Hobby, who suffered a head injury in the crash; Oveta later remembered pulling Governor102 from the crash while Jones and Toomey

100 Height, like other metrics of size, is important in boastful Texas. The state capitol is thirty-one feet taller than the National Capitol, and is larger in total size than any other state capitol building. Kyle Schlafer, Texas Capitol Visitors Center, email to author, January 10, 2008. 101 Federal aid cushioned the effect of the Depression in Houston with funding for the ship channel, the San Jacinto Memorial, two high schools and sixty-nine Works Progress Administration projects. Johnston, Houston, 302. 102 No one called Will Hobby “Will.” To Oveta and to all others entitled to address him on a first-name basis, he was “Governor” – and not “the governor.” Even when he was not present, references to him were as “Governor,” a practice still honored by those who knew him. Governor died in June 1964. In a telephone conversation with Oveta Hobby on the occasion of his election victory in November of that year, Lyndon Johnson told her, “I only wish Governor had been here.” Hobby responded that those celebrating Johnson’s victory the night before had included Governor in their celebration by breaking out some special scotch whisky he had saved for such an occasion. Recording of telephone conversation between Lyndon B. Johnson and Oveta Culp Hobby, November 4, 1964, 12:02 p.m., Tape WH6411.04, PNO 4, Recordings

56 rescued the pilots.103 Both pilots were burned; one died a few days later in a Dallas hospital. Oveta Hobby was two months pregnant with her second child at the time of the accident, a fact she modestly glossed over when she repeated the story in later years.104 Following the accident, Oveta and Will resolved not to fly together in the future.105 Among other activities, pregnancy provided time for another project. Building on her knowledge of the function of a deliberative body sharpened by several terms in the Texas House, the budding mother set to work on a simplified, easy-to-use manual of parliamentary procedure. She moved to a first-floor office in the Post building, working on her book project while continuing her executive functions and continuing service as literary editor. The newspaper published her occasional articles during this period explaining the U.S. Constitution and examining the constitutions recently adopted by some of the new nations spawned by the Treaty of Versailles following the recent world war.106 The study regimen of Estelle Sharp doubtless contributed to her interest and knowledge of the subject. The parliamentary procedure manuscript complete, its author hunted for a publisher, not an easy task for a book with limited appeal. An Oklahoma City publisher agreed to the project. A publisher secured, the next step was to find potential customers. Robert’s Rules of Order and other parliamentary manuals served the “professional” end of the market. Hobby’s objective all along was the production of a guide aimed more at the popular market. She went to work, lobbying the state education departments in Texas and nearby states to list her work as acceptable as a high school textbook. Eventually, two states, Texas and Louisiana, adopted the book. She made sure key libraries in Texas received a complimentary copy; some smaller libraries purchased copies. Mr. Chairman, as she named the book, was never a best-seller nor even a high-school staple, but was

and Transcripts of Telephone Conversations and Meetings, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, TX. 103 Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 11. 104 “R.F.C. Head Escapes Blazing Plane,” Ohio State Journal, June 13, 1936. 105 James A. Clark and Weldon Hart, The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby (New York: Random House, 1958, 177. 106 Barnes, “Career in Houston,” 6.

57 accepted as a library reference work for years after its publication. Indeed, thirty-nine public and college libraries still catalog the work, seventy years after publication.107 To control all aspects of one’s life does not require complete subjugation of wit or mischief. In the third year of her marriage the new mother staged a performance that could have become an “I Love Lucy” episode. In the fall of 1932 the Louisiana State University Tigers traveled to Houston to play the Rice Institute Owls. A mass evacuation from Baton Rouge filled the three special trains that brought the football team, the 140- person LSU band, and 1,000 students, a number swollen by the special three-dollar round trip fare. Governor Huey Long and his retinue apparently chose a bar car for the trip, forcing the welcoming party, led by Houston Mayor Walter E. Monteith and former governor Will Hobby, to wait while the Kingfish and his pals continued partying on board. Will Hobby did not realize it, but his young wife was also in the crowd, contravening his caveat that she should not go to the station to meet the train. She also pressed Will to take her to the welcome reception, given in Governor Long’s honor. The reception was planned as a male-only affair, and as one of the hosts, Will could not be the only person to bring a woman to the gathering. Oveta was not daunted. She knew there would, in fact, be other women at the party – the cocktail waitresses. She went to the hotel and secured and put on a server’s uniform. Then she joined the waitresses, passing hors d’oeuvres to the guests. Will’s sense of humor apparently did not fail him and he proudly introduced his wife to Long, who laughingly said to Will, “Pretty little thing. Where did you find her, in an orphanage?”108 A perennial environmental issue challenged the problem-solving and organizational abilities of the city of Houston and Harris County. A topographical map of Harris County is nearly devoid of gradient lines because the city of Houston and the surrounding county sit on a mud flat with almost no slope. Because of this, periodic rain deluges caused large parts of the city to flood. The situation was made worse by urban development, especially paved streets and parking lots. “Bayous” (the local name for natural drainage ditches) eventually channeled floodwaters to Galveston Bay, but as the

107 WorldCAT data base. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2473478&referer=brief_results (accessed January 6, 2008). 108 Johnston, Houston, 293. Diana Hobby, interview. Another version of the story, attributed to Oveta Hobby, omits the details of the change of costume. The version related by Diana Hobby is more credible. Compare with “Personalities,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 71-72.

58 city continued to grow, nature’s drainage system became increasingly inadequate. After a particularly serious flood in December 1935, Harris County officials, anxious for a solution, appointed the Harris County Flood Control Committee, a blue-ribbon panel that included Hobby as the only woman member. Constraints on growth were (and remain) heretical concepts and were never considered. The committee studied the flooding problem for several years and two strategies were ultimately put in place. The county built upstream dams to contain water from heavy rains, delaying flow into the bayous. Downstream, the county enlarged the existing bayou channels and paved them, resulting in a robust drainage system that would be permanent. The projects were expensive, so the city and county sought outside help. Hobby joined the successful appeal to the legislature to give back county taxes and to support the issuance of tax revenue bonds to finance the work. The former parliamentarian’s legislative contacts, plus the clout of a major newspaper, proved helpful in influencing Austin to back the undertaking. Eventually, New Deal supplemented local and state contributions. Portions of the projects were not completed until after World War II.109 Another committee benefited from the participation of this civic dervish when in 1937 Hobby was appointed Texas chairman of the Advisory Committee on Women’s Participation for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. During the same period she served as Texas chairman of the Women’s Committee for the Mobilization of Human Needs.110 When the University of Houston, then a private institution, determined to raise a one million dollar endowment even in the teeth of the Depression, Oveta Hobby was made chairman of the women’s division of the successful campaign.111 Before long, she became co-chairman of the campaign; the other co-chairman was H. R. Cullen, the oil millionaire whose largesse had provided the funds for the university’s founding.112 The now-familiar pattern of being recruited to an organization and quickly rising to a leadership position had again been repeated. Other civic and charitable activities absorbed Hobby. She worked to secure federal participation in funding for flood control. She was chairman of the speaker’s

109 Barnes, “Career in Houston,” 6; Johnston, Houston, 303. 110 Maxine Block and E. Mary Trow, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” Current Biography: Who’s News and Why/1942 (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1942), 387. 111 Morris Hastings, “The Woman ‘Colonel’ from Texas,” Texas Parade, October 4, 1942. 112 Houston Post, “Women Join University $1,000,000 Fund Campaign,” Houston Post, March 10, 1938.

59 committee for the Women’s Crusade, which later became the Community Chest. She was chairman of the Crusade for two years, and became a member of the Community Chest board. During the period she was on the board of two of Ima Hogg’s principal philanthropies, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Houston Symphony Society.113 Oveta Hobby’s suggestions and promptings pulled her up the ladder of the newspaper’s hierarchy. She told an interviewer that in March 1938 she was invited into a board meeting and informed that the directors had elected her executive vice president. “What for?” she recalled asking board chairman J.E. Josey. “Well,” he responded, “we’ve just decided to give you the authority to do what you’ve been doing already.”114 There is no doubt about Hobby’s degree of responsibility and authority at the Houston Post. Years later, when a New York reporter composed a retrospective of her career, he interviewed Will Hobby. Hobby confirmed what was already known in publishing circles – that the executive vice president was effectively the publisher. From the late 1930s onward, Oveta Hobby ran the Post.115 The journalism profession recognized her accomplishments and her standing when in 1940 the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association elected her as its first woman president. The recognition repeated the usual pattern of Oveta’s participation in civic and professional organizations. Over and over, she would join an organization, join a committee or work group and work to deliver the end product expected of the group. Key people would recognize her contribution and elevate her in the organization. Often, she soon found herself nominated, then elected to the top leadership position. When Hobby attended the 1939 convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, held in Washington, she was one of the program speakers.116 Three years later, when she appeared before the group again, she was chief of the women’s division of the War Department.117

113 Barnes, “Career in Houston,” 7. 114 Harry Hurt III, “The Last of the Great Ladies,” Texas Monthly, October, 1978, 225. The quotation is sometimes attributed to Will Hobby. Whether uttered by Josey or Will Hobby, the remark underscores her active management role in the Post organization. 115 Worth Gatewood, “This Woman’s Work,” New York Daily News, March 21, 1953. 116 New York Times, “Political Leaders Address Editors,” New York Times, April 22, 1939. 117 New York Times, “Newspaper Editors Open Meeting Today,” New York Times, April 16, 1942. 117 New York Times, “Political Leaders Address Editors,” New York Times, April 22, 1939.

60 The Houston Post did not meet the profitability standards of its true owner, Jesse Jones. Whether profits were skimpy or the paper was actually losing money is not clear, and in any event, is not material. Either way, Jones wanted to sell it to the Hobbys, and they wanted to buy it. Later, Oveta told an interviewer that the newspaper’s ownership “had shifted in the most convoluted way possible.” She went on, saying that she knew “that Jesse Jones must ultimately have had control of the Post because we went to his office to sign the papers.” This version of the story is disingenuous. It was widely known that Jones was the ultimate owner of the Post and it is impossible to believe that business partners as close and cooperative as the two Hobbys would not have discussed Jones’s role thoroughly.118 Since Will and Oveta Hobby had responsibility for its financial performance, they knew the financial situation, but they were willing to buy it nevertheless. The Hobbys and their canny employer/financier/friend struck a deal, and the newspaper had new owners – in a manner of speaking. Jones provided the financing. The Hobbys kept the same jobs they had, with Will Hobby also stepping up to replace Josey as chairman of the board, and Oveta Hobby stepping up to board membership. But now they had a promissory note, an obligation collateralized by their company – they had payments to make. Jones being Jones, the new arrangement would have to be profitable, otherwise he would not agree to it. So he placed financial conditions on the sale, including how much salary would be paid to Will and Oveta. The couple had no choice. They wanted to buy the newspaper, even if it meant accepting tough, even onerous, loan conditions. During some periods the new owners could not make the payments; they were able to pay interest only, with no reduction of principal. On one occasion Will went to the office of a bank official, high up in the tower of the bank building, once again unable to pay down principal. The sympathetic banker told Will that, given the paper’s financial situation, his advice was for Will to jump out of the window.119 Jones’s version of the transaction was rather different, saying that he sold the Post on “easy terms,” payable out of the earnings of the newspaper and associated radio station. He painted the sale as prompted by his opposition to monopoly, neatly

118 Oveta Hobby told Marguerite Johnston that she and Will bought the Post in December 1939. Hobby, interview notes, 1. 119 Bill Hobby, interview.

61 sidestepping the fact that for eight years he had no such ethical objection.120 Reflecting on the purchase later, Oveta Hobby saw it differently, describing a newspaper that was not “moderately profitable,” as Jones averred, but “operating in the red.” She and Will agreed that their decision to go ahead with the purchase recognized that the Post was the “only game in town” for the two of them.121 Will Hobby knew other financiers, other bankers, besides Jones. He wanted to find another bank to “take out” Jones; that is, to pay off the indebtedness, leaving the Hobbys with a new lender. It was a delicate situation. Although a close friend, Jones was so powerful that Will Hobby knew he would have to be very careful as he unwound the arrangement. He knew that Fred Florence, who controlled the large Republic of Texas Bank in Dallas, might be willing to take over the loan, and in any event would counsel him in confidence. Meeting in Florence’s office in Dallas, the two discussed the situation. Florence agreed with Will that it was time to replace Jones as holder of the note, but advised him not to seek financing outside of Houston. The Post was a Houston business, with Houston customers and suppliers; the sensible solution was to get a Houston bank to “take Jones out.” Will and Oveta took the banker’s advice. Florence wrote out his suggested loan terms on a pad of paper, and signed it, telling Will Hobby, “Use this to negotiate with those country bankers down in Houston.”122 Using Florence’s term sheet, Judge Elkins’ First City National Bank of Houston made the loan. The result was a better banking relationship, accomplished without damage to Will’s friendship with Jones.123

Oveta Culp Hobby’s transition from youth to maturity had been eventful. Forceful, knowledgeable women broadened her knowledge of her own world and the larger world. She worked in several campaigns for political office, including one in which she was the candidate. She continued to read voraciously. At the same time, she wrote newspaper columns, published a book, and taught herself the newspaper business. She was undoubtedly in control of her life and career. Even so, contingent events determined changes in direction. The outcome of her race for the legislature, the

120 Timmons, Jones, 160-61; Oveta Culp Hobby, interview, 1. 121 Hurt, “Great Ladies,” 224-25. 122 Bill Hobby, interview. 123 Bill Hobby, interview; Bill Hobby, e-mail to author, March 21, 2008; Johnston, Houston, 332-332.

62 unexpected death of Willie Hobby and Oveta’s marriage to Will, the necessity of coping with the effects of the Depression all factored into her plan for her life.

Figure 4 Oveta Culp Hobby, circa 1935. Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed.

Figure 5 William Pettus Hobby. Texas State Library.

64 CHAPTER THREE

1942 - 1945

When the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives asked Oveta Culp to accept the post of parliamentarian, her years of reading legal documents and her training by the previous speaker provided her with the necessary qualifications. During the decade leading up to World War II, Oveta Culp Hobby was gaining the qualifications for another, considerably different, responsibility as head of a section of the United States War Department’s public relations efforts. Quickly mastering that assignment, she was drafted to help plan a major War Department initiative, the military utilization of womanpower during a time of war. Her contribution to the planning effort, coupled with her energy, ambition and obvious abilities, resulted in the War Department virtually drafting her to lead the resultant women’s corps. This chapter begins with the birth of what later became the Women’s Army Corps and describes the contribution made by the WAC to the successful prosecution of the war. Then, WAC Director Hobby’s role in the startup and progress of the organization is explained in greater detail. (Her leadership style is part of the U.S. Army’s current management methodology.)1 As a group, WACs, and particularly WAC officers, liked and admired their commander. Because of their regard for her, WAC memoirs tend to depict the Little Colonel fondly, and to emphasize her victories. Biographical sketches, based largely on Hobby’s own version, also tend to omit her defeats. This hagiographic treatment does its subject a disservice by failing to make clear how intractable were many of the issues with

1 A recent Ph.D. dissertation, completed by an army veteran, and a recent master’s thesis, completed by an active army officer, testify to Hobby’s influence on twenty-first century army doctrine. See Kelli Cardenas Walsh, “Oveta Culp Hobby: A Transformational Leader from the Texas Legislature to Washington, D.C.” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2006); and Vanessa A. Crockford, “Oveta Culp Hobby and her ‘Lieutenants’: Transformational Leadership in Action in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps of World War II” (master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2003).

65 which Hobby had to struggle. The final part of the chapter is an examination of several of these challenges, not all of which resulted in a Hobby victory.2 Competent, popular Gen. George C. Marshall was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff on September 1, 1939, the day the German army invaded Poland. He and his staff immediately began to prepare the United States Army for war in Europe. The scale of the coming war would be massive, with millions of men needed for combat operations. Marshall appreciated the potential of a women’s army: every woman armed with a typewriter or spark-plug wrench freed a man to pick up an M-1 rifle. Marshall’s belief that women could be valuable in the coming war effort was a minority view among the Army’s top command. Even though the British, Canadians, and Soviets recognized the importance of women in their war efforts, their experience was not persuasive in Washington, DC. Strong negative opinion was not limited to the generals. Most regular Army officers and enlisted men were opposed to women in the Army, many in Congress were opposed, and many women’s organizations were against the idea.3 U.S. employment of women in war had been restricted to nurses and relatively few others. During the First World War, the Army hired approximately 21,000 nurses. Other than nurses, the Army utilized only a few hundred women, primarily as stenographers and bilingual telephone operators. During that earlier conflict, both the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps recruited more women than the Army (excluding nurses), although their numbers were also small. Interestingly, the Navy and Marine Corps accepted recruits as regular members of their services, a status the Army, with the support of Congress, denied to its women volunteers.4

2 Things happened rapidly in the wartime WAC, often concurrently. Table 3, at the end of the chapter, is a timeline of major war dates and WAC events. 3 Walsh, “Transformational Leader,” 53; Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1954, 14. Treadwell’s book is the definitive U.S. Army history of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. A trained historian as well as a WAC officer, Treadwell had access to army files and records for the four-year gestation period of her account of the war. She consulted with Hobby when Hobby was the person best able to provide information. Treadwell’s book is the foundation resource for every study of the corps. Complaints by enlisted men did not disappear. In 1944 Time reported that WACs complained about not having enough to do. There was concern that “WACs are on the way to ending forever the enlisted soldiers’ time-honored practice of ‘gold bricking.’” “Hobby’s Army,” Time, January 17, 1944, online unpaginated. 4 Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Inc., “Highlights in the History of Military Women,” http://www.womensmemorial.org/Education/timeline.html (accessed September 4, 2007).

66 Gen. Marshall’s enthusiasm for a women’s service corps was more than matched by the zeal of a woman from Massachusetts. In 1917, when the United States entered the World War, Edith Nourse Rogers’s husband John represented the fifth district of Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives. She accompanied John and other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee when they toured wartime England and the battlefields of France. There she saw American women working as civilians in support roles in communications and logistics. The women were responsible for their own food and quarters in both England and France. The Army accepted their contributions but made few provisions for their welfare. After the war, they were not eligible for medical care, disability, or veterans’ pensions. When, during the war, Congressman Rogers joined the artillery, Edith Rogers joined the Red Cross and worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. In 1925 Congressman Rogers died; his wife successfully ran for office to succeed him. From her experience in Europe and at Walter Reed came a lifelong commitment to veterans’ affairs, culminating in her sponsorship of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G. I. Bill, a measure she helped draft.5 Early in 1941 Congresswoman Rogers drew up a bill to create a women’s corps in the U. S. Army. It was her objective for women to be full members of the Army and to be treated the same as Army men – same pay, same benefits. This was not at all the Army’s intention. Many senior officers were opposed to women in the Army; many others might accept the idea of women, but not with full Army standing.6 Eventually, Rogers had to agree to a compromise. The final bill provided for establishment of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). Auxiliary status diminished the contribution women would make. They were not regarded as regular Army and had to accept lower pay and benefits; instead of being “in” the regular Army, they would serve “with” it, as “a temporary

5 “Oveta Culp Hobby and the Women’s Army Corps,” Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University (hereafter WRC), http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/digital-archive-information/online- exhilbits/oveta-culp-hobby-and-the-women-s-army-corps-exhibit/oveta-culp-hobby-and-the-women-s- army-corps-exhibit-1 (accessed August 30, 2007); “Edith Nourse Rogers: Biographical Sketch,” WRC, http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/digital-archive-information/online-exhilbits/oveta-culp-hobby-and- the-women-s-army-corps-exhibit/edith-nourse-rogers-biographical-sketch (accessed August 30, 2007). These two sources also provided the information for the following paragraph. 6 An army memorandum revealed official antagonism to the women’s corps, outlining machinations so that “when [the women’s force] is forced upon us . . . we shall be able to run it in our way.” Quoted in Vera S. Williams, The WACs: Women’s Army Corps (Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1997), 24.

67 ancillary to meet a wartime need.”7 It was an organizational structure that had failed in Britain. Rogers’s bill languished in Congress from May 1941 until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Recognizing the political complications that slowed passage of the bill, Gen. Marshall decided not to wait. He appointed a planning group to address the issues the army would face in launching the women’s service. Appreciating Oveta Hobby’s problem-solving talents, he made her part of the planning group. In the days after the Japanese attack and the German declaration of war, Congress dislodged the WAAC legislation.8 Even before she was formally selected and sworn in, Hobby, aided by the planning group, began setting in place the structure of the new corps. The British experience indicated that selection of officers should be based on merit. Many officers appointed arbitrarily in the early organizational phase of the British corps did not perform satisfactorily. The British changed to a meritocratic system. Hobby and the other planners determined that the new women’s corps would also be based on merit; it would be democratic. Accordingly, all officers were required to be graduates of the officer candidate school, and all officer candidates would come from the ranks.9 Hobby felt so strongly about this that she herself planned to be trained at the school. Advisors and senior officers told her this was not a good idea, but she persisted. Finally, Gen. Marshall gently ordered her not to attend because attending would be antithetical to military concepts of rank.10 Marshall’s family put its feet where the general’s mouth was. When the second class of WAAC officers was commissioned on September 12, one of the new

7 Ann Allen, “The News Media and the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps: Protagonists for a Cause,” Military Affairs 1986 50(2): 77. Like Rogers, Hobby opposed the WAAC structure. She believed women should be in the regular Army and she believed women should be subject to the draft. Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 7, 2007. 8 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 22. 9 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 34. The women’s corps adhered firmly to the policy of “no appointed officers,” but there was at least one remarkable exception. Kay Summersby was Eisenhower’s driver in England, North Africa, and later, in France. In North Africa, Summersby drove Franklin Roosevelt and Ike on tours of the Tunisian battlefields, and FDR asked if she would like to join the WAC. Roosevelt arranged to have Summersby commissioned as a second lieutenant in the WAC in October 1944. For details about Summersby and the WAC see Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 271, 422. The Korda book includes a detailed account of the relationship between Summersby and Eisenhower. 10 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 59.

68 Third Officers, the equivalent of a regular Army second lieutenant, was Caroline T. Tupper, Marshall’s niece.11 President Roosevelt finally signed the law creating the women’s corps on May 16, 1942. Two months later, on July 20, 1942, reporters from nineteen newspapers and several domestic and foreign press associations, six motion picture companies and a swarm of photographers pelted Director Hobby with questions serious and frivolous. The occasion was the opening of Fort Des Moines, Iowa, as the first WAAC training center, and the arrival of the first officer candidates, a group of 440 women. The women were greeted with new government-issue, Army-design uniforms. Cut as if for men, the blouses were either too tight across the chest or too blousy around the waist. Underneath were mud-colored slips, mud-colored drawers (too long to be considered panties), and pink girdles.12 For her remarks to her charges – not all were younger than she – Col. Hobby composed stirring words: “You have a debt and a date – a debt to democracy, a date with destiny . . . From now on you are soldiers, defending a free way of life.” Things would not be easy; she cautioned them, “. . . few if any mistakes will be permitted you.” Col. Don C. Faith, male commandant of Fort Des Moines, sounded a less ominous note when he told the class, “Us WAACs have got to be better than anybody!”13 Faith was popular with his trainees. He undertook to make male soldiers at Fort Des Moines behave, even going so far as forbidding them to look at WAAC legs.14 Success of the Women’s Army Corps was uneven across the span of World War II. Male Army officer reaction to the deployment of women varied. Some officers wanted no part of women in uniform, citing many problems, mostly obvious, their introduction might cause. Others were willing to go along with the Army’s experiment, but with misgivings.15 At first, President Roosevelt limited the enrollment level to 25,000, but the

11 “242 WAACs to Graduate,” New York Times, September 12, 1942. 12 Margaret H. Greenburg, “‘A Debt to Democracy, A Date with Destiny,’” Army, May 1987, 55. “Mud- colored” was accurate; for some reason undergarments were provided in brown instead of white or khaki color. 13 Greenburg, “‘Debt, Date,’” 56. 14 George Mills, “In the long run, Mrs. Hobby got a kick out of it,” Houston Chronicle, September 11, 1995. Mills covered the WAC during World War II for the Associated Press, and later wrote for the Des Moines Register. 15 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 48-49.

69 number soon multiplied to 150,000 as requests began to roll in. Excited planners projected a possible peak demand of one million. By the time the WAAC was one year old, enrollment totaled 58,100, and “every woman Jill of them was a volunteer,” as Time magazine noted.16 The Quartermaster Corps could not keep up with the demand for uniforms leaving some trainees in mufti. As encouraging as this initial level of interest was, a drop-off in new recruits was already apparent after the first year. While a retrospective look at the history of the women’s corps counts the organization’s initial year as successful, this judgment must be moderated by the realization that the organization fell considerably short of its internal goals and of the final headcount requested by Army units. Too, the nature and operations of every army are necessarily sloppy. Sometimes personnel requested by the Army Air Corps were not needed by the time they arrived, resulting in WAACs being assigned to duties for which they were not qualified by background or Army training. These hapless women were usually assigned to stenographic or switchboard operator positions. Most WAACs were also disappointed by where their assignments were located. They equated joining the Army with overseas assignments, but most of the women were assigned stateside.17 The Philadelphia Inquirer put Director Hobby’s portrait on the front page of a Sunday rotogravure section in August 1942. Hobby’s byline was atop a long cover story with a title that picked up her theme of “Pay a debt . . . keep a date.” She wrote about the early success of officer training. Although the corps’ educational standard for officers required only a high school diploma, a majority of enlistees had college training and many had advanced degrees. Most of the black officer candidates had a college background as well. Col. Hobby was pleased with the civilian career categories of her new soldiers: Teaching 37.6 percent Clerical 32.4 percent Professional 12.4 percent

16 “Stepsister Corps,” Time, 10 May, 1943, online unpaginated http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,851585-2,00.html. 17 U.S. Army, “WAAC-WAC 1942-1944, European Theater of Operations,” undated pamphlet by the Historical Section, European Theater of operations, 3-4. Original on file in Army’s Historical Manuscripts Collection, file number 8-3.1 AH, http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/topics/women/waac.html (accessed March 10, 2005).

70 Business 9.8 percent Technical 2.6 percent Other 4.2 percent

The Inquirer article did not address an obvious characteristic of these early officer candidates – more than ninety-six percent of them were working women at the time they volunteered for the WAAC. Few, if any, were homemakers or students. Since these totals could not be a result of random selection, another reason must explain them. Almost without question, it traces to Hobby’s insistence on the high quality of the early officer classes. With typical Oveta Hobby attention to detail, each candidate for the initial class required her approval; she read the record of every woman considered. Reflecting her emphasis on the quality of applicants, the age of those selected was skewed; twenty-four percent were thirty-six years old or older.18 Hobby spoke at a Sunday luncheon of Washington’s Texas Society on the occasion of the first anniversary of the WAAC. A photograph of the occasion shows her seated between Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and Jesse H. Jones, then serving as both Secretary of Commerce and head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In her address, Director Hobby listed the accomplishments of the first year of the Corps. WAACs had been deployed to one hundred twenty posts in the United States. The first groups to go overseas had already been dispatched to North Africa and Britain. A total of 62,500 women had volunteered and been accepted into WAAC ranks.19 In her remarks, drawing on a story from Texas mythology, she called for all Americans to cross an invisible line on the floor and join in the national effort to preserve freedom. She repeated the purpose of the Corps – to replace men in non-combat roles, freeing them to go to the battle lines.20 This purpose pre-dated Hobby’s entrance onto the scene, tracing at least back to Gen. Marshall and his planning staff. Hobby willingly picked up this line of reasoning, emphasizing it in her Congressional testimony in support of the women’s corps. She

18 Oveta Culp Hobby, “These Women Will Pay a Debt and Keep a Date,” Philadelphia Inquirer, rotogravure section, August 9, 1942, 1. The article contained many personal stories that related the WAACs reasons for volunteering. 19 Oveta Culp Hobby (address to Texas Society, May 16, 1943), reprinted in the Congressional Record May 17, 1943, A2464-65. 20 “Rayburn Says U.S. Must Act at End of War,” Houston Chronicle, May 17, 1943.

71 added creative elements, as when she described the reaction of a man in an administrative job when his WAAC replacement arrived and the “young fighter who had been ‘stuck with the job’ [was] released for combat duty.” She repeated the refrain: “You ought to see how happy the Army desk men are when a WAAC arrives. They know that every WAAC graduate brings them that much clearer [sic] to what they want – action on the fighting front.”21 Edith Nourse Rogers and Oveta Culp Hobby had argued against the “auxiliary” status of the women’s corps, conceding only when it was apparent that there was too much opposition in Congress. The women knew the question could be reopened. During the first months of the existence of the corps, legalistic problems emerged. There was no provision for punishing deserters, corps members who were absent without official leave, or AWOL. Army military policemen did not have authority to detain or arrest AWOL corps members, or to attempt to discipline them. A few women simply decided they were not cut out for Army life and went home, secure in the knowledge that very little could be done about it. WAACs did not have the benefits of the regular army, including medical or life insurance coverage. Pay for the women was not only lower than for men of comparable rank, it was lower than the pay of the WAVES, the Navy women’s corps. When Congresswoman Rogers proposed legislation to remedy some of the problems, the bills were shunted off to committees where they could be delayed or killed.22 Gen. Marshall, satisfied with the progress Col. Hobby was making with the women’s corps, put his influence to work. In January 1943, backed by the Chief of Staff, Col. Hobby and Congresswoman Rogers drafted a simple bill to cure the organizational deficiencies of the corps. Until this point, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, influenced by senior army generals, had opposed integrating the women’s corps into the army. On February 1, 1943 Stimson declared his support for the bill, which quickly passed in the Senate, only to be bogged down in the House of Representatives.23 The House finally approved a measure that varied in significant points from the Senate version; in

21 “Col. Hobby Sees Gun Training for WAAC’s Later,” Houston Press, September 30, 1942. 22 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 116-18. 23 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 119-121. While the bill was delayed in the House, the women’s corps continued to grow, from 13,767 in December 1942 to 60,243 in June 1943.

72 conference, the two houses came up with a bill both could accept. For her part, Col. Hobby was willing to accept any restrictions, provided the measure passed.24 In the ultimately successful campaign to upgrade the WAAC from auxiliary status, Hobby testified before a Congressional committee that women soldiers should be “in” the Army, not “with” it. In testimony coordinated with Hobby’s to support the improvement in status, Brig. Gen. M. G. White said the Army would consider sending women into combat areas, perhaps as operators of such anti-aircraft equipment as range and direction finders. White said “They learn faster and do a lot better than the men.”25 President Roosevelt signed the bill that changed the corps from auxiliary to Army on July 3, 1943. Col. Hobby served as director of both organizations during the changeover period. “Auxiliary” was deleted from the name of the Corps and, more significantly, from its status. Auxiliaries were re-named privates, and enlisted women received the same pay, allowances, and benefits as enlisted men. Women officers were given real, rather than comparable, rank (third officers became second lieutenants.) The change applied to the director. As the corps was originally organized, she was deemed to have the same rank as a colonel and to be addressed as “colonel,” but was deemed not to actually be an Army colonel. With the change, Hobby became a regular Army colonel, the first American woman to be so designated. With the Women’s Army Corps now “in” the Army, Hobby no longer had direct command authority over all corps women. She became an advisor to Secretary of the Army and to the Army general staff. Her power was diminished. Internal enemies, and probably more significantly, ordinary bureaucratic maneuvering conspired to limit Hobby’s access to information about corps performance. Subordinates who formerly reported to her now reported to male officers.26

24 Various restrictions and time limits were made part of the final legislation; specific details are in Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 220. 25 Associated Press, “Col. Hobby Backs Bill to Permit Use of W.A.A.C.’s in Combat Areas,” Houston Post, March 10, 1943. At one point, Hobby believed the Army would train women soldiers to operate anti- aircraft guns, freeing male gunners for more active combat. “Col. Hobby Sees Gun Training for WAAC’s Later,” Houston Press, September 30, 1942. This never happened, although corps members for a few months could take small-arms training and could be issued small arms for duty, where appropriate. Approval was soon rescinded, U.S. Army, “WAAC-WAC,” 32. 26 Treadwell, “Debt,” 87.

73 Previously, the chain of command had been unambiguous; women’s corps detachment commanders reported to senior corps officers, with Director Hobby at the top of the corps chain of command. However, the relationship had been murky between Army commanders and WAACs attached to their commands. With the women’s corps tucked into the Army, its officers were clearly subordinate to post commanders: the normal Army chain of command applied. Army women were subject to the regular Army disciplinary code and to the international conventions covering war conduct.27 Despite their previous commitment, corps members were not required to become WACs.28 WAACs could join the WAC by enlisting; they had sixty days to make up their minds. The reaction of Army generals varied. In the Army Air Forces, Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold encouraged WAC enlistment, even appearing in a military newsreel to underscore his interest. In contrast, Gen. Lesley J. McNair, head of the Army Ground Forces, had pointedly mishandled Corps members, sometimes refusing to assign them to duty, sometimes ignoring their officers. He made clear his opposition to the new WAC.29 Other obstacles, including conflicting interpretation of physical examinations, acted to discourage some from enlisting. Nevertheless, by the time the enlistment period was over, seventy-five percent of Auxiliary Corps members were accepted into the U.S. Army as members of the Women’s Army Corps.30 WACs were non-combatants, although this did not mean they did not face danger. Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his capacity as commander of the Army’s European Theater of Operations, made his first request for members of the corps, asking in autumn 1942 for five officers to be sent to Algiers. The Germans torpedoed and sank the boat transporting the five. The women were rescued. The Army later noted that in January 1944, when Eisenhower moved his headquarters to London, the five women officers were still attached to his staff and all had been promoted.31 In addition to the threat from

27 Bettie J. Morden, The Women’s Army Corps, 1945-1978, Army Historical Series (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1990), 12-13. 28 The abbreviations “WAAC” and “WAC” can be confusing, with WAAC applying to the women’s corps until July 3, 1943, and WAC the correct term after each corps member re-enlisted, an option she could exercise for two months following the conversion of the corps. To minimize confusion the balance of this chapter will refer to the WAC and WACs, regardless of the date under discussion. Direct quotations will be faithful to the original abbreviation. 29 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 228. 30 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 222. 31 U. S. Army, “WAAC-WAC,” 8.

74 submarines, WACs were bombed and strafed by enemy airplanes. When the battle lines wavered back and forth on the Italian peninsula, they found themselves dangerously exposed to infantry fire. In London they were in the path of German V-1 “buzz bomb” and V-2 rocket attacks.32 Nevertheless, no WACs died as a direct result of combat. Sixteen were wounded and presented the Purple Heart. Twenty-seven won the Bronze Star, awarded for bravery or meritorious service.33 Initially, most women’s corps overseas assignments were to Britain. Many of the American job openings there were for replacements for members of British women’s corps who had been requisitioned in support of American Army and Air Corps operations. The British were willing to supply women to get American operations started, but wanted them back as soon as American replacements could be trained and put in place.34 WACs, tiring of Britain, finally got to France. Col. Hobby sent forty-nine women soldiers who arrived on Bastille Day, July 14, 1944. Dressed in men’s battle clothing, they proceeded to make arrangements for hundreds of WACs to follow in August and September. The advance group slogged through mud and washed up in helmets with cold water, “just like any GI.”35 They soon tired of field living and were reported “anxious to see Paris,” even though Paris was still in German hands.36 By January 1945 the largest number of WACs in one place in the world – 2,000 women – was in Paris.37 The total number of different jobs performed by WACs (or alternatively, jobs for which they were qualified, whether or not they were called upon to do so) is not definitive. Different total figures appear in different accounts, only natural given the ability of WACs to demonstrate a continually expanding number of skills. Initially, women were permitted to perform only four jobs of the several hundred identified by the Army. By the summer of 1943, Col. Hobby declared that WACs were capable of performing 406 jobs, of an Army total of 610. At the time, WAC women were being trained for 155 and the total number was increasing. That the largest number of women

32 Greenburg, “Debt to Democracy,” 57. 33 Greenburg, “Debt to Democracy,” 59. 34 U. S. Army, “WAAC-WAC,” 1-3. 35 “WAAC-WAC,” 35-36. 36 “WAAC-WAC,” 37. 37 “WAAC-WAC,” 39.

75 soldiers were performing clerical and administrative work is unsurprising. Some of the other jobs were unusual, including Braille instructors, hearing aid technicians, Link Trainer instructors,38 surgical technicians, and at least one dog trainer. Four hundred twenty-two WACs worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.39 In mid-1943, with the corps now one year old and grown to robust size, it was possible to compile useful demographics. The average corps member was twenty-six years old – ten percent were over forty years old40 – unmarried, and with no children. She was a high-school graduate with work experience, most often clerical. Training was swift. Since almost all inductees had work experience, most did not require specialist training. Four weeks of basic training was deemed sufficient. WACs usually received clerical assignments, though most preferred more active jobs. Most carried the rank of auxiliary, the corps equivalent of Army private, and were paid fifty dollars per month.41 The Women’s Army Corps began demobilizing immediately after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Demobilization was not complicated for WACs, since most were deployed stateside. By the last day of 1946, fewer than ten thousand women remained in the WAC. Most of these wanted to remain in the army. After the war, many in Army leadership recommended continuation of the WAC, offering individual endorsement of the Corps. Gen. Douglas MacArthur called the WACs “my best soldiers.” Gen. Eisenhower wrote, “During the time I have had WACs under my command they have met every test and task assigned to them. . . . Their contributions in efficiency, skill, spirit, and determination are immeasurable.”42 Col. Hobby and her successor Col. Westray Battle Boyce, however, opposed continuation of the WAC. Hobby felt the public wanted women released from service as quickly as was practicable.43

38 Link Trainers were flight simulators widely used for pilot training. 39 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 326-27. For security reasons, Army Corps of Engineers commanders preferred military personnel to civilians for clerical and administrative work. The women served in a variety of “Manhattan District” locations, with more than half posted to the largest and most isolated location, Los Alamos, NM. 40 Olga Gruhzit-Hoyt, They Also Served: American Women in World War II (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 52. 41 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 192-93. 42 Gruhzit-Hoyt, They Also Served, 56. A WAC, the messenger whom Ike called his “little carrier pigeon,” was in the war room in Rheims, France, when German officials signed the surrender declaration. 43 Morden, Women’s Army Corps, 26; Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 726.

76 In 1946 the Army asked Congress to allow it to make the WAC permanent. Some of the same obstructionists who were antagonistic to the women’s corps when it was first proposed held up approval of the Army request for two years. On June 12, 1948 the Women’s Army Corps became a permanent part of the Army, an arrangement that lasted until 1978, when the corps was abolished and women were accepted into all but the combat units of the Army.44 In 2004 the United States government completed construction of the Mussolini- inspired World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Engraved in the wall are quotations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, Douglas MacArthur, and Oveta Culp Hobby. Her inscription reads:

WOMEN WHO STEPPED UP WERE MEASURED AS CITIZENS OF THE NATION, NOT AS WOMEN . . . THIS WAS A PEOPLE’S WAR, AND EVERYONE WAS IN IT.45

The story of the woman with one hundred thousand soldiers under her command began innocently enough. In early 1941 Hobby was in Washington sorting out a regulatory problem with the Federal Communications Commission when she received a telephone call from Maj. Gen. Alexander D. Surles,46 head of the United States Army’s Bureau of Public Relations, asking for her help. In July 1940, Congress had mandated a

44 Judith A. Bellafaire, “The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service,” U.S. Army Center for Military History, http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/wac/wac.htm (accessed July 27, 2007). 45 Patty Reinert, “Hobby’s Words Will Honor War’s Women,” Houston Chronicle, May 23, 2004. 46 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps. Hobby later mistakenly remembered Alexander Surles’s name as David Searles, and it appears often in biographical sketches, including Hobby’s obituary. The author accepts Treadwell’s book, thoroughly vetted and published by the Army, as definitive. Other reference works confirm the name. All accounts of the details of Hobby’s decision to act as consultant to the War Department are the same, including the error in the spelling of Surles’s name. (David Searls was for many years a lead partner in the influential Houston law firm currently named Vinson & Elkins.) The Marguerite Johnston Barnes collection at the Woodson Research Center include a letter from Lt. Col. R. Ernest Dupuy, Chief, Planning and Liaison Branch, Bureau of Public Relations, War Department. The letter, dated June 8, 1941, provides details of the back story. In it, Dupuy offers the Women’s Section job to Hobby, and thanks her for participating in earlier conferences called to address the War Department problem. The fact that Hobby accepted Surles’s request that she join the War Department instead of Dupuy’s almost certainly means that her reluctance to take the job was passed up the chain of command to someone with greater authority. Omission of these details seems harmless, but helps in the understanding of Hobby’s methods of controlling the way her story was told.

77 draft, unprecedented during peacetime but prudent in advance of the entry of the United States into the war in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of men were drafted into the army, or volunteered ahead of the draft, going either into the army or one of the other military services. Women – wives, mothers, sisters, girlfriends – besieged the War Department with letters asking questions and making suggestions or demands. They asked about the “food, recreation, church-going, health and happiness.”47 They passed on complaints received in letters from the men. The army had a major public-relations quandary on its hands and needed professional guidance on how best to manage the situation. Gen. Surles explained to Hobby that his office received thousands of letters each day. The War Department was concerned that before long the army might be facing desertions, perhaps mass desertions, as draftees and volunteers responded to the anguish of those left at home. “Over the hill in October,” was an unpatriotic slogan Hobby remembered later. It was a grim portent of a dangerous possibility.48 Surles asked the newspaperwoman to come to the War Department in Washington to organize the army’s response to the avalanche of mail and to address the women’s concerns that lay behind the avalanche. Hobby refused the offer, citing her husband, her children, and her job. Surles then suggested that she take a representative sample of the letters back to Houston with her and sketch out the structure and approaches the Public Relations Bureau could take to get control of the problem. With characteristic promptness, Hobby sent back her meticulous suggestions. The persistent general was soon on the phone again, this time calling during Sunday dinner. He had a compromise job offer: Would she come to Washington and direct the implementation of her plan, then return for a few days each month to oversee it in operation? Again she refused; travel time and attendant frustrations entered into her decision. Governor Hobby knew full well that if she agreed to lend a hand, he and the children would be required to do without her time and attention while she was absent. He knew, too, that this hardship was a primary motive in her answer to Surles. She later remembered that he admonished her gently. “You shouldn’t have made him have to ask you a second time. Any thoughtful person

47 “Mrs. Hobby Gives Woman’s Slant to Army News,” Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, September 1, 1941, 1. 48 Oveta Culp Hobby, telephone interview by Marguerite Johnston Barnes, June 26, 1985, 1. Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC.

78 knows that we are in this war, and that every one of us is going to have to do whatever we are called upon to do.” Oveta Hobby called Surles back and accepted his offer.49 Through the summer and fall of 1941 she was one of the government’s first “dollar-a-year men,” heading the Women’s Interest Section of the War Department Bureau of Public Relations.50 She balanced her public career with her position as vice president of the Post by spending ten days a month at home in Houston.51 Her group printed and distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets answering the questions posed in the letters. Hobby understood the press. She held press conferences, answering many of the same questions, knowing that the mothers and others would take comfort from the army’s reassurances. As a member of the press, she knew how to handle difficult questions. When asked, “What about the food?” she answered, “It’s getting better all the time,” a response that does not directly address the query but was accepted anyway.52 Mindful of the blizzard of press releases sent to daily newspapers by government entities, Hobby devised a different approach for the Women’s Interest Section. She realized that readers like to read stories about local people, stories that answer the question, How does this affect us? Her strategy was to decentralize the work and produce stories with local datelines about local people and issues.53 Hobby’s quick solutions for problems and her mastery of the difficulties of maneuvering in the military hierarchy caught the eye of Gen. Marshall. He was further impressed when he saw her in action. He was principal speaker at a Washington meeting of the national presidents of twenty-one prominent women’s organizations, a meeting Hobby had organized. At the time, Marshall was attempting to guide through Congress the enabling legislation necessary for the formation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, or WAAC. After watching Hobby conduct the meeting, Marshall, seconded by Nourse, asked her to help secure passage of the legislation, including sensitive liaison

49 Oveta Culp Hobby, telephone interview, 7. 50 “Oveta Culp Hobby Named War Dept. Woman’s Editor,” Houston Post, 31 July 1941, 1; Associated Press, “Army Selects Woman Editor To Interpret Life for Her Sex,” Baltimore Sun, July 2, 1941; “Ladies of the Army,” Time, August 11, 1941, 53. 51 Inga Arvad, “Did You Happen to See--,” Washington [DC] Times-Herald, undated clipping, (ca. late 1941). 52 Oveta Culp Hobby, telephone interview, 7. 53 ASNE Bulletin, “Woman’s slant,” 1.

79 with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also interested in the bill.54 The assignment was made to order for the seasoned parliamentarian. She immersed herself in the details of the bill, becoming so knowledgeable that Marshall named her to be a representative of the War Department in negotiations with the Bureau of the Budget and in later Congressional hearings. As was often the case, she was the only female representing the department.55 Although the legislation was stalled, Hobby was characteristically in action. She was busy managing the Army’s responses to concerned relatives of servicemen; she also worked to stimulate favorable press coverage of the nation’s rush to war. On top of her Washington-based workload she took her efforts on the road with speeches to a variety of meetings and conventions. She left Washington for Houston on Sunday, December 7, 1941, flying first to Chicago, where she was scheduled to speak to the American Farm Bureau convention on the topic of the role of women in the upcoming war. As she got off the plane she was met by a Chicago Tribune reporter, an unwelcome journalist, since the Tribune had recently attacked her efforts, saying “she was brought to Washington to muffle a recalcitrant Southern press.” When the Tribune man asked what her reaction was to the attack on Pearl Harbor, she answered that she did not believe the story, since she was hearing it from the Chicago Tribune. The story of course was true, and she then threw away her Farm Bureau speech and spoke extemporaneously. Hobby later quoted President Roosevelt, who remarked that her speech was America’s first declaration of war. She called Governor. After the speech, she flew from Chicago back to Washington to help prepare for the nation’s struggle.56 Planning how best to proceed with the introduction of women soldiers, Marshall wanted to gain from the experience of the British and Canadians, determining what steps had been successful and what measures had failed. He asked Hobby to study these existing women’s armies and make recommendations, paying particular attention to the

54 Ruth Montgomery, “‘I Pray for You,’ Says Ex-WAC Boss to Anna,” New York Daily News, December 17, 1950. George Marshall recalled that Eleanor Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia were blocking passage of the WAAC bill. He asked Gen. Alexander Surles if there was anyone in the public relations section of the War Department who could influence Roosevelt and LaGuardia, and Surles recommended Hobby. In two days, Hobby, who knew both of the people who obstructed the bill, convinced them to change their minds. The feat impressed Marshall. 55 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 21. 56 Oveta Culp Hobby, telephone interview.

80 mistakes made in organizing them.57 Hobby later recorded that Congress frustrated the mistake-avoidance strategy, duplicating nearly all the British mistakes.58 Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson also assigned Hobby the task of determining which army jobs women could perform with the least amount of special training. Before long, she was called to Capitol Hill to explain to Congress her plan of organization of the women’s army, and to buttress the rationale for the substitution of women for men in non-combat roles.59 Marshall, Rogers, Hobby, and the other supporters of women’s services had to buck Congressional opposition. Writing in a veteran’s magazine forty years later, Hobby quoted an unnamed solon voicing what she characterized as insincere chivalry: “It is a reflection on the courageous manhood of the country to pass a law inviting women to join the armed forces in order to win a battle. Take the women into the armed forces, who then will do the cooking, the washing, the mending, the humble homey tasks to which every woman has devoted herself?” Hobby pointed out the irony of this sentiment: particularly in the early part of the war some highly educated, highly trained women were sent to laundries or to post exchange retail counters.60 With WAAC legislation wending its way through Congressional committees, Army planners set about to select a director for the new corps. They specified a woman between thirty and fifty years old with experience managing both women and men, and with no link to any political pressure group. To Marshall and Army planners Hobby submitted the names of nine candidates, successful career women including business executives and college educators. Congresswoman Rogers submitted one name: Oveta Culp Hobby. Army planners suggested three possibilities, with Hobby’s name first. George Marshall went with the consensus choice, recommending the quick-minded

57 Marguerite Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby (First Draft),” 8. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC. 58 Oveta Culp Hobby, telephone interview. Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 32. Several accounts have Hobby studying women in the French Army, which is unlikely, given the surrender of the French to the Germans two years prior. French women did not become part of the army until 1943, when garrison forces in French North Africa began enlisting and training women auxiliaries for a limited number of jobs. Their numbers remained small. Martin Brayley, World War II Allied Women’s Services (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2001), 47. 59 Bellafaire, “Women’s Army Corps,” unpaginated. 60 Oveta Culp Hobby, “Oveta Culp Hobby Urges Veterans to Remember Country,” Veterans’ Voices, Spring 1981, 13.

81 Texas woman to Secretary of War Stimson. The job description could have been written with Hobby in mind – an Army publication later called her “the perfect choice.”61 Confident that the secretary would affirm his selection and that the Army’s candidate would encounter no significant Congressional opposition, Marshall moved her from the Bureau of Public Relations to the WAAC planning group. Army leadership wanted to put her in place as quickly as possible; members of Congress and other political figures were beginning to push forward other candidates.62 On the day the bill became law, War Secretary Stimson appointed Hobby as Director of the WAAC.63 Governor Hobby was a guest at the swearing-in ceremony. George Dixon, a reporter for the New York Daily News and also a witness, looked at Will and observed, “If ever a man looked as if he was saying to himself what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here, it was Mr. Hobby.”64 If Hobby’s effectiveness and rigorous work habits were welcome additions to wartime Washington, her social graces were also well-fitted to her new environs. She was welcomed, naturally, by the community of expatriot Texans, whom she already knew, and she had other connections as well. At the top of the media pyramid in the nation’s capital was Eugene Meyer, owner of the Washington Post, one of the country’s most important newspapers. Hobby and Meyer knew each other from their shared business interests – in later years, Hobby’s Houston Post holdings resembled the Washington Post empire – and from their participation in publishers’ organizations. Soon after Hobby’s swearing-in, Meyer and his wife staged a lavish cocktail reception for the stylish lady soldier. Retired Army Master Sergeant Ann Allen, now a military and feminism scholar, has written that such soirèes were “exploited through the society pages of the Sunday supplements” as a device to publicize the WAAC. Whenever possible, Hobby was the featured personality, taking advantage of her high-profile civilian life.65 Vice-president Henry A. Wallace and his wife dropped in, as did an impressive number of senators, house members, and ambassadors. Cabinet members were there, and a Supreme Court justice. Generals and admirals abounded. Other high-profile guests included Alice

61 Bellafaire, “Women’s Army Corps,” unpaginated. 62Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 28-30. 63 Bellafaire, “Women’s Army Corps,” unpaginated. 64 Quoted in Maxine Block and E. Mary Trow, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” Current Biography: Who’s News and Why/1942 (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1942), 388. 65Allen, “News Media,” 79.

82 Roosevelt Longworth, Lt. Commander Edward Steichen, the noted photographer, and the son-in-law and daughter of the hosts, Philip and Katherine Graham.66 Home-state people found other reasons to fete the Director. At Christmastime in 1942, the Houston chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Club honored her at a banquet at the Rice Hotel. Highlight of the affair was – of course – a speech by the honoree, lauding the nation’s war effort and Houston’s contributions to it. Houston attorney Robert H. Kelley, introducing Hobby as the evening’s speaker, gave her credit for the establishment of Camp Hood in Killeen.67 Early on, Hobby was dubbed “the Little Colonel,” a sobriquet that is still used when her Army years are described.68 The name was used politely, even affectionately, and apparently was not meant to disparage Hobby but to describe her. At five feet, four inches she was certainly shorter than most other Army colonels, making her, in fact, a little colonel.69 Overlooked in discussions of her nickname is an event in popular culture that occurred not long before the war. In 1935 Twentieth-Century Fox released The Little Colonel, a motion picture starring Shirley Temple and Lionel Barrymore. The movie, featuring six-year-old Temple in a famous staircase dance routine with Bill (“Bojangles”) Robinson, was widely popular. The term “the Little Colonel” passed into the language and seemed to be waiting to be applied to the director of the corps.70

66 Elizabeth Henny, “Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, New Chieftain of the WAAC, Honored at Reception by Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Meyer,” Washington Post, Ca. May 1953. Both Grahams later became publishers of the Washington Post, first Philip, followed by Katherine. Newspaper owner Hobby remained friends of the Meyer-Graham family for the next thirty years. 67 Marguerite Turner, “Houston Has Proved Herself a Great City, Says Col. Hobby,” Houston Post, December 23, 1942. Camp Hood became Fort Hood when it was made a permanent installation in 1951. 68 Congress authorized the rate of pay grade of a major for the director of the women’s corps, and the assumption was the major would be her rank. In June 1942, when her uniform arrived and she presented herself to Gen. Marshall to have the insignia pinned on her uniform, he pinned on the eagles of a colonel, her official rank. Her pay grade was later increased to that of an army colonel. Her official title was Director of the WAAC, to be addressed as “Colonel.” The distinction remained until the conversion of the auxiliary corps into the regular army, Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 50. 69 But her stature was not diminutive when compared to other women. The average height of American women in the mid-twentieth century was between five feet, three and five feet, four inches. U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, “Mean Body Weight, Height, and Body Mass Index, United States 1960-2002,” Advance Dta No. 347 (PHS 2005-1250) Advance Data No. 347, October 27, 2004, Table 7. 70 William M. Counselman, The Little Colonel, DVD, directed by David Butler (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 2001, originally released in 1935). Ann duCille has written that the interracial dance scene was cut from copies of the movie sent to Southern theaters, Ann duCille, “The Shirley Temple of My Familiar,” Transition 73 (June 1998): 12.

83 Hobby’s appearance and comportment contributed to the appropriateness of the word “little.” Archival photographs and portraits depict a lovely woman. At thirty-six, when she first went to Washington, she was described as trim, a description that had been used often before and would be used for the rest of her long life. Her enthusiasm for hats frequently placed her under oversized chapeaux that made her seem diminutive. She was pretty – again, all her life – and her face fine-featured, a characteristic that supports the adjective “little.” Finally, if her form was trim and precise, so was her speech. Years of attention to elocution, of amateur theatrics, and of platform speaking resulted in a polished speaking style. Often she spoke softly, in her careful modulated drawl, with the result that those around the conference table or in the audience listened carefully.71 Men and women reporters often included descriptions of Hobby’s appearance as part of their reporting. At the Congressional hearing where the director disclosed she would consider recommending women for some forms of combat, the article commented on her hair style, “Col. Hobby, sleekly coiffed, with a new hair-do, side-swept upward in back . . .”72 She understood what reporters wanted – needed – to take back to their newspapers, and she obliged them. The director’s physical appearance was important. Edith Nourse Rogers supported Hobby’s candidacy for the top job, in part because she thought Hobby would “look the part,” which would be important in the successful start-up of the corps. Congresswoman Rogers went to a movie where she saw an actress in military uniform. The costume was ill-fitting and the actress “bulged in the wrong places.” The audience “tittered, then roared, and Mrs. Rogers winced.” Rogers worried, “What if such a thing should happen to my corps?” Rogers believed that, like it or not, “beauty and brains” were both requirements, and she found both in Oveta Hobby.73 Newspaper and wire service stories reporting her selection to head the WAAC described her as pretty and smartly dressed, often complimenting her prematurely graying hair and her coiffures. One report said “Mrs. Hobby is about the height movie directors favor for their feminine stars” and added

71 Maxine Block and E. Mary Trow, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” Current Biography: Who’s News and Why/1942, (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1942), 388. 72 Associated Press, “Col. Hobby Backs Bill to Permit Use of W.A.A.C.’s in Combat Areas,” Houston Post, March 10, 1943. 73 Malvina Stephenson, “Personality, Brains, Beauty Mark Oveta Culp Hobby Who Will Lead New Women’s Army,” Hammond (IN) Times, May 20, 1942.

84 that her figure would look good in uniform.74 In civilian clothes, she was described as “slender, vivacious and dynamic . . . winsome.”75 The Associated Press asked its photographer in Des Moines to get a photograph of Director Hobby in a “swim suit standing on the diving board of the WAC pool.” An Army press officer stepped in, growling that there would be no “cheesecake of the boss.”76 A Chicago newspaper printed the lament of a woman subscriber:

I’m not a Waac, I’m not a Wave Yet I’m a patriotic slave I’m saving grease, flattening each can I’m one of those women “behind the man” I’m selling bonds in a theater lobby – But why can’t I look like Oveta Culp Hobby?77

One of Hobby’s key responsibilities, as she defined her job, was to maintain a vigorous speaking schedule throughout the war. Women’s corps emplacements asked for visits from Hobby, reporting that when she visited, morale spike upward. But there were five hundred different locations; Hobby never visited most of them.78 She often spoke to outside groups of many types. When she did not appear at an event in person, she frequently was there by telephone or remote radio broadcast, as during a symphony program of the renowned director André Kostelanetz, broadcast from the CBS Playhouse in New York City. During the broadcast fifty women were inducted into the women’s corps. Speaking from Washington as part of the induction, Hobby once again encouraged American women to come forward and serve their country.79 Three weeks later Arturo Toscanini directed the NBC Summer Symphony Orchestra in one of a series of Treasury Department concerts. Women from the American military services and a group of British WRENS filled the hall at the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center. At the intermission, Col. Hobby, onstage, quoted Thomas Paine’s admonition against “summer soldiers and

74 Ruth Cowan, “Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps Has a Lively Lady for Its First Director,” Wide World, May 15, 1942. 75 Henny, “New Chieftain,” Washington Post, Ca. May 1953. 76 Mills, “In the Long Run,” Houston Chronicle, September 11, 1995. 77 Gertrude H. Swidlec, “No Waac, No Wave,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 26, 1942. 78 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 720. 79 “Duty Abroad Seen for Women’s Units,” New York Times, May 31, 1943.

85 sunshine patriots” and urged listeners in the United States to buy war bonds and stamps, adding encouragement to Canadian listeners to buy their government’s war debt securities.80 On March 2, 1943 Hobby was in the San Francisco Bay area, cracking a bottle of champagne on the bow of the Liberty ship William B. Ogden at the Kaiser shipyards. Naval tradition bars men from christening ships, thus Hobby became the first officer of the armed services ever to sponsor an American Navy vessel.81 At a luncheon in her honor in New York on July 21, 1943, Hobby spoke on the subject of expansion of women’s role in the war. The occasion was an Advertising Club meeting chaired by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Noteworthy was the fact that wives of advertising executives were invited to the meeting, the first time this courtesy had been extended to them.82 In his introduction “the Little Flower” said that while Congress had commissioned Col. Hobby, “only God could give anyone so much charm.” The soft-spoken, fast-thinking southern woman had evidently made a favorable impression on the sweet, fast-talking Italian American.83 Betty Bandel was Col. Hobby’s aide for many months of the war. Although there were only seven years difference in their ages, Bandel wrote that Hobby often treated her as if she were much younger, and sometimes called Bandel her “third child.”84 Bandel’s first-hand accounts of her WAC years, published in an edited collection of her letters, show an intelligent and resourceful woman, ideal to work closely with a workaholic Hobby. Bandel went with Hobby on the first of the director’s two trips to the European theater. Both were accompanying Eleanor Roosevelt on a mission to consult with the King of England. Bandel’s letters were written as if to skirt military censors. She referred to Eleanor Roosevelt as “Her Ladyship” or “Rover,” a nickname then in use in Washington. Col. Hobby was either “the Little Colonel” or “L.C.” The transit through

80 “Toscanini Directs Treasury Concert,” New York Times, June 21, 1943. 81 “WACs Chief Sponsors a Ship,” New York Times, March 3, 1943. In actuality, before passage of the WAC bill, her status as an American military officer was ambiguous. 82 “Advertising News,” New York Times, July 13, 1943; “Col. Hobby Pleads for More Recruits,” New York Times, July 22, 1943. 83 “Col. Hobby Pleads for More Recruits,” New York Times, July 22, 1943. 84 Betty Bandel, An Officer and a Lady: The World War II Letters of Lt. Col. Betty Bandel, Women’s Army Corps, Sylvia J. Bugbee, ed. (Hanover [NH]: University of New England Press, 2004), 142.

86 Scotland revealed some of the vulnerabilities of travel in a war zone. Their Air Corps plane took them as far as the Republic of Ireland, a nominally neutral country. Neutrality imposed rules, including prohibition of aiding the combatants. The Irish worked a way around the problem by requiring all Allied military passengers passing through the country to travel incognito – no uniforms, and assumed last names. Obviously, Roosevelt would not call herself “Rover,” nor would Hobby go by a military title, even a diminutive one. Roosevelt made her way through immigration and customs procedures and by commercial ship across the Irish Sea as “Miss Brown.” Her secretary, Malvina Thompson (“a nice old shoe”) traveled as “Miss Smith.” Hobby and Bandel were Mrs. Hobby and Miss Bandel, civilian officials. The only problem caused by the subterfuge was sorting out the luggage with porters at the London train station.85 One night at a dinner given at the Claridge Hotel by American Ambassador John Winant, Hobby wanted an after-dinner cigarette. British protocol was involved; it was necessary to secure permission to smoke from Ambassador Winant, as host. Hobby signaled Gen. Eisenhower, also a guest at the dinner. Ike secured approval, then reached into a pants pocket and fished out a pack of Camels, sending it spinning across the tabletop to Hobby.86 At the dinner Ike looked over at Hobby and asked, “Are you a Short Snorter?” Hobby had been inducted into the club so she was able to answer “yes” before she remembered she was unable to prove her membership. At the dinner at Claridge’s, Hobby was attired in a gown suitable for a formal occasion, not in her uniform, with its government-issue tan leather purse. Her proof of membership, a dollar bill with signatures, was upstairs in her hotel room! Rules of the game gave participants two minutes to produce their signed currency, adequate for most searches. Hobby acted fast. She had to get to the elevator, get up to her room, find the dollar, then get back to the banquet room in 120 seconds. She made it, to the delight of Eisenhower and the other assembled guests, not all of whom understood what was going on.87

85 Bandel, Officer, 41. 86 Hobby was at least a moderate cigarette smoker, continuing the habit until she was fifty-nine years old. Peggy Buchanan, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. 87 Bandel, Officer, 43. A “Short Snorter” was a member of an informal club composed or anyone who had made a trans-Atlantic flight and had been inducted by a Short Snorter club member. The inductee owed one dollar to every Short Snorter on the flight. The new Short Snorter then asked every other member to sign a dollar bill, or better yet a piece of foreign currency, the more exotic the better. The next time the Short Snorter question was asked, the new member had to present the signed piece of currency to the inquirer,

87 By the middle of 1944 Hobby’s manic tempo was affecting her health. She checked into Walter Reed Hospital several times for “anemia, exhaustion, and a throat ailment that prevented her from speaking.” Finally, in July, she was ordered to Brooke General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio where she was diagnosed with exhaustion.88 She remained at Brooke for six weeks, followed by recuperation at an undisclosed place. Only her family knew where she was.89 She had reason to question her continued effectiveness. Her years of political and business experience taught her that, with all the fights she had had, she had antagonized enough people that at some point her usefulness at the helm would be “destroyed.” Her triumphs were based on what she knew in advance, based on the British experience, and included success at gaining equal status and full military rights for the women’s corps, redesign of the uniform, elimination of the “snob element” with selection of officers from the ranks, and others.90 Back at work in early 1945 after her hospitalizations, Col. Hobby still maintained a rigorous pace. Betty Bandel, closest to her, knew that she was not well and was not gaining strength. Bandel wrote to her mother that for the last six months Hobby was at her post, both were fearful that she would not last until the end of the war. She almost made it. She might have been able to hold out physically, but things were deteriorating at home in Houston, particularly problems at the Post.91 Finally, Governor’s health began to worsen, adding a final motivation for Hobby to resign before the war was over in the Pacific theater.92 In ill health himself, Governor was more concerned about Oveta, who recalled that following her release from the Army, Governor “took her to the train and directly from Washington to a hospital for complete rest and treatment.”93 Consistent with her commitment and her energy level, Hobby maintained a vigorous schedule in the final weeks of her tenure. Aileen Kilgore Henderson

thus avoiding the fine. Short Snorter and similar groups are extant. (Lacking a central authority, practices may vary.) When a member asks, “Are you a Short Snorter,” the required response is “You bet your sweet ass I am,” and this is how Hobby probably answered. Bandel doubtless sanitized Hobby’s response in her letter to her mother. More information about the club is available online, http://www.shortsnorter.org/. 88 “People,” Time, July 10, 1944, online unpaginated. 89 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 719. 90 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 720. 91 Bandel, Officer, 183. 92 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 720. 93 Marguerite Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby (First Draft),” 11. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC.

88 remembered the day in June 1945 when Col. Hobby arrived at Houston’s Ellington Field on her way to a meeting in San Antonio. The meeting was clearly important – three flights through Ellington brought sixteen generals and forty-five other officers, including war hero Lt. Audie Murphy, from as far away as Paris. Hobby and the others passed through one day in June 1945. A month later Henderson became upset and the Women’s Army Corps was in turmoil. On July 12, 1945, Col. Hobby resigned.94 In Houston, on Friday, September 14, about forty couples met at an appreciation dinner for the returning leader. The encomiums following the dinner were broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company on a nationwide hookup. President Harry S Truman sent a message of tribute. Brig. Gen. Henry I. Hodes represented Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall and read Marshall’s complimentary message. He went on to deliver a short address highlighting WAC performance under the leadership of Oveta Hobby. Civic leaders and Houston Mayor Otis Massey spoke, each describing a different list of accomplishments of the guest of honor. Finally, still on network radio, Hobby responded with remarks of her own. She compared WACs to pioneer women crossing the plains. She said WAC women served on a total of 271 Army posts in the United States, and in every overseas theater. She often sounded high-minded and visionary; her final sentences were vintage Hobby rhetoric: Now it is to the future we must turn. We must rebuild our spiritual and physical reserves. We must turn the inventions and discoveries of this war to the good of mankind. We must turn the great energies used in making war to making peace and establishing the virtues of Freedom. We must build skyscrapers and discover poets. We must return the dignity of man to its former high station. Let us consider and treat him as he truly is . . . “made in the image of God.”95

Despite four years of active service, Hobby departed the military with the same rank she had when she entered it. Many of her supporters felt the deliberate lack of recognition was not fair. In Congress, Representative Overton Brooks of Louisiana

94 Henderson, Stateside Soldier, 174. 95 Houston, “Houston’s Distinguished Col. Returns,” Houston, October 1945.

89 pointed out that in the U.S. Army, a brigadier general commanded ten thousand troops. Oveta Hobby, with ten times that number under her leadership, should have been promoted to major general, in fairness to Hobby and in fairness to her officers. Putting a ceiling on Hobby’s advancement effectively held back promotions for other senior WAC officers. In early 1945 when the War Department awarded Hobby the Distinguished Service Medal, Gen. White commented, “since our friends on the hill won’t let us pin stars on you, this is the next best thing.”96 From the start, the United States Army treated the issue of Hobby’s rank in a manner that can fairly be described as shoddy. The designation of “major” and then “colonel” were convenient for everyday use, but were adulterated by the stipulation that she was not a “real” Army officer. Her command title was “Director,” a classification that limited her ability to get things done. When she spoke at the Army-Navy Club during the war, the club said that as their program speaker, she was of course welcome, but asked her to enter the building through a service entrance, not through the front door.97 When the WAAC became the WAC, corps members were granted Regular Army status and Hobby obtained almost all the privileges of Uncle Sam’s hundreds of other colonels. Colonel was the highest rank she was ever permitted, by act of Congress. British experience served as a template for the U.S. Army women’s corps; the British ATS was commanded by a major general and the WAAF had a major general and a brigadier general at the top.98 Both services sported squads of colonels.99 Nor did this inequity improve over time. In the 1990s, near the end of Hobby’s life, Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, an old friend of Hobby and former candidate for vice-president of the United States, called for her belated elevation to the rank of general. President George H. W. Bush, another longtime Hobby friend, considered the matter and denied the request. Bentsen, Bush, and Hobby had been at the pinnacle of power in Houston and in Texas –

96 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 721; Treadwell, “Debt,” 89; “Col. Hobby,” Houston Chronicle, July 13, 1945. Hobby received the Distinguished Service Medal on January 8, 1945. “Chronology,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing, 1997), 57. 97 Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 9. The club, a citadel of social conservatism, lumbers onward. In recent years, Hobby’s portrait has been hanging in the club, along with the portrait of the first WAC general allowed to become a club member. 98 A Brigadier General is a “one-star” general; adding stars, the other general officers are Major Geneneral, Lieutenant General and General, accorded four stars. 99 New York Times, “Head of ATS Aids WAAC on Crutches,” New York Times. October 15, 1942; Bandel, Officer, 146.

90 they had downed their share of Scotch together – but the commander-in-chief would not overrule the Army brass on this issue.100 The citation accompanying the Distinguished Service Medal spelled out Hobby’s contribution: Without the guidance of precedents in United States military history to assist her, Col. Hobby established sound initial policies, planned and supervised the selection of officers and the preparation of regulations. The soundness of basic plans and policies promulgated is evidenced by the outstanding success of the Women’s Army Corps, composed of nearly 100,000 women and comprising an essential and integral part of the Army.101

Acting Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson called a press conference to announce Hobby’s resignation. His tribute to her included the pronouncement, “She had to fight many obstacles in promoting a program that was unique in the history of the Army, but she did it with great distinction.”102

When the U.S. Army was forced to accept women in 1942, 167 years of tradition were overturned.103 The founding commander of the women’s corps faced dozens of issues of the integration of women into the military’s largest branch, each issue requiring resolution or accommodation. Oveta Hobby’s life experience, by the age of thirty-seven, had outfitted her with many of the skills necessary to deal with the huge, conservative, largely misogynistic United States Army. If any of the requisite proficiencies for dealing with the Army problems were not in her skill set, she was required to develop them on the job. Although she knew she had the support of Army Chief of Staff Marshall, she recognized that she could not take many problems to that level. From a practical point of view she would have to solve most problems by relying on her own considerable resources. After nearly twenty years of working with men, most of them powerful figures in their spheres, Oveta Hobby had developed formidable management competence. A

100 Bandel, Officer, 53; Associated Press, “Bentsen Pushes for Promotion to Gen. for ‘Little Col.,’” Amarillo Daily News, May 8, 1992. 101 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 721. 102 Treadwell, “Debt,” 90. 103 The U.S. Army was founded by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775. http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/branches.html (accessed December 8, 2006).

91 New York Times reporter noted that she worked well with men. In the course of a lengthy interview with Hobby, male officers came in and out of her office, able to “discuss the business at hand with ease and directness.”104 Her staff witnessed most of the battles she fought, and they recorded or remembered the outcomes. Hobby was insistent on achieving the results she sought, both from subordinates and from the Army. She would compromise when she found it necessary; she would wait, if waiting brought what she needed; she would not hesitate to confront Army opponents when she felt confrontation would be effective. As she once said, “You will find a lot of people with a bureaucratic frame of mind that would kill anything new unless you fought for it. It is my job to fight for it.”105 Leading the Corps required a strong woman. Of the many issues Col. Hobby had to resolve, four are particularly instructive. In the racially segregated Army, the commander of the WAC had to make many decisions, and had to balance opposing points of view. Uniforms, seemingly incidental to the conduct of the war, were important in defining the nature of the Corps and were instrumental in the challenges of recruitment and retention. Recruitment itself was an enormous problem, made more difficult by the singular circumstances of the newborn branch of military service. Finally, Hobby and the WAC were confronted by an amorphous campaign of rumors that threatened the survival of the WAC experiment. A major news weekly observed that Hobby’s first difficulty was the accusation of racial discrimination implicit in the announcement of a southerner in the director’s position.106 The black press decried her selection. The National Negro Council protested directly to President Roosevelt, objecting to the selection of a director “known to share ‘lily white’ traditions and ‘Jim Crow’ practices of her native state.”107 The director of the Council condemned Hobby as “imbued with the mores and undemocratic practices of a state like Texas.”108 The Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most influential black newspapers, reporting on a possible discriminatory recruiting violation in its home city,

104 Nona Baldwin, “No. 1 WAAC,” New York Times, May 24, 1942. 105 Treadwell, “Debt,” 84. 106 “Mrs. Hobby’s Wacks,” Newsweek, May 25, 1942, 45. 107 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 58; Nona Baldwin, “WAAC Will Begin Recruiting Soon,” New York Times, May 14, 1942. 108 Nona Baldwin, “Mrs. Hobby Slated to Head the WAAC,” New York Times, May 15, 1942.

92 wrote “We wouldn’t want the public to deceive itself with the notion that what happened in Pittsburgh was due to the fact that the Director of the WAAC is a white woman from Texas.”109 The new director acted quickly. Within two days of the first National Negro Council condemnation, Hobby announced that the first group of officer candidates would include at least forty black women. In addition, at least two of the first companies would be black units, and they would be in the administrative category.110 When Hobby stipulated “administrative category” she was anticipating black concern about the use of black soldiers – male and female – for menial jobs. The corps’ quick response included an announcement of the ratio of black to white WACs: “Negroes” would be included in the WAC in the same proportion as blacks in the regular (male) army.111 The National Negro Council was mollified, greeting Hobby’s prompt response by withdrawing its objection to her appointment. The savvy public relations professional continued to reach out to black opinion leaders. Her first public address after appointment to lead the corps was to a black sorority at Howard University. She used the occasion to describe the early progress of the entire experiment, including the situation of black women in the corps. Director Hobby praised the patriotism of black volunteers, then quoted from application letters of several who held advanced college degrees. She went out of her way to praise Mary McLeod Bethune, “one of my good friends,” for her work in helping select officer candidates.112 Hobby knew sensitive situations should be handled quickly. During the first week of the corps’ existence Hobby received a telegram from an NAACP youth group in Winston-Salem, NC reporting that the recruiting officer there would not recruit black applicants. Within one day Hobby sent two telegrams in response – one to the recruiter directing him to accept applications from blacks, and a second to the youth group advising that the recruiter’s mistake had been corrected.113

109 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 593. 110 Nona Baldwin, “Mrs. Hobby Sworn as WAAC Director,” New York Times, May 16, 1942. 111 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 34. The Army was approximately 10.6 percent black, and the WAC goal was set at that proportion. For a variety of reasons, recruiting of black women fell short of the goal. 112 “WAAC Will Train 2 Negro Companies,” New York Times, July 7, 1942. 113 Brenda L. Moore, To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas during World War II, (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 56.

93 Historian Joyce A. Hanson wrote that Mary McLeod Bethune saw the activation of the WAC as an opportunity for African American women to demonstrate their leadership and administrative abilities while in patriotic service to their country. President Roosevelt named Bethune to be a special assistant to the Secretary of War, assisting with the selection of black candidates for the first officer classes. Hanson records that Bethune was successful in persuading Secretary Stimson to stipulate that ten percent of officers would be African American women. The Army was segregated, and this included the new women’s corps. Racial segregation in the Army was not required by federal law and was contrary to Iowa state statutes, putting the practice of the WAC training center at Fort Des Moines at odds with state law. Bethune remonstrated to Eleanor Roosevelt; she also organized public demonstrations, conferences, lobbying pressure, and National Council of Negro Women activities.114 Bethune was soon distracted, however. Early in 1943, Martin Dies of the House Committee on Un-American Activities accused her publicly of being a communist, an allegation he made while offering no specific information or proof. Bethune later recalled that the leadership of the National Council of Negro Women, an organization she had founded, was skeptical about Hobby. After a series of meetings with the WAC, director Bethune became convinced that “Mrs. Hobby’s place of birth did not condition her idea of justice.” Bethune persuaded most of the Council leaders to withdraw their objections.115 Hobby recognized the value of strong black staff and line officers. She selected Lt. Harriet West, a former assistant to Dr. Bethune at the Bureau of Negro Affairs and a civilian member of the WAC planning staff, for the original executive office (headquarters) staff of eighteen. It was important to have a black WAC as part of the command staff to provide guidance in minority issues.116 At forty-two years of age, a

114 Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Activism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 185-86. 115 Genevieve Forbes Herrick, “‘Loved, Feared and Followed,’” Collier’s, September 23, 1950. The relationship between Bethune and Hobby remained constructive. The Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial Committee organized a memorial in Bethune’s name on May 15, 1971, benefiting United Nations Day. The event was chaired by Lena Horne and Leontyne Price who selected Hobby as a committee member. Hobby to U.N. Day Committee, April 27, 1971. 116 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 73.

94 college graduate, and with civil rights experience, West was a good choice.117 Hobby later gave her the responsibility of investigating discrimination complaints of recruits. Following that, West investigated complaints of discriminatory recruiting violations.118 In the segregated Army, and in assignments in the segregated South, West frequently had to endure racial insults, even while investigating discriminatory treatment of African American WACs. She explained her incentive, saying black women’s military service would be “of future benefit to the whole race.”119 Other African American officers were notably successful. Charity Adams led the 6888th Central Postal Battalion, known as the “Six-Triple-Eight,” sent to Britain to straighten out a very big mail problem. The battalion had a strength of 855, all African Americans, under Adams’ command. A shortage of manpower had resulted in mail piling up in England – three million pieces, sometimes delayed for months. Aggravating the problem was the fact that the Army was continually moving forword, requiring frequent changes in routing of the mail. Once the 6888th reduced the backlog in England, the unit was transferred to Rouen, France, where a similar mail pileup was waiting. In both England and France, working conditions were bad, with inadequate light and heat, and meeting the objective required round-the-clock operations. Nevertheless, the unit was credited with largely solving the major problems that confronted them when they were deployed.120 Major, later Lieutenant Colonel, Charity Adams was the highest-ranking black WAC officer, and the 6888th was the only black WAC unit sent overseas. Sociologist Brenda L. Moore, in a book based heavily on archival materials found at the Bethune Museum and Archives in Washington, and on interviews of fifty-one African American former WACs, places the 6888th at the center of her study of black female experience in the WAC. Whereas Charity Adams Earley’s memoir had only a few references to Hobby, Moore depicted a clearly active and involved director, often denying requests made by black WACS or by black activist groups. Moore generally

117 Obituary, “Harriet M. Waddy, WAC Officer, Dies at 94,” New York Times, March 8, 1999. West retired from the armed forces in 1952. 118 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 592. 119 Richard Goldstein, “Harriet M. Waddy, 94, Officer in Women’s Army Corps, Dies,” New York Times, March 8, 1999. 120 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 599-601; Charity Adams Earley, One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1989), 137-189.

95 makes clear the fact that Hobby was not creating policies by her denials, but rather she was applying existing Army regulations. Moore shows Hobby’s attention to detail and promptness in response. When the 6888th Battalion sailed for Britain on February 3, 1945, Hobby went to New York to see the unit off. The only black WAC unit to serve overseas during the war would never have been selected for the assignment if it had not been for the pressure of black activist groups. By bidding bon voyage to Maj. Charity Adams and her troops, Hobby was making an important public gesture.121 Lt. Col. Jessie P. Rice was Hobby’s chief assistant and at times Acting Director for the last twenty months of Hobby’s tenure at the WAC. A Georgia native, and white, she was a good problem solver who got along well with peers and subordinates. One day in 1944 she had an encounter with a superior officer that did not go very well. In a meeting with Hobby’s immediate superior officer, Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Henry, Rice was appalled to hear Henry apply clearly objectionable language in a discussion about African American WACS. She walked out of the meeting in silence, turned around, and came right back in the room and resigned, saying, “Sir, your staff officer just went out – and a citizen of the United States walked in.” A report of the incident said that she then “offered her uncensored opinion” to the general. When she recounted the episode to Hobby and other WAC headquarters staff members. Hobby’s reaction was to threaten resignation, as well. With the founder and only director of the WAC offering her resignation, and with her deputy also offering resignation, Gen. Henry apologized for his language, then asked both to withdraw their resignations.122 Two small-town southern white women had made their point. Hobby’s skills served her well, and also served well her black and white volunteers. Gen. Marshall, concerned with the treatment of black WACs, noted that a reporter from the Pittsburgh Courier urged black officer candidates to give specific details of complaints of their treatment – and received none. Walter White, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, speaking

121 Moore, To Serve My Country, 104. 122 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 722.

96 of discrimination observed in the city of Des Moines, asked, “When is Des Moines in general going to become as democratic as the white Waacs from the South?”123 Col. Hobby worked for three years to balance the strictures of the Jim Crow Army with demands of patriotic black American women and their advocates – demands for improved inclusion and treatment. The women’s corps had a goal of recruiting black women in the same proportion as black men compared to the Army totals, or about ten percent. Despite strong support and publicity from the WAC and civil rights groups, and despite recruiting/marketing campaigns, the number never rose above six percent.124 Table 1 charts African American WAC personnel.

Table 1. Year-end strength of black personnel in the Women’s Army Corps, 1943-1946. Total Black % of Officers Enlisted Year Total WAC 1943 2,805 4.9 105 2,467 1944 4,040 4.5 120 3,920 1945 1,690 3.9 80 1,610 1946 372 3.9 9 364 Source: Appendix A, The Women’s Army Corps, Mattie Treadwell.

Once back in civilian life, Hobby pursued a middle course, neither actively supporting improved civil rights nor abetting opponents.125 She continued, however, to wield power to effect outcomes. Soon after the war, Hobby was co-chairman of a large dinner planned in celebration of Armed Forces Day. In a planning meeting in her Houston Post offices, her co-chairman described his plans for a whites-only event. Hobby had threatened resignation as head of the WAC over a race-related incident. She let her

123 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 590. 124 Morris J. MacGregor, Jr. Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965, Defense Studies Series (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1981), 33. MacGregor attributes this performance at least in part to the concern of African American women about the reception they could expect at Army posts. 125 Marguerite Johnston Barnes’s eulogy included the statement that Hobby “was an early member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” Barnes’s context places membership in the late 1920s. The author’s examination of Hobby papers in eight archives failed to confirm her membership in the organization, and the Houston NAACP office was also unable to confirm it. Hobby’s last known review of her biographical sketch, five years before her death, included no mention of the organization. Lacking any confirmation, it appears that she joined posthumously. See Marguerite Johnston Barnes, “The Widening Wake,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 78.

97 colleague know that the dinner would not go forward without the understanding that everyone who served in the military would be able to attend. It would not be for whites only.126

The early response to women’s corps recruiting efforts was surprising, surpassing the recruitment goals and the capacity of the training center. When he signed the bill into law, President Roosevelt set a goal of 25,000 for the first fiscal year ending June 30, 1943. That goal was topped by November 1942, prompting Secretary of War Stimson to raise the June 30, 1943 goal to 150,000, the maximum enlistment set by Congress. Additional training centers were required. Daytona Beach was in operation by the end of 1942 and by March 1943 centers were in operation at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia; Fort Devens, Massachusetts; and Camp Ruston, Louisiana.127 In September 1942 Hobby and her headquarters staff were stunned when G-3 Division, the Army staff branch responsible for operations and training, directed the Corps to take the planning steps necessary to expand to more than one million members. G-3 forecast a need for 1,500,000 Corps members by 1946. The Army Adjutant General calculated that 750,000 women could be used immediately, with 1,323,400 required by the end of 1943. The Adjutant General’s requirements were based on the finding that women could perform 406 different Army occupations, of a total of 628. Initially, Col. Hobby had promised 12,000 WACs by July 1943. By accelerating the pace of the start-up this goal was met in December 1942. However, the Army had changed its attitude toward employment of women. Early in the year 12,000 seemed too many; at year-end, 1,200,000 seemed too few.128 Hobby moved to make the women’s corps more attractive to competitive women. In the opening months of WAC operations all new officers were commissioned as third officers, the WAC equivalent to second lieutenants in the Army. The only woman with

126 Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 11-12. Will Hobby, at work within earshot in the adjoining office, walked into the room and joined the discussion, emphasizing his agreement with Oveta’s point of view. 127 Morden, Women’s Army Corps, 9. 128 Treadwell, “Debt,” 84. The Army created a serious problem. European Theater commanding generals, including Gen. Eisenhower, were requesting more and more WACs but the Army’s legal department ruled that corps members were not eligible for government life insurance, hospitalization benefits, or death benefits; if captured, they were not entitled to the rights of prisoners of war. Hobby responded by recommending to Gen. Marshall that Corps members remain stateside – that none be sent overseas.

98 higher rank was Col. Hobby. The officer structure needed to be rationalized; further, as a matter of recruiting strategy, potential WACs had to be able to see the likelihood of advancement in grade. Hobby started off the new year in 1943 with the mass promotion of 487 officers to the rank of second officer, corresponding to Army first lieutenant, and eighty-one officers to the rank of first officer, corresponding to Army captain. Some of the newly promoted officers had already been deployed overseas. 129 WAC leadership turned to outside counsel for help with the critical marketing situation. Using the corps’ internal resources and the help of a marketing and advertising consultant, Hobby and her staff tried various ways to encourage more volunteers. Then, in March 1944 a large national advertising agency launched a mendacious attack on the WAC and its leader. Samuel W. Meek of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson charged in a written report that Hobby and WAC advertising advisors had failed to understand the pool of potential recruits, resulting in an enrollment fiasco. Meek cited failure to improve the uniform as an example of WAC leadership incompetence, and asserted the WAC had badly lost a prestige contest with the WAVES, a charge he backed with a survey. Among Meek’s recommendations was the strategy of commissioning prominent women as officers, publicizing the appointments in the society pages of major newspapers. The notion was diametrically opposite of the meritocratic system the British had validated and Hobby had championed and installed. The report and supporting surveys soon found their way to Gen. Marshall who handed them over to Hobby and asked for her response. Meek’s report and recommendations conflicted directly with recommendations recently made by the corps’ marketing advisors, Young and Rubicam, which, like J. Walter Thompson, was one of the premier advertising agencies in the nation. Hobby analyzed the report and found it flawed. Meek’s “public opinion survey” was a program of interviews of 111 college girls, ninety-four of them from Vassar College. The Young and Rubicam survey on which WAC leadership relied used a scientifically chosen sample of 1,431 eligible women and 1,415 parents of eligible women. This much more comprehensive study yielded results about the reputation question that were almost all contrary to the Meek conclusions. Further, WAC marketing

129 “568 WAAC Officers Receive Promotion,” New York Times, January 4, 1943.

99 efforts already included several of the Meek suggestions, though results were disappointing.130 With the Meek report defanged and the Chief of Staff’s attention stimulated, Hobby knew she had a short window of opportunity to re-present her solutions, previously stalled in the chain of command. She issued two memoranda with ten supporting appendixes summarizing her proposed tactics to improve the recruiting impasse, if not solve it altogether. Director Hobby’s analysis boiled down the recruiting problem to two areas, negative attitude of soldiers toward women, and apathy of unmarried non-working women. She addressed the male attitude problem with a multi- pronged approach. Many in the officer corps, including senior combat officers who had had little contact with the WAC, were outspoken in their attitudes and prejudices toward women in the Army. She recommended a persuasion campaign directed at incoming officers and using existing and new training films describing the accomplishments of WAC personnel. She called for stepped-up distribution of informative WAC materials to military newspapers. Yank, the army newsmagazine, had refused to accept female staff members. Hobby wanted one assigned to the staff, regardless of male resistance. Most importantly, she wanted Army generals to seek prior approval of any public statements about the WAC and WACs. This suggestion was too drastic for Marshall. He realized it would be impossible to implement successfully. Instead, he chose to write a letter to all generals and to commanders, those in high authority but below the level of general officer. In the letter, he made a strong case for the utility of the women soldiers and directed the officers to work toward better acceptance of the corps.131 As early as September 1942, when she spoke in Washington to the Women’s National Press Club, Director Hobby reported that nearly ninety percent of WACs were asking for overseas duty.132 Months later, in May 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt was still encouraging the women to believe that the ninety percent who wanted to go overseas

130 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 272-74. 131 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 274-75. 132 “90% in the WAAC Ask Duty Abroad,” New York Times, September 9, 1942. In February 1943 she spoke, along with WAVES director Lt. Cdr. Mildred McAfee, at a Town Hall meeting for college women in New York. The women showed particular interest in overseas deployment. Hobby told them directly that not many WACs would go overseas; McAfee explained that Navy policy prevented WAVES from going abroad, “Women in College Urged to Continue,” New York Times, February 3, 1943.

100 would be able to do so, a patently false hope.133 The problem was that the typical WAC was a victim of statistics, given that the purpose of each service woman was to free up a soldier for combat, and several million non-combatant men were based in the continental United States. Lucky was the WAC who was ordered overseas.134 January 1943 saw the publication of Women in War, a 200-page book of instructions on how to apply for work in the war industries or the women’s military services. Regarding it as a WAC marketing tool, Hobby wrote the introduction.135 In June, Nancy Shea’s book The Waacs, written to de-mystify the corps to potential corpswomen, appeared. The WAC Director once again provided the foreward.136 Hobby soldiered onward. Asked to speak at a dinner in Philadelphia honoring Donald M. Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board and former executive vice president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, she lionized her corps, describing it as “neither a circus nor a crusade,” but “an intense, immensely serious military project.”137 Not every man wanted to be released for combat. Not every member of the U. S. Army was anxious to head for the front lines, despite what he heard from the WAC commander, and not every man’s family wanted to see him replaced by a woman so he could go get shot at or bombed. As the lack of appeal of the WAC mantra became apparent, Hobby went public with a new argument, neatly reversing the previous argument. Now, for every woman in the military, “one more father will be enabled to stay at home with his family.” She followed up the new recruiting slogan with a corollary: joining the WAC enabled fathers to stay at home, and demonstrated how WACs “preserve and protect” family life.138 Even though recruiting shortfall dominated WAC concerns, Gen. Marshall increased the goal of total authorized WACs to 600,000. It was an Army exercise in whistling in the dark, given that the current complement was only about ten percent of

133 “Duty Abroad Seen for Women’s Units,” New York Times, May 31, 1943. 134 “90% in the WAAC Ask Duty Abroad,” New York Times, September 9, 1942. Two years later, Time reported that the most serious complaint voiced by WACs was the small number of overseas assignments. “Hobby’s Army,” Time, January 17, 1944, online unpaginated. 135 “American Women Are Marching to Victory,” advertisement, New York Times, January 17, 1943. 136 Shea, Nancy Brinton, The WAACs. New York: Harper, 1943; advertisement, New York Times, June 6, 1943. 137 “Nelson Asks Work in ’43 to Win in “44,” New York Times, January 17, 1943. 138 “Tells How WAACs Help,” New York Times, July 5, 1943.

101 that goal, and recruitment was waning badly. The occasion of Marshall’s optimistic statement was the swearing in of the first WAC, Director Hobby, on July 5, 1943. On that occasion she also became an Army colonel. Previously, she had a colonel’s rank and insignia and was called “colonel,” but was not an Army colonel; she had headed an auxiliary organization, making her an auxiliary colonel. Now-Colonel Hobby continued to speak out, calling for more volunteers.139 During World War II unnecessary travel was discouraged “for the duration.” Some travelers accustomed to traveling first class on trains found themselves taking the bus, and glad to have transportation of any sort. In this restrictive travel climate the severity of the recruiting problem was underscored by a tour Hobby organized for leaders of twenty-eight women’s organizations in August 1943. Representatives of the organizations were selected on the basis of membership in the Advisory Council of the Women’s Interests Section of the War Department Bureau of Public Relations – Hobby’s old territory. The women leaders did not travel by bus; theirs was a flying trip, with most departing from New York and the rest from Chicago. Two stops would suffice to demonstrate WAC accomplishments to the women leaders. They went first to Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and then to Camp Crowder, Missouri, not far from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The travelers were officials of influential women’s groups, including National Catholic Community Service, National Council of Negro Women, Daughters of the Confederacy, and major business, labor and social service groups. When they landed in Des Moines, their tour leader was Director Hobby.140 In September Hobby took to the airwaves again, this time on a Sunday afternoon radio program on the NBC station in New York City. Her topic was “Women without Ration Books,” an elucidation of another advantage gained by women joining the WAC.141 The marketing drive continued. On October 8 she appeared on the popular “Kate Smith Show” on the ABC radio network.142 On November 30 she was in the gymnasium at Barnard College in Manhattan, speaking at an armed services assembly of students. At the assembly she scaled back the recruitment goal, saying that the WAC needed 400,000 to 500,000 volunteers.

139 “Mrs. Hobby a Col.,” New York Times, July 6, 1943; “Col. Hobby Pleads for More Recruits,” New York Times, July 22, 1943. 140 “Women’s Leaders to See WAC Camps,” New York Times, August 2, 1943. 141 Advertisement, New York Times, September 5, 1943. 142 “Radio Today”, New York Times, October 8, 1943.

102 Emphasizing her challenge to the young women, and perhaps at the same time undercutting it, she added, “We’ve never been able to get a volunteer army that big.” Years of careful writing, proofreading and editing had made Hobby a particularly precise writer and speaker. This time, her statement about army history was not quite right. 143 Perhaps the most inventive recruitment concept was one devised by Hobby’s deputy director Maj. Jessie P. Rice. Rice, whose background included teaching and industrial sales management, reasoned that the smear campaign and the recruiting shortfall both rose from lack of public understanding and support of the WAC concept.144 To gain public support she proposed a competition of all forty-eight states, with each state to recruit a state company which would carry the state flag and be identified by state armbands. Gen. Marshall would enlist the state governors, who would appoint prominent civic leaders to organize the local groups. The system, much like the techniques used to raise troops in America’s colonial and revolutionary periods, was named the “All-States Campaign.” Col. Hobby, warming to the plan, added another appeal. Each town would list its sons who were battle casualties and a woman would be recruited to replace each.145 The Army, especially the Army Air Forces, supported the plan, including allocating funds for newspaper advertising. The radio networks backed it, and Army field commanders cooperated. Of particular importance was cooperation from the War Manpower Commission, charged with mobilization of workers for production of war materiel. The Commission initially agreed to cooperate, but when the plan unfolded, insisted in sequestering a large percentage of war industries, denying employees the right to leave. In some cases, the Commission suppressed local publicity. At other times it released notices of the threat the plan posed to production goals, generating negative headlines. The result was a confused public.

143 “Service Rally at Barnard,” New York Times, November 29, 1943. A historical nitpicker sent a letter to the Times in defense of American courage and patriotism. Calling Hobby to task, he asserted that 420,000 volunteered to serve in the Spanish-American War, that the U.S. fielded more than 400,000 volunteers in the First World War, and that both North and South had more than 400,000 volunteers before instituting the draft. Letters to the editor, New York Times, December 9, 1943. 144 The smear campaign is discussed later in the chapter. 145 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 235-46. The All-States Campaign described in Treadwell is summarized in this and the next two paragraphs.

103 The ten-week drive generated 10,619 recruits, approximately equal to Maj. Rice’s conservative estimate. Though the results were modest, the campaign produced higher numbers of volunteers than any other WAC recruiting drive of the war. More important, the positive publicity in most parts of the country about the recruiting drive went a long way toward squelching the slander campaign, as Rice predicted it would. By Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day), May 8, 1945, 99,388 women had joined the WAC. The total was considerably short of the Congressional goal of 150,000, despite all of the efforts expended in recruiting campaigns. An Army history of the WAC listed the reasons for the shortfall: “continuous male opposition to women in uniform; the ‘slander campaign;’” and “competition from industry and from the other women’s services.” WACs could perform 406 of the Army’s 628 military occupational specialties. Potentially, 1,300,000 women could replace men in those specialties, freeing them for combat or specialty roles not suitable for women. The Army general staff and WAC Director Hobby favored drafting women to fill the ranks of the women’s services, and Gallup polls conducted during the war showed that the general public agreed. Congress, however, did not agree and failed to seriously consider draft proposals.146 Retrospective appraisals of WAC enlistment efforts generally conclude that Col. Hobby, her staff, and WAC marketing consultants were diligent in their efforts to increase the number of volunteers. Serving in the women’s volunteer army simply was not attractive to most young American women, regardless of the talent or effort expended in proving otherwise. Table 2 depicts WAC recruiting results.147

146 Morden, Women’s Army Corps, 24. The WAC total was 99,388; the combined total serving in either the WAC or the WAAC was approximately 140,000. In addition to the three negative factors listed by the army in the Morden essay, other factors discouraged volunteers, including low likelihood of overseas deployment; high likelihood of stateside deployment in a remote or undesirable location; and in the case of African American corps women, the likelihood of being garrisoned in the segregated South. One problem was traceable to Hobby; she successfully advocated higher standards for women enlisted in the army than for men. Her reasoning was that less-qualified men could be given jobs in supply or construction as ordinary unskilled laborers. Women typically did not have the physical strength for those bottom-rung jobs, so higher standards were needed to assure that everyone taken into the corps could be utilized. See Treadwell, “Outline,” 3. 147 Cite MacGregor or Campbell, etc.

104 Table 2. Year-end strength of Women’s Army Corps, 1942-1946. Year Total Officers Enlisted 1942 12,767 1,545 11,222 1943 57,731 5,456 51,675 1944 90,191 5,878 84,313 1945 43,813 4,709 39,104 1946 9,655 1,194 8,461 Source: Appendix A, The Women’s Army Corps, Mattie Treadwell.148

WAC planners were counting on the uniforms to attract recruits to the corps.149 Phrased more precisely, the planners did not want to select uniforms that would not appeal to the volunteer women’s army. Insignia for the new women’s corps was up to the Heraldic Section of the Quartermaster Corps. Their first suggestion was a bee-like creature which Hobby rejected, calling it a “bug.” She added that she did not want to become the Queen Bee. The Heraldic Section next suggested the insignia could be the head of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene, the goddess of handicrafts and of just wars. In battle, Athene led the way to victory, peace, and prosperity. Hobby happily accepted the design, which was also incorporated into the corps banner.150 Hobby’s personal uniform was a matter of some importance – she symbolized the ideal of the women’s corps and her personal appearance doubtless contributed to her selection as the corps’ founding commander. Her personal wardrobe included tailor-made clothing of various kinds; her uniform needed to be of comparable quality and workmanship. In her first weeks as corps commander she had only one uniform, shipped to her in Washington in June 1942. The standard narrative of her life faithfully repeats that she traveled with her single uniform, plus a fan and an iron,

148 Peak strength, reached in May 1945, totaled 98,935. 149 Ann Allen, “The News Media and the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps: Protagonists for a Cause,” Military Affairs 1986 50(2): 78. 150 Mattie Treadwell, “Outline–Possible Subjects for Discussion,” manuscript, September 28, 1982, 1. “Oveta Culp Hobby – WAC” folder, Hobby Family Papers. Treadwell prepared the outline for Hobby’s interview by a writer. Vera Williams describes other attributes of Athene that make her an apt choice as the corps’ symbol: Athene “would cook, navigate, and supply clothing and weapons – a nice parallel on [WAAC] job descriptions.” Other parallels are explained in Williams, WACs, 28, 30. In Greek mythology, Pallas Athene is a perpetual virgin. Whether the Heraldic Section considered this attribute is not a part of the record.

105 which enabled her to wash, dry, and iron the shirt nightly.151 The story, recorded in Treadwell’s Army history and thenceforward in several biographical sketches of Oveta Hobby, is certainly credible. Given sufficient repetition, it is unforgettable. Syndicated newspaper columnist Drew Pearson gave a boost to the only-one-uniform fable, reporting that on an occasion in fall 1942 photographers showed up at a radio studio to take photos of Hobby broadcasting an appeal for more WAC volunteers. When they arrived, they found Hobby dressed in a stylish feminine dress, not in the uniform they had expected. Hobby explained that, with only one uniform, hers was at the cleaner’s, so she had to wear civilian clothes on this particular day. The photographers arranged to come back on another day, when Hobby would be in her uniform.152 The War Department planners working on the uniform were not clothing professionals; rather, they were Army personnel, both male and female, doing the best they could. Treadwell’s account of the decision-making process includes the description of “seeing Lt. F. stalk through the office with a cigar in one hand and a pair of pink panties in the other.”153 The planners called in well-known designers, directed by Dorothy Shaver, vice president of Manhattan’s Lord & Taylor, to help design the uniforms.154 Other designers included Mangone, Maria Krum, Russell Patterson, Helen Cookman, Mary Sampson, all of whom were recognized fashion designers of the time. The planning committee made decisions quickly. The jacket was compounded of several design concepts; a pleated skirt was rejected by the Quartermaster General as consuming too much material; a blue color scheme was proposed, but Hobby rejected it preferring fabrics similar to those used by the Army.155 Slacks seemed sensible to some but were

151 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 50; Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby,” 8. 152 Drew Pearson, Washington Merry-Go-Round,” United Feature Syndicate, December 6, 1942. An invoice from a New York City tailoring firm, K. Wragge, Inc., is for four “Khaki Flannel Waists,” custom shirts made to order for Oveta Hobby and sent to Washington. The price of twenty dollars per shirt is indicative of the quality of the uniform Hobby wore. Ordering four at a time probably relieved Hobby of traveling with her fan and iron. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 12, folder 8, WRC. 153 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 37. 154 Time, “‘Maj.” Hobby’s WAACs,” Time, May 25, 1942, online unpaginated. 155 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 37.

106 rejected by Hobby as too masculine. She was concerned about anything which gave a rough or masculine appearance.156 Much has been made of the “Hobby hat.” Time reported a WAC complaint that the hats were not “as cute as the Marine women’s.” The magazine quoted an unnamed potential recruit explaining why the Corps was having enlistment problems: “WAC hats are terrible. They were designed for Mrs. Hobby. She’s the only one they look smart on.”157 Although Hobby was closely identified with the hat, she did not select it, as many believed. Most uniform decisions, including choice of a hat, were made by a conference committee. Hobby was a member, but was frequently outvoted by the majority.158 The hat consisted of a circular pillbox body and a stiff, nearly flat brim. It was difficult to keep neat under field conditions. As the number of different Army occupations performed by WACs continued to expand, WACs found the hat increasingly cumbersome or inappropriate. In the European theater of operations the Hobby Hat was all but retired from use. The Army could not furnish adequate cleaning and blocking services, resulting in an inability for the corps women “to maintain military appearance.”159 Mismatched uniforms, worn second-hand clothing, and mis-manufactured items all combined to make the Women’s Army Corps uniforms visually unappealing. In 1944 members of Congress began to publicly criticize WAC appearance and a Gallup poll ranked WAC uniforms well below those of the other women’s services.160 There was a reason for the low approval rating. WAVE uniforms were designed by Mainbocher, a celebrated couturier; WAC uniforms were designed by a committee.161 Hobby’s personal uniform, although not designed by Mainbocher, always looked good on her. Other Washington-based WAC officers, particularly those involved in recruitment, were required to wear uniforms that fit nicely and looked attractive. Accordingly, instead of

156 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 38, 163. The decision to reject slacks in favor of skirts was regrettable at times. During physical training women had to clamber up and down a structure resembling an oversized jungle gym, while wearing skirts. 157 Time cover story, “Hobby’s Army,” 17 January 1944, 57-62. 158 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 38. 159 Greenburg, “WAAC-WAC,” 14. The design is called kepi and is a traditional military design still worn by the French gendarmerie. During and after World War II and garlanded with gold braid, it was the hat design worn by French General Charles de Gaulle. Hobby proposed a garrison cap, the type of cap worn by male soldiers; it was denied. 160 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 528-529. 161 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 167.

107 relying on the Quartermaster Corps’ suppliers for government-issue clothing, Hobby and those around her wore uniforms tailored for them by Saks Fifth Avenue, a fact not mentioned in Army’s authorized account of the war.162 A spiral of interest on the part of some of the public went like this. Women soldiers were a novelty; women in military uniform were also a novelty, at least to most Americans; and the undergarments of women in uniform were something new and interesting to talk about, and for the press to write about. Newsweek wrote of “Mrs. Hobby’s Wacks,” with the sub-heading, “New Women’s Army Auxiliary Will Girdle 25,000 for War.” The magazine article concluded with the sentence, “Part of [the new uniform] will be a girdle, to be supplied free by the Army.”163 Hobby’s first press conference brought many questions about the new corps. Reporters asked if WACs would be punished by sending them to the guardhouse. Others asked about nail polish and makeup, and whether women would be permitted to wear civilian clothes when off duty. Then one of the female reporters asked, “How about girdles?” Hobby answered that she did not yet know.164 Not long after training began, a Quartermaster Corps committee “made personal investigations at Fort Des Moines” and determined that only one-fourth of the women were wearing government-issue girdles; the rest wore none or purchased a commercial brand. The Quartermaster Corps considered disbursing an allowance with which women could buy undergarments; WAC headquarters concurred. However, there were legislative barriers and both the Quartermaster Corps and the WAC leadership abandoned the idea. One Quartermaster colonel suggested that proper appearance of WACs should be the result of exercise and good posture rather than by use of “surgical contraptions.” He wrote that if brassieres and girdles were issued to women, “such devices could well be considered for the officers and enlisted men.” The Army stopped issuing girdles and

162 Enid Nemy, “Mabel Carney Stover: Remembering Normandy,” New York Times, June 30, 1993. Stover told her interviewer that she was the first WAC to set foot in Normandy. 163 Newsweek, “Mrs. Hobby’s Wacks,” Newsweek, May 25, 1942, 45. 164 United Press, “Girdles or Guns – New Women’s Army Problem,” Oakland (CA) Post-Inquirer, May 16, 1942; Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 48.

108 brassieres, which required WACs to supply their own, without reimbursement for personal expense.165 WAVES, SPARS, and Women Marines were provided with government-issue dress uniforms to be worn off-duty or on social occasions. Hobby recognized the benefit of something similar for the WAC. When recommended, the idea was rejected by the Army supply bureaucracy on the grounds that Army males were not to be issued dresses. Hobby counter-proposed that the clothing be made available for WACs to purchase. This concept was also rejected. She proposed to add color to the uniforms by the addition of inexpensive scarves and gloves, similar to the other women’s services. Rejected. Finally, the Meek report attack on WAC uniforms – paradoxically – came to Hobby’s rescue. To defend herself and her staff, including civilian advisors, from the spurious Meek charges of incompetence, Hobby provided documentation of two years of recommendations and requisitions – almost all denied, often for execrable reasons. Gen. Marshall was now involved and he began accepting Hobby recommendations. He approved chamois-colored scarves and gloves; he accepted Hobby’s recommendations for light-weight materials to replace the heavy khaki previously used for summer uniforms; he approved the idea of off-duty dresses, one for summer, another for winter, furnished to WACs at government expense. When the Quartermaster General protested that these could not be furnished in a timely manner, Marshall thought otherwise; the uniforms appeared on time.166 Other design modifications took longer. Under pressure from Marshall, the bureaucracy accepted more of Hobby’s suggestions. But some improvements came too late. The reality of the supply pipeline kept the many changes from reaching camp storerooms until near the end of the war. Fortunately for the women’s corps, the Chief of Staff took a positive step not included in WAC requests. To gain better oversight of the relationship between operating groups and their WAC components, Marshall put a WAC- relationship specialist in each group as a method of maintaining attention on the treatment of the women in the Army.167

165 Mattie E. Treadwell, “‘A Debt and a Date,’” unpublished manuscript, 80. Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 12, WRC. 166 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 531. 167 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 275-76.

109 WAC uniform design was one issue. A related issue was the almost complete failure to deliver uniforms, once designed. Florida-trained women showed up at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the winter with only summer cottons. Other corps women were sent to Arizona with one shirt; overcoats were not to be found. Some women went through basic training in the civilian clothes they left home with. Most delays were attributed to Quartermaster Corps staff debates over minor policy questions, rather than problems of logistics or manufacturing capacity. The men in the Quartermaster Corps were not doing their job.168 Hobby went to bat for improved uniform supply in 1944. Supplies were ample, but Army policy required WACs to wear out their mismatched uniforms before exchanging them for properly made clothing. Hobby understood that uniform issues were part of the recruitment problem, but she could not get the Army’s supply structure to budge.169 September 1942 found unseasonable cold in Iowa, including early snow. Hobby hurried to Fort Des Moines, and found her troops in bad shape. Barracks and training rooms were cold, with heating systems not yet activated for the coming winter. She took a warm coat to Des Moines. On arrival she found that all the troops had to fend off the early winter temperatures was a summer raincoat. Hobby wore a summer raincoat instead of the one she brought. Recruits had contracted colds; unheated classrooms seemed to breed upper respiratory problems. Before she left, Col. Hobby was sick, too. Her response was to requisition enlisted men’s overcoats from nearby military bases. Because of WAC coat supply problems, the requisitioned coats were the WAC overcoats through the winter.170 The September problems at Fort Des Moines recurred two months later. When Hobby returned from England on November 11, she found the supplies of winter clothing in Fort Des Moines had been distributed and new recruits were coming in with no clothing available. Further, recruiters had advised them to arrive with only one outfit. Women from southern and southwestern states were particularly affected.171 After several days of frustration trying to dislodge clothing and explanations from the Army’s supply

168 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 149-50. 169 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 527. 170 Treadwell, “Debt,” 82. 171 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 99.

110 functionaries, Hobby acted. First, she stopped newly trained units from being shipped out until proper clothing was provided. Second, she told recruiters to advise all recruits to bring enough of their own clothes to last for several months. Third, she checked the written records of her staff to confirm that they had made the appropriate requests and requisitions, and in a timely manner. They had. Then she called Maj. Gen. Wilhelm D. Styer, Chief of Staff of the Army supply command, laid out the situation and informed him that if the WACs could not be supplied for the coming winter, her resignation would be necessary. Styer investigated, then agreed that his staff had mishandled the situation and quickly gave orders authorizing emergency procurement of any available kind of cold-weather clothing.172 Threatening to resign is an ultimatum that must be employed sparingly and skillfully in an organization like the U.S. Army. That Col. Hobby felt impelled to make the threat indicated that she was very serious about solving the problem. She would threaten resignation only one other time.

Questions about girdles and brassieres reflect natural human interests. In moderation and within bounds, the titillation quotient can be maintained at temperate levels. The Little Colonel was a big girl; she understood this. She also was more than aware of the nature and level of rumors British women’s services had confronted. And she knew the WAC would confront many of the same frequently unsavory delinquencies. The press – Hobby’s milieu – could be a help and would be a hindrance. She understood all this. Implanting women in the male U.S. Army began a battle of the sexes, with men the aggressors. Epithets came at the WACs, and at the Director. Reflecting Fort Des Moines’ history as a horse cavalry post, WACs were sometimes called “Hobby horses.” Jokes ranged from ribald to raunchy. A mild example: a WAC recruit asked, “Where do I eat?” “You mess with the officers,” came the answer. “Yes, I know,” said the WAC, “but where do I eat?”173

172 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 100-101. 173 Greenburg, “‘Debt, Date,’” 55. Many commanders laughed at the “dirty” jokes. In contrast, Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces (AAF) throughout the war, forbade dirty jokes and disrespectful behavior. As a result, the AAF was the WACs’ most popular branch of the army; forty percent of all WACs went to the AAF. See Williams, WACs, 43.

111 “Release a man for combat” proved to be an unfortunate slogan for the WAC. Men being men, the Army being an army, there arose a broad assumption on the part of many that the new women’s corps would provide physical companionship for Uncle Sam’s fighting men. Further, considering that the majority of uniformed men never saw combat, the new corps would be invaluable behind the front lines, as well. With few exceptions, this was not the reason young-to-middle-aged American women enlisted. Many signed up in an authentic spirit of patriotic support for a nation at war. Others were widowed by Pearl Harbor or the debacle of Bataan peninsula or by later combat. Soldiers’ wives and sisters – sometimes mothers – joined, in an expression of unity with their family member and his sacrifice. In actuality, physical companionship for these women would be easier if they did not join the WAC, a fact later confirmed statistically.174 A study of medical records in 1943 showed that incidences of WACs with venereal disease were almost zero, orders of magnitude lower than Army men or statistically comparable civilian women. The pregnancy rate was one-fifth of the rate of civilian counterparts.175 The question of physical companionship was highlighted when the War Department received a request from the European Theater for black WACs who were needed “for morale purposes.” European Theater officers saw the request as a way to defuse racial tension caused by black U.S. troops dating white European girls. The request infuriated Hobby and her staff, and put them on notice about the difficulties they faced.176 The WAC campaign for legitimacy encountered setbacks, as when “Amber d’Georg” came on the training scene. To boost her career the young lady succeeded in enlisting in the women’s corps, then resumed her profession as a stripper, this time at the Casino Theater on Locust Street in downtown Des Moines. Her specialty was a “Samoan love dance.” Amber was quickly discharged from the corps. “I can laugh about it now,” Hobby said later, recalling the incident, “but at the time it was months before I could

174 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 620. 175 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 193. 176 Renee Christine Romano, Race Mixing: Black-white marriage in postwar America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 20.

112 even smile.” Adding to the Director’s displeasure was the attention drawn to Amber in a December 1942 edition of Life magazine.177 Hobby and her WAC staff had to work around various obstacles to recruitment. War planners understood the crucial role women production workers filled in the manufacture of equipment and ordnance. It did not make sense to cripple industrial output in order to fill the ranks of the military services. Before a woman working in a war industry could exchange her civilian coveralls for Army khaki, her employer had to give written notice of approval.178 American men, in and out of uniform, were a major impediment. Many men – fathers, husbands, boyfriends, brothers – were opposed to the women’s military services, for a variety of reasons. Social conservatism kept many women at home or close to home. Sexual suspicions and jealousy were barriers. The need for family income, for more income than paltry Army pay, stood in the way, particularly when one or more male family members were in military service and family finances were already straitened.179 Some religious leaders opposed the idea of women in military service, with Roman Catholic clerics especially active. Commonweal, a popular liberal Roman Catholic weekly wrote that the war work of women wouldn’t matter, because “the soul of our society will already be lost.” The Roman Catholic bishop of Fall River, Massachusetts stated publicly that he “hoped no Catholic woman would join” the WAC. Catholic opposition was sufficiently pronounced that Time wrote an article about it, quoting a Brooklyn, New York, church publication that said the women’s corps was “intended to break down the traditional American and Christian opposition to removing women from the home and to degrade her by bringing back the pagan female goddess of de-sexed, lustful sterility.”180 Even with these obstacles to recruitment, the women’s corps during its start-up period had more volunteers than the corps could clothe, train, and deploy. Then, in late 1942, the interest of potential volunteers peaked. By early 1943 the situation was clear. Enlistments were down; WAC leadership knew it had a problem. Some of the serious

177 Associated Press, “New Job of Oveta’s More than a Hobby,” Memphis Commercial-Appeal, January 22, 1953; Allen, “News Media,” 79. Mills, “In the long run.” 178 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 234-235. 179 “Catholics v. WAACs,” Time, June 15, 1942, online unpaginated. 180 “Catholics v. WAACs,” Time, June 15, 1942, online unpaginated.

113 marketing issues would probably never go away, but now there was an even more serious obstacle to recruitment and to the overall mission of the women’s corps – the “smear campaign.” No one person or entity orchestrated it, it rose spontaneously . . . and predictably. Hobby and others in the pre-planning group knew from the British experience that the new American corps would have three serious issues to confront and try to manage. First, “auxiliary” status, working “with” instead of “in” the Army, consigned women to a clearly subordinate level and neutered corps leadership. Second, raising large numbers of women volunteer recruits was probably not possible. (Britain had to draft them.) Third, putting women in uniform would spawn rumors that would have to be dealt with – and lived with. An example is an all-soldier (all male) revue at Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn, including a generous rasher of humor at the expense of women soldiers. Humor on the level of rhyming “latrine” with “Begin the beguine,” with lyrics becoming rougher as the song progressed. Another song was titled, “I want to bivouac with a WAC.” The audience, which included women, heard much more. A newspaper reporter wrote, “A healthy irreverence for Col. Oveta Culp Hobby’s gals was inherent. Another sketch in which a female sergeant discovers how her company of WACs violated the anti-girdle rule was a delightfully rowdy dissertation on feminine vanity.”181 Civilian or military, home-front or deployed, women during World War II lived and dealt with misogyny (as they were required to do before and after the war). The slurs against uniformed women were widespread, and initially inchoate. As the months marched by, the rumors took several forms. While directed against women in the other military services as well, the women’s army was the biggest and most visible organization and so received most of the abuse. Unsurprisingly, most of the smears focused on WAC sexuality: WAC women were by turns lesbians, man-haters, or prostitutes.182 In early 1943 smears that had been amorphous congealed into a tide of odium threatening to overwhelm WAC accomplishments and objectives.

181 New York Times, “‘Stars and Gripes’ at Fort Hamilton,” New York Times, July 16, 1943. 182 Greenberg, “Debt to Democracy,” 56. The WAC leadership was concerned about lesbianism and “mannish” appearance, and emphasized femininity, sexual restraint, and the middle-class status of corps members. For a recent treatment of sexual and gender issues in the WAC, see Leisa D. Meyer, Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

114 The Army needed to act, but it did not always make good decisions. Although the WAC director was a bona fide public relations expert, the Army Bureau of Public Relations, run by Hobby supporter Gen. Alexander Surles, refused to allow her to intrude on their turf. They ignored her recommendations. At one point she suggested a radio performance of the WAC Band. Surles batted the idea down on grounds that special appearances would disturb the orderly procedure of planned publicity. As happened many times during her tenure as commander of the women’s corps, her hands were tied.183 Cartoons were a particular problem. The Army could not rein in caricatures, either in the civilian or the military press, where cartoons in camp newspapers were particularly egregious. Army historian Mattie Treadwell wrote that cartoonists ridiculed a woman by exaggerating “those portions of her figure that differed from the masculine version. Although peculiarly masculine garments were not considered funny, the mere depiction of a brassière, empty or otherwise, was alone enough to seem comic to cartoonists.” Treadwell’s Army history of the WAC during the war includes some of these cartoons.184 It is worth noting that not all cartoons presented WACs in a negative light. Vic Herman drew “Winnie the WAC,” a cartoon representation of a member of the women’s corps. Winnie was attractive and could be incisive, victimized, or air-headed, depending on the point of each cartoon. The cartoons showed Winnie as she coped with problems, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Herman’s “Winnie” appeared in Stars and Stripes, Yank, Life, and Look, and in Army camp newspapers.185 The nation’s mania for uniforms contributed to the problem. Women ordnance workers in ersatz WAC uniforms were reported in barroom brawls; the Civil Air Patrol adopted a near-WAC uniform for women members; department stores sold WAC uniform knock-offs for women, adolescents, and children. In several east coast cities, streetwalkers, known as “Victory Girls,” enhanced their appeal by wearing uniforms indistinguishable to most people from the uniforms of Director Hobby’s corps. In Hampton Roads these good-time girls waited outside the port entrance, identifying

183 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 194. 184 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 195. 185 Stars and Stripes is now, and was during World War II, the overseas newspaper published for the U.S. Armed Forces; Yank was a magazine published weekly by the U.S. Army during World War II; Life and Look were popular pictorial newsmagazines of the era. Republished in recent years, Herman cartoons add to the understanding of daily WAC life.

115 themselves as WACs and picking up soldiers as they left the harbor area.186 The Quartermaster Corps rejected Director Hobby’s recommendations for controlling the problem by regulation of the clothing manufacturers.187 Approaching the summer of 1943, Col. Hobby suspected concerted rumor activity. Too often, slander with identical details would break out in several parts of the country at the same time. Suspicions grew that Axis agents were spreading the scandal stories. Hobby called for investigation and both Army intelligence and the FBI became involved. Rumors included stories of large numbers of pregnant WACs being shipped home from overseas; that ninety percent of WACs in Hampton Roads were pregnant; that WACs were trained to take prophylactics with them when they left their quarters so that they would always be ready to perform their morale-building duties.188 The flood of anti-WAC revulsion had its own momentum, now advanced by a New York newspaper columnist who wrote an exposè with a specific allegation. Writing on June 8, 1943 in the New York Daily News and syndicated as the feature “Capitol Stuff” in many daily newspapers, John O’Donnell “revealed” that “contraceptives and prophylactic equipment” would be furnished to WACs. Providing these items was pursuant to a “secret agreement” between Hobby and key generals, and O’Donnell told of a document proving the arrangement. The anti-New Deal reporter added that “Mrs. Roosevelt wants all the young ladies to have the same overseas rights as their brothers and fathers.” To make sure readers understood him, the reporter repeated the allegations in two subsequent columns.189 On June 10, 1943 Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson angrily denounced the rumor about contraceptives and prophylactic equipment, charging that spreading the stories was “actually an aid to the enemy.” Stimson reasoned that the enemy had a stake in American combat strength and anything that eroded that strength provided an advantage to the enemy. Representative Edith Nourse Rogers and Col. Oveta Culp Hobby joined Stimson in the condemnation.190 Broad media distribution of the slander was a bombshell to the women’s corps. Younger women were called by their parents to return home; older women were

186 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 198-99. 187 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 190. 188 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 201. 189 Treadwell, Woman’s Army Corps, 203; Miller, “News Media,” 81. 190 “Stimson Condemns Gossip about WAAC,” New York Times, June 11, 1943.

116 embittered to read and hear how they were regarded, at least by some of the American public. Army intelligence investigated the reporter’s accusations. The only publication they could find that might have stimulated the insulting columns was a recently published WAC hygiene pamphlet, well-crafted and without reference to either contraceptives or prophylactic practices. Convinced that the story was fabricated, the Army demanded a retraction by the columnist, who was forced to comply, though he insisted that the unnamed source of his information was reliable.191 The worst of the smear campaign was over, but military misogyny was not so easily moderated. Years later, a former WAC wrote about a memorable and distressing incident of May 1945, when the women’s corps had been established for three years and the war was almost over. A heavily decorated Air Corps enlisted man was walking toward the woman on a sidewalk at Ellington Field, south of Houston. Just before they passed each other, the airman “spat a blob of spit so powerful it hit the sidewalk in front of my field shoe like a rock from a slingshot . . . The contempt that hardened his face was worse than the spit.”192 Ann Allen added a media twist to the slump in recruitment. During the early months of existence of the women’s corps, the organization was novel, newsworthy. As the war moved on, its activities were no longer as interesting to the public; they were old news. Consequently, with the exception of women’s magazines, the organization all but disappeared from the pages of newspapers and general-interest magazines. The “smear campaign,” called also the “scandal campaign,” rekindled the interest of the newshounds. But not the kind of interest, and not the kind of resultant articles, that would boost the level of recruitment.193 Successfully launching a branch of the military service – one that most of the military opposes – requires an organizer and a leader. Oveta Hobby had to confront each obstacle or challenge and determine how she wanted her organization – small at first, but growing extremely fast – to deal with it. In many ways, she was the right person for the job. Her years of experience actively guiding the state House of Representatives; her

191 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 203-04. 192 Aileen Kilgore Henderson, Stateside Soldier: Life in the Women’s Army Corps, 1944-1945, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 174. 193 Allen, “News Media,” 81.

117 political contacts inside the federal government; her mastery of the production and commercial details of a major daily newspaper; her years of work in women’s clubs and charitable organizations; and her leadership role in professional societies had all provided experiences she drew upon as leader of the women’s corps. Perhaps her most useful attribute was her interpersonal skills. She had the command presence vital to military leaders; the ability to express herself persuasively in small groups and in front of large audiences; and the personal qualities that bond relationships with peers and subordinates. Finally, she was able to pick her battles, to push hard for what might be attainable and to select alternate objectives when necessary.

118 Table 3. Summary Timeline: 1941-1945 ______1941 May 28 Rep. Edith Rogers introduced bill to create a women’s army July Oveta Culp Hobby appointed Expert Consultant to the Secretary of War December 7 Pearl Harbor attacked

1942 January Preplanning commission for the women’s army established February 23 Hobby joined preplanning commission May 15 Congress passed bill creating WAAC May 16 President Roosevelt signed bill into law; authorized strength of 25,000 May 17 Hobby sworn in as Director of WAAC May 22 Uniform design announced July 20 Ft. Des Moines Training Center opened October 18 Col. Hobby departed with E. Roosevelt for Britain November 5 Five WAAC officers arrived in Algiers November 11 Col. Hobby and E. Roosevelt returned from European theater of war November 20 President Roosevelt authorized WAAC strength to 150,000

1943 March 2 Col. Hobby became first U.S. military officer to christen a U.S. naval vessel July 3 President Roosevelt signed WAC legislation into law July 5 Col. Hobby commissioned as a colonel in regular Army September 75% of WAAC had reenlisted as members of the WAC

1944 January 17 Col. Hobby and the WAC organization featured on the cover of Time June 6 D-Day; Allies invaded France July 14 49 WACs arrived in France July Col. Hobby hospitalized in Brooke Army Hospital for exhaustion

1945 January 2000 WACs stationed in Paris January 8 Col. Hobby awarded the Distinguished Service Medal February 3 Central Postal Battalion (the 6888th) sailed for England May 5 V-E Day; victory in Europe July 12 Col. Hobby resigned August 15 V-J Day; victory in the Pacific

119

Figure 6 Time, January 12, 1944.

120

Figure 7 Oveta Culp Hobby, sworn in as Director of WAAC, May 17, 1942. Woodson Research Center, Rice University.

Figure 9 Col. O. Hobby and Maj. W. Burgoyne at the Pyramids. The National Archives, Still Picture Branch.

Figure 8 Basic training in skirts. The Women’s Army Corps, Mattie Treadwell.

Figure 10 Humor in uniform. The Women’s Army Corps, Mattie Treadwell.

121

Figure 11 Col. Hobby and President Franklin D. Roosevelt Fort Oglethorpe. U.S. Army Photograph.

Figure 12 Hobby,Col. Eleanor Roosevelt, and Col. J. A. Hoag at Fort Des Moines. The Women’s Army Corps, Mattie Treadwell.

122

Figure 13 Discharge Certificate of Oveta Culp Hobby. William P. Hobby, Jr.

123 CHAPTER FOUR

1946-1952

The carefully tended account of the life of Oveta Culp Hobby that recurs in biographical sketches and in books that aggregate the lives of noteworthy American women all but omits her business and public service accomplishments in the period between her Houston homecoming following the war and her return to political prominence in the first administration of President Dwight Eisenhower.1 An examination of the publications of the time – especially newspapers, but also general interest magazines, trade publications, and Hobby’s own published writings – yields a coherent account of where she concentrated her formidable energy and what her leadership efforts accomplished. The chapter describes how Oveta Hobby expanded the family’s business interests, and how those interests helped shape the city of Houston. She made contributions to the country’s international standing while maintaining, even enhancing, her national presence. Her political interests led to an active role in helping change the political leadership in Washington. WAC Director Hobby had spent four years in Washington, much of the time separated from her young children and aging husband – Governor was sixty-seven the year she returned home. Her high-energy approach to work had sent her to the hospital in Washington, and sent her back to the hospital when she got home to Houston.2 Once recovered, she was able to spend some months restoring normalcy to the affairs of the Houston Post.

1 Two doctoral dissertations have been written about Hobby. While both provide excellent detail and analysis of the periods covered, the scope of the studies did not extend to a close examination of her activities in the years between the war and her service on Eisenhower’s cabinet. See Kelli Cardenas Walsh, “Oveta Culp Hobby: A Transformational Leader from the Texas Legislature to Washington, D.C.,” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2006); Debra Lynn Sutphen, “Conservative Warrior: Oveta Culp Hobby and the Administration of America’s Health, Education, and Welfare, 1953-1955,” (Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 1997). 2 Hobby resigned on July 12, 1945. “Timeline,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing, 1997), 58; Marguerite Barnes, “Oveta Culp Hobby (First Draft),” 11. Oveta Culp Hobby papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC; “People,” Time, July 10, 1944, online unpaginated.

124 A natural outgrowth of running a major regional daily newspaper was participation in state and national trade activities. Here, the familiar pattern of Hobby advancement obtained: first she joined an organization; soon she was selected as a director and assigned to a committee or work group; often she became the organization’s presiding officer. Her diligence, together with deftly applied interpersonal skills, quickly propelled her upward. Her prominence in trade organizations led to her selection to participate in leadership of charitable groups and government advisory committees. Hobby’s national prominence, her WAC experience, her almost manic reading regimen, and the benefits of Estelle Sharp’s tutelage made her an easy choice for international consulting assignments. Back in civilian life she returned to her fascination with partisan politics. Like other southern conservatives, she had become disaffected with the New Deal – and with aspects of the Democratic Party, even before the war. At the national political level, her move toward the Republican Party accelerated during the 1940s, leading to her support of Eisenhower in the 1952 election. The Cold War made most Americans conscious of international communism; Hobby was active in anticommunist efforts and ultimately caught up in a local manifestation of the Second Red Scare. During the war Colonel Hobby kept close track of the performance of the Houston Post and radio station KPRC, even down to the selection of Christmas gifts mailed to Post employees who volunteered or were drafted for the war effort. Her Houston staff mailed meticulous production and advertising reports to her in Washington, and she participated in editorial decisions.3 She spoke with Governor often, as they assessed the operations of their enterprises and scrutinized their performance. Back home after the war she was able to devote more of her time to building the businesses. The years she had invested in learning all aspects of newspaper publishing enabled her to operate a successful newspaper in the growing but competitive Houston market. Publishers and editors recognized Oveta Hobby’s abilities; they invited her to become a director of their trade and professional associations. Working newsmen also

3 While she was in Washington, Hobby’s secretary at the Post sent each day’s edition of the newspaper, along with operating reports, financial results, and requests for approval to pay bills. Will Hobby was deeply involved in daily operations, and so was Oveta Hobby, from afar. Files at the Woodson Research Center contain many examples of business-related correspondence between Hobby and her office in Houston. See Boxes 7-13, and 22.

125 acknowledged her managerial competence, as witnessed by a Chattanooga editor who told the Christian Science Monitor, “Mrs. Hobby can talk shop with the best of us. She knows the newspaper business from the composing room to the front office.”4 The Houston Post entered broadcast radio in the 1920s when the company established radio station KPRC. Pleased with radio station profitability, in 1949 the Hobbys wanted to expand their broadcasting activities to include television. The Federal Communications Commission was swamped with applications for licenses and imposed a moratorium to gain time to process applications already received and to determine how to proceed further with licensing. The Hobbys, and all others seeking to enter the business, were stymied. After several months of delay and frustration, Oveta Hobby answered a telephone call from Judge James A. Elkins, doyen of Houston’s powerful legal establishment and prime mover behind First City National Bank, one of the city’s two largest – the other being Jesse Jones’s bank. Elkins recommended that Hobby contact the owner of KLEE-TV, a start-up television station known to be in financial trouble. The owner, needing additional capital, wanted to sell half-interest in the station. Hobby and the owner met and discussed the transaction. Afterwards, she related the conversation to Elkins, who reacted with the suggestion that she buy one hundred percent of the station. Hobby demurred; the family did not have the resources for such a purchase. Judge Elkins pressed her further to buy, and then she asked him, “Can I borrow the money from you?” Elkins said yes. The Hobbys made an offer; time passed, because of delays by the Washington regulators. FCC approval finally came through, and the Hobbys had to make a decision, particularly difficult because competition from Jesse Jones’s Houston Chronicle was threatening to put either the Post or the city’s third and smallest daily, the Houston Press, out of business.5 The Post’s finances were not strong. Even so, Judge Elkins reconfirmed that he would provide the necessary financing. Judge Elkins was an advisor Hobby trusted. So was Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. As Hobby pondered the risks and rewards of an enormous gamble on the future of television, she telephoned Johnson in Washington for his advice about the outlook for

4 “Newspaper and Lively Family Keep Former WAC Head Busy,” Christian Science Monitor, April 13, 1949. 5 The Houston Press, under competitive pressure from both Houston Chronicle and Houston Post, shut down in 1964. For more on the Texas newspaper wars, see Patrick Cox, The First Texas News Barons (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005).

126 television. Johnson’s opinion was that the prospects for television were bright, even allowing for some start-up problems.6 Complicating the issue, Governor was seriously ill, confined to a downtown Houston neurological clinic. Oveta went to the clinic to discuss the decision, explaining the most recent changes in the proposed purchase. She later remembered Governor left it up to her, saying, “I will rely on your judgment.” She determined to go ahead. At the closing of the transaction she signed a check on an account that she knew did not have a balance sufficient to cover it. Speaking softly, Judge Elkins, her attorney in the transaction, assured her that enough money would be in her account by the time the check was presented for collection.7 The intrepid entrepreneur had created a delicate diplomatic problem. She had failed to tell one of the Post’s outside board members that she was proceeding with the purchase. When he was told of the enormity of the transaction, he was upset, and insisted on discussing it with Governor, now at home but confined to his bed. Oveta suggested that he go upstairs to Governor’s bedroom and discuss it without her, so that Governor could answer questions without being concerned about her feelings. She said after the director and Governor had discussed it, she and the director would sit down to lunch. Governor eased the man’s concerns and when he came downstairs he told Oveta, “Governor said that you now have the responsibility of running these things, and ‘I’ve never doubted her judgment before. I shan’t start now.’”8 Governor’s confidence was well placed. Renamed KPRC-TV, the struggling NBC affiliate soon became the most watched and most financially successful television station in the Houston market.9

6 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview by David G. McComb, Houston, TX, July 11, 1969, 25. Hobby family papers. Johnson knew a lot about the prospects of television broadcasting. A year before Hobby asked for his advice, he had petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for a license for a television station in Austin, Texas, only to be caught up in the FCC licensing moratorium. In 1952 he was granted a license, and no other television station in Austin was licensed for the next several years, despite multiple applications. The background of this market monopoly is described in Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 183. 7 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview by Marguerite Johnston, Houston, TX, undated, 2. Interviewer’s notes in Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 10, WRC. The Hobbys purchased KLEE-TV on June 1, 1950 and on July 3, changed the call letters to KPRC-TV. “Chronology,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 58. 8 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview, 3. 9 David G. McComb, “Houston.” Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/hdh3.html. The Hobby family sold KPRC-TV to the Washington Post Company in 1994.

127 The Post performed well, too, under Oveta’s direction. By 1951 it was the second largest newspaper in Texas, after its evening rival, the Houston Chronicle.10 A business magazine of the period, Dixie Business, honored Hobby by putting her on its cover, “the first woman to adorn the cover” in nearly a quarter of a century.11 Before the war, the newspaper fraternity acknowledged Oveta Hobby as the person in charge of the Post – she ran the newspaper. With Oveta in wartime Washington, Governor took more responsibility for day-to-day operations, meanwhile consulting regularly with the Little Colonel. After her return home she picked up the reins, resuming her former responsibilities. Governor deferred to her judgment, as illustrated by her role in the purchase of KLEE-TV. Additional examples confirm that she was in charge. During the 1948 Senate campaign, Lyndon Johnson identified Frank “Posh” Oltorf as a reporter sympathetic to Johnson’s campaign. He asked Posh to prevail on Posh’s cousin, Will Hobby, to hire him as a political reporter, assigning him to cover Johnson. The request was reasonable, since Posh had worked for the Post once before, as campus reporter when he was a student at Rice Institute. Posh went to Governor, who answered yes, but conditioned it: “Let me clear it with Oveta.”12 Oveta Culp Hobby was frequently in the public eye. Her years of women’s club leadership before the war conditioned her for the schedule of civic, charitable, and women’s club activities of postwar Houston. New Yorker magazine described a very public occasion with Hobby at its center. When Federated Department Stores13 opened its new Foley’s department store in downtown Houston, a large contingent of the press was

10 George Fuermann, Houston: Land of the Big Rich (Garden City: Doubleday, 1951), 129. The Hobby family sold the Houston Post in 1983 to the Toronto Star. The Hearst group bought the Houston Chronicle in 1987, later bought and closed the Post, eliminating the Chronicle’s only competitor. The Post perennially was less profitable than the Chronicle. Jesse Jones placed ownership of the Chronicle in Houston Endowment, Inc., a charitable foundation not subject to income taxes. The Post paid significant taxes, leaving reduced funds for dividends to owners, and less surplus for such expenses as employee wage increases. The Internal Revenue Tax Code prohibits such an arrangement, but powerful Texas Congressmen protected the Chronicle from the IRS for many years. Bill Hobby, interview, January 28, 2007. 11 Dixie Business Copy of cover in DDEL, T1. No date, but probably early 1950s from content. 12 Frank Oltorf, telephone interview by Marguerite Johnston Barnes, Ca. 1988, 2. From Marguerite Johnston Barnes research materials for Houston, The Unknown City, 1830-1991. Marguerite Johnston Barnes Papers, WRC, box 3, folder 17. Will Hobby and Posh’s father were cousins. Posh Oltorf later joined Brown & Root as a lobbyist and solver of political problems. He and Oveta Hobby became close friends, a relationship that lasted until both were in their late eighties. 13 Federated Department Stores owned Foley’s, Houston’s largest department store. Over the years Federated acquired many other department stores nationwide. The company has adopted Macy’s as its corporate name; Foley’s stores were renamed Macy’s in 2007.

128 there, including the New Yorker. Occupying an entire block in the center of the downtown business district, the architecturally impressive eight-story building was windowless except for first-floor display panels. During the building boom of the 1920s, New York architect Kenneth Franzheim designed Jesse Jones’s Gulf Building – for thirty-four years the tallest in Houston – and the Jones-underwritten coliseum for the 1928 Democratic Convention. Franzheim watched on October 20, 1947, as 200,000 people visited his award-winning building. At the noon dedication the featured speaker was Oveta Hobby, wowing the crowd with booster talk: “I think I’ll like Houston if they ever get it finished.” Stanley Walker, the author of a New Yorker article about the opening, attributed the original quotation to author O. Henry – ironic, considering O. Henry once was a reporter for Hobby’s newspaper. Walker wrote that the store had two employee cafeterias – one for white employees, one for black – noting that both were served by a single kitchen. A few years later, Foley’s segregated food service practices would become a more public matter.14 While the Hobbys worked to build their businesses, they were also part of the social scene. In 1951 the Houston Press society columnist noted Oveta Hobby and flamboyant oil millionaire Glenn McCarthy seated at McCarthy’s table at the Cork Club, the upscale Houston watering hole located in McCarthy’s hotel. A local entertainer sang a bespoke composition to the tune of the popular melody “Rum and Coca-Cola.” Hobby’s stanza: Colonel Hobby just got out of the Wacs She didn’t have to worry about income tax She used to be known from coast to coast Now all she’s got left is the Houston Post15

When McCarthy, called “The King of the Wildcatters,” completed construction of his 1,100-room Shamrock Hotel, south of Rice Institute, he threw a grand opening party that attracted revelers from all over Texas and from the east and west coasts. The party was on St. Patrick’s Day, 1949, in honor of McCarthy’s Irish heritage. Hobby cooperated in

14 Stanley Walker, “Something for Everybody,” New Yorker, March 13, 1948. 15 Bill Roberts, “The Town Crier,” Houston Press, September 13, 1949.

129 the festivities: newsboys, dressed in black tie attire, handed out commemorative copies of the Houston Post.16 Other Houston social events were more refined, as when the 8-F Crowd17 welcomed General and Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower to a soirèe on the top floor of the Lamar Hotel in downtown Houston – Jesse Jones’s home. It was not a penthouse suite, it was the entire floor, with windows on all four sides enabling Jones to count the buildings he owned, and allowing the distinguished guests to see all of the Bayou City from one vantage point. The Hobbys and close friends – the people who largely controlled the city – made the Eisenhowers feel welcome.18 Oveta and Will entertained at their home, too. When the NBC radio network broadcast a radio play live from a University of Houston stage, the Hobbys invited the Hollywood stars and their crew to their home at Two Remington Lane for a party. Hobby friends were invited, along with officials of NBC in New York and representatives of the show’s sponsor, United States Steel Corporation. Oveta and Will Hobby could count on good coverage from their favorite newspaper. The following morning, two articles, with photographs, showed Houston what a Hollywood party was like.19 In the several years prior to Oveta Culp Hobby’s return to government duty as a member of the Eisenhower administration, she seemed to be in meetings everywhere, customarily on the program as a speaker. At the same time, she was the prime mover in the Houston Post organization and an influential component of business and government leadership in her home state. Land promoters created Houston in 1836 and the city never outgrew its speculator mentality. The city, more than most cities, seemed to exist so that

16 At the time it was completed, the Shamrock Hotel was one of the largest in the country and claimed the world’s largest swimming pool, large enough for water skiing exhibitions. The hotel was an important public space and an aesthetic eyesore until it was demolished in 1987 to make room for expansion of the adjacent Texas Medical Center. Several accounts of the hotel grand opening exist; one of the best is Larry McMurtry, “Men Swaggered, Women Warred, Oil Flowed,” New York Times, September 29, 1996. A “wildcatter” is the name given someone who promotes oil and gas exploration, usually high-risk, high- reward ventures. 17 The 8-F Crowd did not call themselves “the 8-F Crowd,” but the rest of Houston did. Named for a suite eight floors below Jesse Jones’s penthouse, the “unofficial capital of Texas” was the place where a small group of men – and one woman – frequently met to consider what was best for Houston, and Texas, and America. The phenomenon is discussed in greater detail later in the chapter. 18 Houston Chronicle, “Jesse Joneses Honor Eisenhowers at Reception,” Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1949. 19 George Vaught, “Diana Lynn, Dan Daily Here for KPRC Drama,” Houston Post, October 5, 1951; Hubert Roussel, “Ode to Diana, a Lady Whose Look Is Really a Beautiful Mystery,” Houston Post, October 5, 1951.

130 its wealthier residents could multiply their financial assets. Groups of individuals – male – dominated the economy: manufacturing, extraction, transportation, communications, finance, law, and government.20 For a period of years, from the late 1930s until the early 1960s, the most influential of these coteries gathered after work, or sometimes at lunch, in Suite 8-F of the Lamar Hotel in downtown Houston.21 Membership in the 8-F Crowd was small, fluctuating as business and personal affairs dictated. Jesse Jones was the eminence grise of the city and of the control group that met downstairs from his rooftop home. Yet he did not often grace the suite with his presence. At the center of the people who met at the suite was George Brown.22 The suite belonged to Brown and Root, the construction conglomerate owned by George and his brother Herman (there was no longer a Root). Early in the company’s history, Herman Brown operated from Austin and his younger brother George lived in Houston. The suite provided a second home for Herman, who often came to Houston. Herman later moved to Houston, but the company kept the suite and used it as a meeting place for the group. Through the years, a daunting amount of wealth and power was represented by the men who sometimes gathered in the suite.23 The men – and one woman. Will Hobby was an early member of the 8-F group, and as the other half of the “Hobby Team,” Oveta was inducted into this inner circle.24 She was the more visible half, and the one who was

20 Houston Post journalist George Fuermann described the influence of the wealthy in Houston: Land of the Big Rich (New York: Doubleday, 1951); for more critical analysis of the influence of the wealthy on the growth of the city, see Joseph Pratt, “Civic Leadership in Houston,” Houston Review of History and Culture 1, no. 2 (Summer 2004); Joe R. Feagin, Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political-Economic Perspective (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988). 21 Eighty-seven other rooms or suites in the hotel belonged to companies involved in oil, banking, politics, and other activites. The hotel did not book conventions, as a courtesy to its regular clientele. “Nostalgia for Sale at a Houston Hotel,” New York Times, July 21, 1983. 22 George Brown was often characterized as the informal leader of the group. His daughter recalls that he did not consider himself the leader; to him, all were equals. She also recalls that the group did not agree on everything. Isabel Brown Wilson, interview by author, January 24, 2007. 23 For details of membership and activities of the Suite 8-F Crowd see Jimmy Banks, Money, Marbles and Chalk: The Wondrous World of Texas Politics (Austin: Texas Publishing Company, 1971); Dan Briody, The Halliburton agenda : the politics of oil and money (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004); Carleton, Don. Red Scare! Right-wing Hysteria. Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas. Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985; James W. Lamare, Texas Politics: Economics, Power and Policy (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1988); Joseph A.Pratt and Christopher J. Castaneda, Builders: Herman and George R. Brown (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999). 24 The Houston Chronicle obituary of Oveta Hobby named her as the only woman member of the group and noted that she was the last of the 8-F Crowd to die. See “Oveta Culp Hobby: Her Death Marks the End of an Era in Houston,” Houston Chronicle, August 17, 1995.

131 often accorded greater credit for the couple’s success. Oveta Hobby seldom joined other members to play cards or drink whiskey in the late afternoons, preferring to meet individuals for lunch in one of Houston’s downtown luncheon clubs. Like Jesse Jones, Oveta Hobby did not have to be physically inside the suite to be an imbedded part of the group.25 A few successes scored by those who sometimes met in Suite 8-F include election victories of Sam Rayburn, Lyndon B. Johnson, and John Connally; the privatization of the World War II-era Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines; the selection of Houston as the location of NASA’s Johnson Space Center; the site selection and construction of Houston’s Intercontinental Airport; and the growth of Halliburton Corporation.26 There are more. Often, the projects and enterprises of this group benefited from sympathetic press treatment. Member Jesse Jones owned the Houston Chronicle; members Oveta and Will Hobby owned the Houston Post.27

Early in her revived career as a press baron, Hobby went out into the wider world – and then went around it. She no longer wrote regular columns for the Post. Her writing generally was limited to speeches and other public appearances. An exception was a series of Post columns based on her 1947 trip as a passenger on Pan American World Airways’ first scheduled flight around the world. The inaugural flight on the Pan Am Clipper America was limited to publishing celebrities, owners or editors of major American newspapers and popular magazines. The Post reported that Hobby’s columns

25 George Brown’s daughter, Isabel Brown Wilson, remembered the suite and its guests, including Oveta Culp Hobby, who was a very close friend of both her father and mother. Wilson, who visited the suite from time to time, described the rooms as simple, with dark but not massive furniture, and with no personal effects – no photographs, no wall hangings, no flowers. Isabel Brown Wilson, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 24, 2007. 26Robert Bryce: Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 77-78. The Browns sold Brown and Root to Halliburton Corporation following the death of Herman Brown in 1962. Following acquisition of M. W. Kellogg Company in 1998, the subsidiary became known as Kellogg Brown and Root or KBR, the largest military contractor in the Iraq War beginning in 2003, and the largest non-union construction company in the U.S. Halliburton divested its KBR stock in early 2007. For details see “Private Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2007. 27 Johnston, Houston, 187. Suite 8-F members forecast the city’s need for land to expand civic facilities and bought the land in advance, selling it to the city at no profit. Facilities reported to be built on properties acquired by this method included most of the downtown Houston civic buildings and Houston’s primary aviation facility, the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, renamed in 1997 in honor of George H. W. Bush.

132 were so popular the newspaper published them in a collection, a slim volume modestly titled Around the World in 13 Days with Oveta Culp Hobby.28 Hobby’s wide reading and her diverse interests enabled the columns to provide insight into international affairs. She was openly critical of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, calling his regime anti-democratic, feudal, and corrupt. She wrote that she and her fellow journalists understood that perhaps one-fourth of American aid to Chiang’s Kuomintang government was “skimmed off,” stolen by Chiang and his associates. She judged the struggle between the Chiang’s Nationalists and their communist adversaries to be at an impasse.29 The America went from China to an airport in Tokyo, where a “smartly turned out” WAC band greeted the travelers. While in Japan, the itinerary took the media luminaries to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Tokyo. Hobby was particularly moved by the devastation of the firebombing of Tokyo, which she wrote was more destructive than the atomic bomb blasts in the two smaller cities. She allowed that “Instead of discussing the ethics of the atomic bomb, we should be discussing the ethics of warfare itself.”30 By 1947 Hobby was a national director of the Advertising Federation of America, elected at the annual convention in Boston. The new director delivered a speech – Hobby’s life was a seemingly endless schedule of speeches – choosing as her topic, the need to control atomic energy. She accused the world of having “international palsy since V-J day . . . for two years we have been pandering to expediency.” She digressed long enough to attack Henry Wallace for wrecking American foreign policy.31 The following year the Advertising Federation convened in New York where Hobby presented the annual “advertising woman of the year” award to an advertising executive with General Foods Corporation, one of the nation’s largest advertisers. Reelected two times to the group’s board of directors, in 1951 she was the toastmaster for the annual awards luncheon. Her speech that day addressed, among other subjects, President Harry S Truman’s recent decision to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a move she agreed with.

28 Oveta Culp Hobby, Around the World in 13 Days with Oveta Culp Hobby, Houston, Tex: privately printed, 1947. 29 Hobby, Around the World, 44-47. 30 Hobby, Around the World, 54. 31 Oveta Culp Hobby (speech, Advertising Federation of America, Boston, MA, 1947.) Oveta Culp Hobby Papers, WRC, Box 4, File 13.

133 In mid-twentieth century America most daily newspapers were family owned. The families by and large knew each other, primarily from press associations and other professional groups. Within a couple of decades, when the economics of the newspaper industry mandated agglomeration, the families bought and sold newspapers among themselves. The Reid family, owners of the New York Herald Tribune, knew Hobby and were impressed by her. In March 1948, when they established a family foundation to finance international study for young journalism students, they asked Hobby to sit on the foundation board. The Reids invited her back to New York a few months later to speak at the newspaper’s annual forum. The other featured speakers were presidential advisor Bernard Baruch and New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, at the time, the Republican candidate for president of the United States. One month later, in St. Petersburg, Florida, the popular national officer was elected the first woman president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. Within two weeks she spoke at a conference of editorial writers meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, sharing the program with Walter Cronkite, already well-known as Moscow correspondent of the United Press.32 The nation’s two best-known journalism schools put Hobby to work in behalf of the profession. Columbia University’s American Press Institute initiated a series on management in a large-newspaper environment; Hobby was a natural choice to speak at the first seminar, using the work of the Hoover Commission to illustrate the benefits of efficiency.33 At the journalism school of the University of Missouri, the school climaxed its annual Journalism Week with an award to the executive vice president of the Houston Post, retiring as president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. She received one of two Missouri Honor Awards for distinguished service to journalism. The other award went to Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times. Hobby,

32 “Foundation to Aid Studies Overseas,” New York Times, March 1, 1948; “Dewey and Baruch to Speak in Forum,” New York Times, October 17, 1948; John N. Popham, “Oveta Hobby Heads Publishers Group,” New York Times, November 10, 1948; Associated Press, “U.S. Can Win Via Truth, Says Oveta Culp Hobby,” Houston Post, November 21, 1948. Cronkite assessed the likelihood of another world war. Hobby advocated answering Soviet propaganda activity with an American information initiative. The call was sincere: Hobby and the Houston Post supported Radio Free Europe and the Crusade for Freedom, U.S. programs designed to counter Soviet propaganda with radio programming of western propaganda and general interest shows. 33 “Columbia Offers 6 News Seminars,” New York Times, September 11, 1949. Hobby knew whereof she spoke. She had been on the advisory board of the Hoover Commission since it was established, two years previously.

134 in her acceptance address, proposed the journalism profession should adopt a form of Hippocratic Oath, the pledge taken by physicians. She recommended naming it the Socratic Oath, in honor of the philosopher with an inquiring mind.34 The American Cancer Society appreciated her organizational ability, demonstrated at the state level in 1947 when she was commander of the Texas Field Army, a volunteer branch of the cancer organization. In 1949 the national organization appointed her vice-chairman of the fund drive. The announcement of her selection stressed her success in working with volunteers; the Society looked to her to increase volunteer participation nationwide.35 Hobby and co-chairman Mefford R. Runyon of New York, with the optimistic reinforcement of United States Surgeon General Leonard A. Scheele, forecasted cancer cure rates of up to fifty percent. In 1953, after Hobby became Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, General Scheele reported to her. Together they faced the polio vaccine predicaments and disputes of 1954 and 1955.36 Gen. George C. Marshall called his favorite female colonel back to public service – two times in the same year. President Truman appointed Gen. Marshall president of the American Red Cross in 1950. Marshall immediately set about to organize the advisory committee for the year’s fund-raising drive, choosing his former protégé Oveta Culp Hobby to be one of the seventeen committee members. At the June advisory committee meeting in Washington, Hobby was on the agenda, counseling the other members on ways to inform the public of the organization’s programs.37 Hobby’s political proclivities were no secret, nor was her opposition to Harry Truman. Perhaps that is the reason the Truman administration excluded the most important woman in American military history – and the military woman with the highest

34 “Missouri to Confer Journalism Awards,” New York Times, April 30, 1950; William M. Blair, “Publishers Exalt U.S. Role in World,” New York Times, May 6, 1950.William M. Blair, “Publishers Exalt U.S. Role in World,” New York Times, May 6, 1950; “Mrs. Hobby Proposes ‘Socratic Oath,’” Editor and Publisher, May 6, 1950, 9. 35 “Oveta Culp Hobby Aids Cancer Drive as Vice-Chairman,” Des Moines Plain Talk, February 24, 1949. 36 “New Hopes Raised for Cancer Curb,” New York Times, April 1, 1949. 37 “Recruiting Drive Set by Red Cross,” New York Times, June 10, 1950; “Leaders Will Aid Red Cross Campaign,” New York Times, February 10, 1950. Marshall’s other advisers also had impressive credentials and included Mrs. Norman Chandler, wife of the President of the Los Angeles Times, Mildred McAfee Horton, wartime commander of the WAVES, Harrison Jones, board chairman of Coca-Cola Company, and George Humphrey, president of M.A. Hanna Company. Humphrey and Hobby later served together in the cabinet of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first administration.

135 political profile – from a Washington conference of women leaders on the subject of “Womanpower in the Mobilization Effort.” The date was July 15, 1950, just three weeks after the start of the Korean War. Sarah McClendon, syndicated White House correspondent, wrote that Hobby was furious. McClendon offered that Hobby “had more background to bring to the conference than any other woman there . . .” including one of Hobby’s former advisors who was at the meeting.38 A few weeks after the affront to Hobby, the Truman administration changed its mind. Truman fired Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and replaced him with General George C. Marshall in September 1950. Hobby’s old defender quickly appointed both Hobby and former WAVES commanding officer Mildred McAfee as advisors.39 The following year Secretary Marshall formed a large panel of advisors, appointing forty- eight women to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which reported to Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna M. Rosenberg,40 whom Hobby had defended a year earlier in the face of an attack from Senator Joseph McCarthy.41 Another national group claimed Hobby’s time and organizational skills. The National Council of Christians and Jews, planning for Brotherhood Week to be observed in February 1951, named Hobby national chairman of the newspaper committee.42 Hobby’s committee asked newspapers to publicize the observance and to stress evidences of racial and religious amity. To encourage more news coverage, the committee borrowed techniques from her publicity campaign at the Women’s Interests Section of the War

38 Sarah McClendon, “A Texan in Washington,” Beaumont Enterprise, July 15, 1950. McClendon, who covered every American president from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, was peculiarly competent to judge Hobby’s qualifications. Already a seasoned reporter when World War II began, she enlisted in the WAAC in September 1942, beginning in the WAAC's public relations department. She then attended officer candidate school and was promoted to lieutenant. Briefly married, she became pregnant and was honorably discharged, returning to a long career of political journalism; USA Today, “Veteran White House Reporter Sarah McClendon Dies,” USA Today, January 8, 2003. 39 Hy Gardner, “Early Bird on Broadway,” New York Herald Tribune, October 16, 1950. 40 Anna M. Rosenberg’s career was varied, dramatic, and interesting, like Hobby’s. A recent summary is provided by Anna Kasten Nelson, “Anna M. Rosenberg, an ‘Honorary Man,’” Journal of Military History 68 (January 2004): 133-162. 41 “All-Woman Advisory Committee,” Democratic Digest, August-September, 1951. Other members of the committee included Dorothy Height, social and civil rights activist; Mrs. Douglas Horton, former director of the WAVES; Mrs. Oswald B. (Mary) Lord , Pillsbury heiress and a moderate Republican stalwart; Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller, first wife of the future vice president; Dr. Dorothy Stratton, former director of the SPARS; and Mrs. Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, wife of the publisher of the New York Times. The advisory group was charged with helping devise recruitment strategies to yield 80,000 women for the armed services. 42 “To Head Press Committee for Brotherhood Week,” New York Times, October 23, 1950; “Mrs. Hobby to Head Brotherhood Group,” Houston Post, October 23, 1950.

136 Department, distributing to editors and publishers thirteen thousand copies of press kits containing cartoons, sample editorials, and suggestions for news coverage.43 The Houston Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews recognized Hobby’s contribution with a dinner at the Shamrock Hotel, at which Oveta and Will Hobby were praised for their public service and contributions to brotherhood.44 Five years after Mrs. Hobby’s return from military service, a trade publication recapitulated her major memberships and honors, ranging from membership on the Alaska Statehood Committee to an honorary doctorate conferred by Bard College. The article listed nineteen civic, public, and professional organizations; she was an officer or director of almost all of them.45 Estelle Sharp’s study groups in the years leading up to the war kindled Hobby’s interest in foreign affairs. A rigorous reading program, a two-front war, and three years leading an innovative branch of the army added to Hobby’s knowledge. Given her publishing background and her level of intellect, she was an obvious choice to join the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Freedom of Information Conference, convening in Geneva. Republican Congressman William Benton headed the delegation. Hobby knew Benton from advertising activities; both belonged to the dominant national advertiser’s trade organization – Hobby as a publisher and Benton as head of the national advertising agency, Benton, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn, the legendary BBD&O. In an interview, Benton made it clear that the U.S. delegation expected criticism from some of the other countries’ delegations, criticisms he characterized as “generally false.” The primary purpose of the conference was to lower the barriers to the free flow of information across international borders, thereby encouraging democracy and peace.46 When the four-week conference was over the delegates returned, pleased with the coherence of the Western nations. The Eastern Bloc nations were obstructionists, unanimously vetoing nearly all resolutions. Even so, as Benton pointed out, the other side was generally courteous in

43 “Papers Will Stress Brotherhood Week,” New York Herald Tribune, October 24, 1950. 44 “Hobbys of Houston, Texas, Honored for Brotherhood Week,” Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, Bulletin No. 1563, March 10, 1951, 1. 45 Allen K. Tyler, “Service in 19 Groups Is Mrs. Hobby’s Hobby,” Editor and Publisher, February, 1951, 20. See Appendix 2 for a representative listing of Hobby’s activities and honors. 46 The protracted and intensive meetings included deliberation on the U.N.-proposed covenant of human rights. The Freedom of Information delegates were in Geneva to discuss that part of the covenant’s wording having to do with freedom of information and freedom of the press.

137 demeanor. The key issue was condemnation of false reporting by government-controlled media. Almost as important, certainly to a newswoman, was the provision for protection of the safety of foreign correspondents.47 The Houston Post printed the text of a Hobby speech reporting on the Geneva Conference. Hobby stressed, as the meetings in Geneva had stressed, the importance of a free press – uncensored and able to produce and distribute its news to free and democratic countries. She called attention to a major obstacle to the resuscitation of a vigorous newspaper industry, a severe shortage of newsprint in Europe that seriously constrained the ability of the newspapers to deliver the news. Looking beyond print media, she noted that radio in the U.S. was in private hands, unlike radio in Europe, with the result that there was essentially no unreasonable influence or censorship of radio by the government. In her speech, Hobby spoke of economic matters, and of the importance of the Economic Coordination Administration, the name of the European central office of the Marshall Plan. Hobby called for freer trade, including a reduction of tariffs, quotas, quantitative restrictions, “currency finagling,” and all other impediments to free trade. Her point was that Europe’s recovery would be faster without unnecessary U.S. trade restrictions.48 A year later, in 1949, came appointment to an even more important assemblage, the national council of the Atlantic Union Committee, and to the state board of the committee. The Committee’s purpose was to further the idea of an “Atlantic union” – a union of western European states built on the success of the Marshall Plan and on the North Atlantic Security Pact, the treaty that would soon create the North Atlantic Treaty

47 “Delegates Praise U.N. News Parley,” New York Times, May 6, 1948. Representative Benton, author of several books, was also author of a syndicated newspaper column carried by the Houston Post for many years. The recommendations of the Benton committee relative to freedom of information and the press were incorporated into the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, promulgated by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. For a critical consideration of the Universal Declaration, see Johannes Morsink, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting & Intent" (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 48 Oveta Culp Hobby, “Freedom of Information and Trade Agreements Keys to World Recovery,” Houston Post, June 13, 1948. Text of speech delivered on about the same date at the annual meeting of the Advertising Federation of America, at its annual meeting in Cincinnati. Writing in Editor and Publisher in July 1951, Zechariah Chafee, Jr., of Harvard University provided an analysis of the freedom of information advances made by United Nations study groups. He addressed the advances and declarations of the World Conference on Freedom of Information, meeting in Geneva in March and April of 1948, and particularly the work done in harmonizing the U.N. recommendations with U.S. laws. Chafee singled out the contributions of Oveta Culp Hobby. See Zechariah Chafee, Jr., “Freedom Lovers Wrote Each Phrase,” Editor and Publisher, July 28, 1951.

138 Organization. The Atlantic Union transformed itself into the European Economic Community in 1957, eventually becoming the European Union. In the following year Hobby was one of ten leaders, including high-ranking officers and a former Secretary of War, who urged a unified defense and foreign affairs entity for the North Atlantic – the future North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their recommendation went to Gen. Marshall, as Secretary of Defense.49 A September 1950 guest of the Hobbys was Gardner Cowles, publisher of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, and Look and Quick magazines. Cowles had recently returned from a trip to Europe. While in Houston, Cowles drew attention to Dwight Eisenhower’s influence with European governments, suggesting that the United States should draft Eisenhower to lead the fledgling North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s combined armed forces. The choice was an obvious one; by year’s end, President Truman had appointed Eisenhower to the difficult post.50 Truman had been required to make a critical appointment before. In 1947 the Republican Congress created the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. Truman agreed with the purpose of the commission and determined to appoint a strong person to lead it. The president considered the qualifications of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. With a keen intellect, an engineer’s training, and experience in business and non-profit organizations, Hoover was acknowledged to be a very effective administrator.51 Truman made the Hoover appointment and the investigative body quickly came to be known as the Hoover Commission.52 Although President Truman agreed with the purpose of the commission and even though Herbert Hoover and the other members took seriously their charge from Congress

49 “Oveta Culp Hobby on Atlantic Union Body,” Houston Post, September 11, 1949. Considered as a unitary entity, the European Union by the early twenty-first century was approximately equal to the United States in such economic measures as gross domestic product. A European Union web site displays the comparative statistics at http://eurunion.org/profile/EUUSStats.htm. 50 United Press, “Would Draft Eisenhower to Head Post, Shreveport Times, September 8, 1950. 51 Hoover’s effectiveness at the helm of the United States government during the onset of the Great Depression is open to interpretation. There are exhaustive treatments of Hoover’s life and accomplishments. A short critical study is Ellis Wayne Hawley and Mark M Dodge, Herbert Hoover and the Historians (West Branch, Iowa: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, 1989. 52 There were two Hoover Commissions. The first was appointed by Truman in mid-1947 and delivered its recommendations to the president on in early 1949. Four years later, dissatisfied with implementation of the proposed improvements, President Dwight Eisenhower revived the commission, immediately dubbed the Second Hoover Commission. The effort to streamline federal bureaucracies was an important element of partisan attention for many years.

139 and the president, it inevitably became a partisan matter. Republicans were able to point to commission findings as proof of shoddy Democrat administrative practices; many Democrats dismissed the commission’s output as partisan nitpicking.53 With the advantage of historical perspective, scholars recognize the accuracy of the results of commission deliberations and generally agree about the value of the lengthy exercise. A frequent conclusion is that the most important outcome of the commission was the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953.54 The Hobby newspaper had found fault with Herbert Hoover as president, and again as candidate for re-election in 1932.55 By 1940, with the Depression largely over and after eight years of the New Deal, Hoover’s message began to sound better. When he spoke to the Republican National Convention that year, the Post offered the opinion that he “literally swept the convention delegates off their feet with brilliant oratory,” that his logic was “devastating” and his arguments “unassailable.”56 Hoover, at least in the mind of the Hobbys, had rehabilitated himself.57 They were understandably delighted when President Truman reached out to the opposition party and selected Hoover to head the reorganization commission; Oveta Hobby was doubtless honored when she was named to the commission’s advisory panel. Hoover was keynote speaker at the National Reorganization Conference, a meeting in Washington designed to build public support for the implementation of the Hoover Commission recommendations, some of which had already been put in place. Among the recommendations not yet adopted was the plan to consolidate a number of agencies into a master agency, the entity that would become the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). As a member of the commission advisory group, Hobby

53 The Senate majority leader highlighted his party’s accomplishments. See William F. Knowland, “Republican Report of the First Session of the 84th Congress together with Republican Achievements, January 1953 to July 1955,” Washington: Government Printing Office, August 5, 1955. 54 The commission has been intensively studied. Two recent analyses, one by the British historian M. J. C. Vile, and another by political scientists Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg stress the value of the Hoover Commission and single out HEW as perhaps the most significant outcome. See Maurice John Crawley Vile, Politics in the U.S.A. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 203; Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced (New York: Norton, 2007) 186-87. 55 Oveta Hobby’s mother, Emma Hoover Culp, was reported to be a distant cousin of both Herbert Hoover and J. Edgar Hoover. “Lady in Command,” Time, August 4, 1953, online unpaginated. 56 “Herbert Hoover Battles Way Back to Position of High Leadership,” Houston Post, editorial, June 27, 1940. 57 An alternate interpretation might be that Hoover’s views were fixed across time and it was the Hobbys who had undergone rehabilitation.

140 attended the meeting to continue her support for the changes. As usual in any meeting that included Hobby, she was one of the speakers, detailing benefits to women from the proposed government streamlining.58 The New York Times published the verbatim text of Hoover’s speech, along with a photograph showing Hobby and two other conference leaders (incongruously dressed in conservative business attire) gathered around a large simulated cracker barrel labeled “Hoover Report.”59 In a trade publication, Hobby opined, “On the national level, the Post considers that the Hoover Commission recommendations merit substantial coverage. The Federal Government is a bit like Humpty-Dumpty – a Humpty-Dumpty who has grown so corpulent and ungainly that he has lost his original agility.” It “is important to every citizen of Texas – that we reduce Humpty-Dumpty and put him back into efficient trim before he runs any danger of falling.”60 A number of prominent Americans contributed to a series of newspaper articles advocating adoption of the commission findings. In her contribution, Hobby complimented Truman for selecting the only living former president, “as [a] great student of government and a great administrator” as chairman, and for selection of Secretary of State Acheson as vice-chairman. Hobby used a can of beans as a metaphor to explain all the ways the government influenced water, seeds, farm prices, steel, and transportation. She closed by calling for citizen involvement.61 Practicing what she preached, Hobby began support for the Hoover reforms at home, overseeing organization of a citizens luncheon meeting at the Rice Hotel with a talk by University of Houston economist John Owen.62 Pressure continued for complete implementation of the commission’s findings. Twenty-eight “leaders,” members of the National Citizens Committee for the Hoover

58 Clayton Knowles, “Hoover Warns U.S. Must Halt Waste to Retain Liberty,” New York Times, December 13, 1949. Another speaker was Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, president of Ohio Wesleyan University; Flemming later succeeded Hobby as secretary of HEW. 59 “Text of Hoover’s Address Declaring Government Reforms Vital to U.S. Economy,” New York Times, December 13, 1949. 60 Oveta Culp Hobby, “A Free Press Demands Excellence and Continuous, Conscientious Performance,” The Alabama Publisher, January, February, March, 1950, 4. Text was of Hobby speech of February 10, 1950 at the annual convention banquet of the Alabama Press Association, meeting in Montgomery. 61 Oveta Culp Hobby, “Women, Too, Have Part in Hoover Reorganization Fight,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 21, 1950. 62 “Hoover Reform Forces Rallied in Houston,” Houston Press, June 19, 1950.

141 Report, reported in March 1950 that in the year since the presentation of the report some progress had been made, but that other advances were stalled. One of the recommendations still gestating was the re-grouping and realigning of various agencies and bureaus into what would become HEW.63 Ever on the speakers’ circuit, Hobby addressed the annual convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, meeting in New York, excoriating an “over-planned economy, an over-governed nation and an overspent budget.” She spoke of the need to eliminate waste, cut taxes, and simplify government, “if venture capital is to be free to provide an expanding economy in the United States.” The speech called for publishers to recognize their duty to help inform the citizenry.64 Hobby often called for the press to be a voice of moderation. She seemed to be particularly concerned about treatment of those on the political left, taking issue with the practice of labeling all who were liberals or “left-wing” as communists. In a 1949 interview with a trade publication, she argued that “Communist Russia” was a country on the right side of the political spectrum. Continuing the political orientation exercise, she asserted that the United States was actually to the left of the political center, a point she made repeatedly in her speeches.65 She sounded this theme the following year at the annual convention of the Alabama Press Association. There, she insisted there is “a greater difference between democratic socialism and political communism” than between socialism and communism. “But how clearly do we define and distinguish the differences for our readers? Have we fallen into the fuzzy-minded habit of labeling all communists, socialists and liberals together as ‘left wing,’ thereby implying that the United States is ‘right wing,’ reactionary, hidebound, controlled?” The U.S. is “the most liberal – in the true sense of the word – the most progressive, and the most un-hidebound country in the world.”66

63 The advocacy group included the heads of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL and CIO), industry leaders, college presidents and such prominent individuals as U.S. Vice President Charles G. Dawes, New Dealer James A. Farley, and Republican Party leader Mrs. Oswald B. (Mary) Lord. United Press, “Fight Seen to Bar Hoover’s Reforms,” New York Times, March 5, 1950. 64 “U.S. Waste Condemned by Oveta Culp Hobby,” Texas Tax Journal, June, 1950, 16. 65 Julian Stag, “Mrs. Hobby Advocates More Scope, Less Scoop,” Editor and Publisher, January 29, 1949, 12. 66 Oveta Culp Hobby, “A Free Press Demands Excellence and Continuous, Conscientious Performance,” The Alabama Publisher, January, February, March, 1950, 13. The text was of Hobby’s speech of February 10, 1950 at the annual convention banquet of the Alabama Press Association, meeting in Montgomery.

142 Her criticism was often specific, as in February 1950 when she singled out Republican Congressman J. Parnell Thomas. As chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Thomas often used his position to attack individuals with whom he differed on political issues. He labeled Truman’s Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, "the most dangerous man in America," adding that if left unchecked he would "cause another world war." Hobby reminded her audience that Thomas released a report calling Dr. Edward Condon, a pioneering nuclear physicist, “one of the weakest links in our atomic security.”67 Condon demanded and was denied a hearing on the charge. Hobby’s point about the incident was that, as bad as Parnell’s actions had been, press handling was even worse. The press devoted three or four times more space to the unfounded charges than to the later statements confirming his innocence.68 In a speech later in the same year, Hobby repeated her criticism of the press, calling attention to the newspaper practice of trumpeting accusations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but, when the charges turned out to be inaccurate, not giving the denial story the same coverage, the same weight.69 Hobby’s early involvement in anticommunist activities focused on the Cold War struggle in Europe. Shortly after the war, the State Department asked the Associated Press and the United Press to supply news for foreign broadcast, and the two press services refused, for ethical reasons. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) appointed a committee of eight members to review the issue. Oveta Culp Hobby’s reputation earned a seat at the table for the smallest newspaper, from the smallest city.70 The ASNE members promptly recommended that the editors’ group set up a committee to review the State Department’s news-dissemination efforts, diplomatically suggesting that government news dissemination would probably not be trusted by foreign recipients of the information. The New York Times quoted Oveta Culp

67 Thomas called Condon “the missing link” and sometimes referred to him as “Dr. Condom.” http://www.theblackvault.com/wiki/index.php/Edward_Condon 68 Oveta Culp Hobby, “A Free Press Demands Excellence and Continuous, Conscientious Performance,” The Alabama Publisher, January, February, March, 1950, 13. Text was of Hobby speech of February 10, 1950 at the annual convention banquet of the Alabama Press Association, meeting in Montgomery. 69 “Mrs. Hobby Proposes Socratic Oath,” Editor and Publisher, May 6, 1950, 58. 70 “Society Names Committee on World News Dissemination,” New York Times, May 8, 1946. The other newspapers were the Cleveland News, the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Star, the Minneapolis Star Journal, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Baltimore Sun.

143 Hobby: “If we consider world dissemination of news in the sense of United States news and more specifically the news of a self-governing people, we must admit that such a step is a radical and perhaps dangerous extension of the powers of the United States Government. . . . I abhor the necessity for it and despise the doing, but if such a program can be effective – or even partly so – it may be a partial peace insurance.”71 Providing Eastern Europeans with news from the West was best accomplished by radio. Beginning in World War II and continuing through the Cold War years that followed, the United States government’s official voice was the Voice of America (VOA), operated by the State Department. America had a means to broadcast America’s message to the millions behind the Iron Curtain, countering the Soviet propaganda that provided the only “news” available. Because the VOA was the acknowledged voice of the U.S. government, the idea of a non-government alternative seemed a more effective way to reach the desired audience. Radio Free Europe, a private-sector initiative funded by donations from the American public, came into existence. Radio Free Europe was not a competitor of Voice of America, but a parallel effort, a people-to-people method of supplementing the Uncle Sam-to-people endeavors of the VOA. By 1950 Radio Free Europe and its companion network Radio Liberty (collectively, “the Radios”) were broadcasting American news and propaganda to Eastern bloc countries in several languages. The Radios were funded by Congress, not directly, but through the Central Intelligence Agency, a subterfuge that allowed the government to conceal its involvement. The scheme became even more complicated. If the Radios could be seen as coming directly from the American people, the messages would be more believable.72 The Crusade for Freedom provided the means of concealing the real source of the U.S. propaganda. The Crusade raised funds in the U.S., ostensibly to support the Radios, even though the Radios were already fully funded. In September 1950, General Lucius D. Clay, who had been military governor of the American zone of Germany, became national chairman of the Crusade for Freedom. Clay issued a “Call to Action to American Women,” declaring that prevention of a third world war was dependent on the Crusade for Freedom and that the success of the Crusade

71 “Editors Ask Check on Culture Agency,” New York Times, December 14, 1946. 72 Stacey Cone, “Presuming a Right to Deceive: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, the CIA and the News Media,” Journalism History 24, no. 4 (Winter 1998-1999): 148-156.

144 was dependent, in large measure, on American women. Women leaders nationwide responded to Clay’s call. The general appointed twelve to serve on the National Council of the Crusade. Included among them were a former dean of Barnard College, the president of the public interest group Common Cause, Mary Lord, and Oveta Culp Hobby.73 American media supported the Crusade for Freedom, even though many in the media knew it was a charade designed to conceal the truth. Year after year, newspapers and magazines did their patriotic duty, raising public awareness, and raising unneeded public funds, for the Radios.74 Oveta Culp Hobby went further: in addition to joining the Crusade boosters, she offered the Hobby Foundation, the family’s philanthropic foundation, as a conduit for CIA cash. The route taken by the money was as follows. Congress appropriated operating funds for the Radios to the CIA, whose use of funds was secret. The CIA passed the funds through a dummy foundation to the Hobby Foundation and other similar private foundations. The Hobby Foundation “donated” the funds to the Crusade for Freedom, which in turn passed them to the Radios. The actual source of funds was concealed from the general public for nearly twenty years.75 In early 1967 a reporter for Ramparts, a politically liberal monthly magazine published in San Francisco, uncovered a connection between CIA financing and putative non-governmental organizations. The Ramparts article reached the New York Times, which in turn uncovered the link between the CIA and the Radios, with Crusade for Freedom the sham organization concealing CIA involvement. The Times broke the story in the major media.76 It eventually came to light that in the twenty years prior to the exposure, the “private” radio systems had received about one-half billion dollars.77 Oveta

73 “American Women Asked To Help Lift Iron Curtain Everywhere,” Ottumwa (IA) Courier, September 8, 1950; Margie Wren, “Society Chatter,” Augusta (GA) Chronicle, September 3, 1950. 74 Cone, “Presuming a Right,” 150-151. 75 An insider’s appraisal of Radio Free Europe is offered by its former president in Sig Mickelson, America’s Other Voice (New York: Praeger, 1983). A self-described “traditional anarchist” offers analysis of the dangers of private sector complicity with covert government enterprises in Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (New York: Pantheon, 1988). 76 Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 28, 2007; Sol Stern, “NSA and the CIA,” Ramparts, March, 1967, 29-51. Stearn, the Ramparts reporter who uncovered story, later commented, “The fact that the established press did not break this story shows just how complacent and compliant it was.” Cone, “Presuming a Right,” 152. 77 Ralph A Uttaro, “The Voices of America in International Radio Propaganda, Law and Contemporary Problems 45, no. 1 (Winter, 1982): 106. Liberal organizations also cooperated with the CIA during the

145 Hobby, who never liked to deal with the press, did not want to deal with this story. Her son Bill Hobby, as chairman of the Hobby Foundation, answered the Times reporter’s questions with characteristically Hobby family candor. Yes, he said, the Hobby Foundation had done what the Ramparts article revealed. Then he said, “We are glad to have done it and proud to have been of service to the Federal Government.78 Anticommunism was a domestic issue as well as an international one. In the U.S. during World War II, it was appropriate to be pro-Soviet, or at least to show approval of Soviet successes in the struggle against Nazi Germany. Once the war was over and the Cold War became a fact, communism and the Soviet Union were considered menacing. The Soviets soon controlled Eastern Europe; the Soviet military, abetted by American and British spies, gained ground in their competitive effort to catch up with American nuclear weapons capability; national communist parties threatened to take over additional countries in various parts of the world, using force if required. American anticommunism was the predictable reaction.79 Newspapers carried reports of the gains and losses in the struggle with communism; editorial pages exhorted readers to pay attention to the historic confrontation. In Houston, all three daily newspapers conformed to the national pattern of anticommunist editorials. The Houston Post invoked the support of Divine Providence in “Eisenhower Calls for Religious Crusade to Defeat Communism.” Oveta Hobby may have spoken out against the outrages of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but in an editorial titled “House Proposal that U.S. Reds Be Treated as Foes Is Logical,” her editorial page supported the Committee’s suggestion that United States communists be subject to the death penalty for spying and sabotage. In “Government Employees Must Answer,” the Post advocated firing government employees who gave

Cold War. For more, see Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York:New Press, 2000). 78 Asked recently about the foundation’s involvement with the CIA, Bill Hobby said he would do it again. Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 28, 2007. The Crusade for Freedom was not a left- versus-right political issue. In 1951 newspaper columnist Drew Pearson, best known for investigative journalism, joined with the Crusade in launching helium-filled balloons carrying eleven million leaflets to be scattered over urban areas of communist Czechoslovakia. Pearson described the project in Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Bell Syndicate, September 8, 1953. Time described the project in “Winds of Freedom,” Time, August 27, 1951, online unpaginated. 79 Many scholars have written about the Cold War. For an overview, see John W. Mason, The Cold War, 1945-1991 (New York: Routledge, 1996).

146 the Fifth Amendment as their reason not to answer questions about their past. The Post pronounced the Roosevelt and Truman administrations to be “honeycombed with communist spies; with Eisenhower in office, they were no longer being “coddled.”80 Political scientist Chandler Davidson has conducted studies of the political climate of Texas in the post-World War II period. His description of Houston during the Second Red Scare is succinct: “The hysteria in Houston, as elsewhere, represented a complex of tendencies: an exaggerated fear of communism; the inability to distinguish it from liberalism; xenophobia; racist and anti-Semitic impulses; suspicion of ‘progressive education’ and internationalist ideas; and anti-intellectualism.” Davidson indicts the city’s power elite for employing anticommunism to beat back advances by organized labor, African Americans, and political liberals. The city’s newspapers, including the Hobbys’ Post, were instrumental.81 Houston’s leaders did not need to be inspired by the Red-baiting practices of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, they were capable of mounting their own counteroffensive to communism. Not that they would not extend aid to McCarthy – during 1952 the Post serialized his book McCarthyism – The Fight for America.82 One of the centers of attention for Houston’s Red Scare was the school board of the Houston Independent School System, which included most of the city. Alert to the intrusion of communism into the classroom, conservative school board members banned a geography textbook because it mentioned the United Nations; banned another textbook with the offensive chapter title, “It’s All One World,” and a third containing a sentence stating that government is obligated “to promote the welfare of all the people.”83 A slate of candidates for the school board in the election of 1952 ran on an anti-UNESCO platform with the slogan, “Citizens of Houston, save your schools from the dangerous influence of UNESCO.”84 Two of them won.

80 Editorials, Houston Post, December 28 and 30, 1952; October 16, 1953; Editorial, “President’s Order to Intensify Drive Against Security Risks,” Houston Post, August 7, 1954. 81 Chandler Davidson, review of Don E. Carleton, Red Scare! Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985), reviewed in Journal of Southern History 52, no. 2 (May, 1986): 327-328. Segregationists are credited with more complexity in George Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunism, and Massive Resistance, 1945-1965 (Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2004). 82 William V. Shannon, “Mrs. Hobby: The Studied Approach,” New York Post, May 1, 1955. 83 George Fuermann, Reluctant Empire (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), 142. 84 Fuermann, Empire, 143. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was a favorite target of some anticommunist groups. A brief, cogent defense of UNESCO is in

147 School board controversies continued, inflamed by a peculiar group, the Minute Women.85 Founded by a wealthy Connecticut woman in September 1949, the purpose of the organization was to fight communism in education and government and to encourage instruction in American values. Texas was fertile ground for this conservative philosophy and chapters sprung up in major cities.86 The largest chapter was in Houston; this chapter soon was one of the largest in the country, with at least 500 members. Houston Minute Women were largely from upper-income and upper middle-income strata. Almost all were married to business executives, entrepreneurs, lawyers, or physicians; some sixty were doctors’ wives, drawn to the Minute Women to help combat the threat of socialized medicine.87 Others saw membership as a way to support the oil industry, or to promote opposition to integration or “progressive education.”88 The organization was not democratic; it was definitely non-democratic, with no constitution or bylaws and no reference to parliamentary procedure. Nothing was put to a vote. Officers were not elected, they were appointed by the group’s founder.89 Minute Women tactics included letter-writing campaigns, telephone campaigns, and distribution of anti-communist, anti-New Deal, and anti-Semitic literature. Minute Women leadership insisted that members eschew any identification with the Minute Women organization.

Rita R. Colwell and David Pramer, “Back to the Future with UNESCO,” Science 265, no. 5175 (Aug., 1994), 1047-1048. The Wisconsin alienated some who had supported him earlier; Liz Carpenter recalls that the Houston Post became identified with the anti-McCarthy movement. Liz Carpenter, interview by author, Austin, TX, January 15, 2007. 85 A new study of the gendered and maternalist aspects of the American anticommunist movement is Mary G. Brennan, Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade against Communism (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008). Brennan stresses the conservative concern over the “loss of China” to the communists, a development conservatives blamed on those they thought were left-leaning or outright communist politicians in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. See Brennan, 69-70. 86 Conservative Texas women had demonstrated militance before, as in the example of anti-suffragists. Minute Woman Helen Darden Thomas, daughter of anti-suffragist Ida Darden distributed copies of her mother’s publication, Southern Conservative, to Minute Women meetings. More on the Minute Women, the anti-suffrage heritage of the group, and the role of Ida Darden is in Elna C. Green "From Antisuffragism to Anti-Communism: The Conservative Career of Ida M. Darden," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 65, No. 2, (May, 1999). 87 Ralph O’Leary, “Houston Group Hit Its Peak during ’52,” Houston Post, October 14, 1953. The term and concept of “socialized medicine” is discussed in chapter five. 88 Don E. Carleton, Red Scare! Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985). Veteran Texas politician Maury Maverick, Sr. described the Minute Women as “a subversive organization made up of old bags, the wives of ignoramuses and the newly rich.” George Norris Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics (Westport, CT; Greenwood Press, 1979), 121. 89 The founder of the Minute Women, Suzanne Stevenson, reasoned that parliamentary procedure and election of officers provided the means for antagonists such as communists to take control of individual groups. An autocratic command structure protected against this threat.

148 Every action taken had to be seen as an individual action. Letters from 500 individuals carried much more weight with public officials than a letter from an organization with 500 members.90 Houston Minute Women attended public meetings, usually arriving early and seating themselves in seats closest to the speaker’s rostrum. Using an each-one-call-five chain-telephoning system, they could mobilize the chapter in a matter of minutes. Once assembled at a meeting, they took pains to act as individuals, not as members of a group.91 For months, they were an important force in Houston. They challenged churches as venues for national speakers; they forced speaking engagements to be canceled; forced dismissals and resignations of teachers and school administrators. More than once, Minute Women attended meetings in schools, churches, and halls and heckled speakers.92 When a new school administrator with impressive West Coast credentials was hired by the superintendent of schools, they branded him as pro-communist, and ran him off.93 Then they attacked Oveta Culp Hobby, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.94 Ordinarily, one would not anticipate that women of Minute Women ilk would provoke a newspaper publisher, but they did. The issues that directed their fire to Hobby and HEW were health insurance and any other aspects of socialized medicine. To the Minute Women, any health-related initiative of HEW was capitulation to socialism, if not communism. Hobby was not advocating national health insurance; both she and President Eisenhower were opposed to the idea. Hobby and the president, with the support of the insurance industry, were advocating a federal safety net for insurance carriers, a measure that would encourage the insurers to insure more Americans.95 The Minute Women judged the concept to be subversive. They inundated the White House with letters of complaint about Secretary Hobby.96

90 Ralph O’Leary, “Militant Group Has Chain Phone System,” Houston Post, October 11, 1953. 91 “The Houston Scare,” Time, November 2, 1953, online unpaginated; O’Leary, “Militant Group.” 92 Ralph O’Leary, “Minute Women Mail Uniform, Outspoken,” Houston Post, October 16, 1953. 93 Ralph O’Leary, “Caller Tipped Search for an ‘Example,’” Houston Post, October 20, 1953. 94 Oveta Culp Hobby served as Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from her appointment on April 11, 1953 until her resignation on July 12, 1955. Her tenure as HEW secretary is discussed in chapter five. 95 Carleton, Red Scare, 230-31. 96 The White House reported that more than half of all letters critical of Hobby and HEW came from Houston. Carleton, Red Scare, 231.

149 To this point, Houston’s three daily newspapers had not found in the Minute Women anything to which the newspapers needed to object. Now, its leader affronted, the Post changed its collective mind. Directed by Oveta and Will Hobby, city editor Harry Johnston assigned Ralph S. O’Leary, a new employee with experience as a reporter for major newspapers in New Orleans and St. Louis, to investigate the Minute Women.97 The Post placed no limitations on O’Leary and he wrote an eleven-part expose that won five journalism awards for him and his newspaper. The series generated an avalanche of letters to the editor, most of them endorsing the newspaper’s stand. The husbands of three Minute Women challenged the Post to a debate on the “questions” raised by O’Leary’s articles, and demanded an equal amount of newspaper space for refutation. The Post printed its response: if the Minute Women had news about its activities, the newspaper would treat it as it treated other local news.98 O’Leary torpedoed the Minute Women, which meant that Hobby had torpedoed the Minute Women. The reporter simply, devastatingly, wrote what he saw and heard about the women’s group. The organization limped along for a while, but membership was shriveling, and the group never again was able to muster the muscle that had terrorized Houston school and church officials.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s solutions for the problems of the Great Depression required state intervention in the American economic system. FDR attracted support from politically astute citizens who, in normal times, would never have supported the New Deal. In 1932 and again in 1936, the Hobbys joined millions of other voters in making what believed to be the rational choice, under the circumstances. Like most Republicans and many other conservative Democrats, they parted ideological company with Roosevelt over his abortive plan to pack the Supreme Court followed by his decision to break with Founding Father precedent and run for a third term.99 In 1940, both Oveta and Will

97 Carleton, Red Scare, 235. O’Leary’s series ran in the newspaper from October 11 to October 28, 1953. 98 “The Post Stands on Its Full, Careful Report,” Houston Post, October 24, 1953. 99 The newspaper’s attitude toward the union movement is another example of the shift of conservative sentiment. In 1938 the newspaper favored the advances of the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act), crediting the legislation with improving the standard of living of American workers. Two years later, as the National Labor Relations Act became anathema to Texas business interests, the Post began to find fault with the law and the regulatory apparatus it created. Editorial, “Industry’s Program,” Houston Post,

150 Hobby left the national Democratic Party voting for, and personally supporting, the candidacy of Republican Wendell Willkie. They repeated their actions in 1944, favoring Thomas E. Dewey over the ailing incumbent. Their newspaper, an institution in Democratic Texas, could not reflect their personal views; the Post, which earlier had endorsed Roosevelt, made no endorsement in 1940 and 1944.100 The presidential election of 1944 sparked a split in the Texas Democratic Party, with an anti-New Deal faction called the “Texas Regulars” attempting to send uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The attempt failed, but was a portent of party struggles in upcoming election years.101 Southerners, and especially southern politicians, used the concept of states’ rights to defend many practices. According to southern dogma, the national government had no right to interfere with state laws governing relationships among people: Jim Crow laws were sacrosanct, and states’ rights was the reason. Poor public education might be a fact, but for Washington to attempt to interfere was a clear violation of states’ rights. Aspects of public health were similarly subject to competing claims of responsibility.102 States’ rights included important economic entitlements. States on all three American coasts claimed ownership of the shallow waters seaward of the low tide line of their beaches. For two states, Texas and California, the claim of this particular states’ right was amplified by the likelihood that there were very large amounts of oil offshore. The Texas tidelands claim was based on the terms under which the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States. Certain principles of Texas law were permitted to stay in place, in contrast to most territory appropriated by the United States, where U.S. law and practice immediately obtained.103 Before oil became important in the Texas and national economy, ownership of the offshore land was not seriously contested. It did not

December 11, 1938; Editorial, “‘Meet, Legislate and Vacate’ Is Good Congressional Formula,” Houston Post, January 3, 1940. 100 The Hobbys made a personal endorsement. Along with Democrat Texans with petroleum and other business interests, the Hobbys were Republican donors in 1944. See Davidson, Race and Class, 175. 101 Stanley Schneider, “The Texas Regular Party of 1944,” (master’s dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Political Science, March 1948), 45. Schneider’s exhaustive study of the breakaway Texas Democrats remains the definitive study of the group. 102 The literature on states’ rights is extensive. A recent study of the use of the doctrine by conservative Democrats is in Kari A. Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 103 Texas claim to the tidelands is explained in Thomas Lloyd Miller, The Public Lands of Texas, 1519- 1970 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 180-82.

151 matter who owned it. Once drillers found petroleum in large oil fields in the low-lying coastal plain and wetlands, Texans suddenly remembered the historic claim to the potential riches, and the state legislators declared tidelands tax revenues would be used for school funding. Other coastal states, mindful of at least the possibility of value under their offshore lands reasserted their own claims, though for historical reasons, these usually did not extend as far into the ocean as the Texas claim.104 The legal situation in California was not identical to that of Texas, but the claims of the two states were similar. Texans were outraged when the United States Supreme Court ruled against California in 1947 in United States v. California.105 Based on federal success in that case, the federal government claimed ownership of the land offshore all states. Congress, under pressure from the “dispossessed” states, passed legislation to validate the state claims, only to see President Truman veto it. The issue was highly charged in Texas, and Texans were voluble about it, including the woman running the Houston Post. After New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey became the Republican candidate for president in 1948, Hobby went to Albany to meet with him and to discuss his view of the tidelands issue. After the meeting, Hobby could not confirm the governor’s legal opinion, but her comments left the impression that he was sympathetic with the Texas view. Hobby told the press Dewey’s position might help him the win state’s twenty-three electoral votes.106 A few months later Hobby explained the importance of states’ rights and the tidelands to The Christian Science Monitor. She acknowledged the sensitivity of the concept of states’ rights when applied to racial matters and offered her opinion that southerners in the States’ Rights Party lost considerable support during the 1948 presidential campaign by aligning their party too

104 Most states claimed their lands extend out three miles from shore. Texas, relying on the Spanish system in use at the time of annexation, claimed three leagues, a little more than ten miles. For background, see Ernest R. Bartley, The Tidelands Oil Controversy (New York: Arno Press, 1979). A useful study of the tidelands issue and other business issues is Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 87, no. 1 (February 1982). 105 Lucius J. Barker, “The Supreme Court as Policy Maker: The Tidelands Oil Controversy,” The Journal of Politics 24, no. 2 (May, 1962): 350-366. 106 Leo Egan, “Dewey Warns GOP of Over-Optimism,” New York Times, September 15, 1948.

152 closely with racial issues.107 As the 1952 presidential race came closer, the states’ right that Texas was pressing was the right to the tidelands.108 Truman had opposed the Texas position on offshore rights, and other likely Democratic nominees to succeed Truman agreed with his position. The Republican frontrunner, Senate Minority Leader Robert A. Taft of Ohio, also opposed the Texas claim. There was another potential Republican candidate – what did General Eisenhower think? Ike accepted the Texas claim to the tidelands. And Texans accepted Ike’s claim on their votes. Although Eisenhower was an attractive candidate, he first had to get his party’s nomination in a contest with Sen. Taft, a man called “Mr. Republican.” In Texas, this meant two political battles. The small, entrenched Republican leadership was in the Taft camp, and wresting from them the power to name the delegates to the national nominating convention would require outside forces, namely Democrats interested in participating in Republican affairs. In the event enough state nominating votes could be amassed to nominate the affable Eisenhower in the fall general election, an appeal to Democrats to vote for Eisenhower would be mandatory. Oveta Hobby understood politics, the public, and persuasion. She had confronted mass marketing challenges when she led the Women’s Interests Section of the War Department; she had fought a good fight with the recruiting nightmare of the WAC, with estimable results; she had raised money for violins, flood relief, and a paper mill. When Ike declared as a candidate for the Republican nomination, late in the political cycle, she swung into action. Almost at once, the Houston Post printed and distributed 400,000 “political primers,” non-partisan educational summaries of Texas election law as it applied to presidential primaries and the general election. For voters who had never voted in a Republican primary election and had never voted Republican in a general election,

107 “Newspaper and Lively Family Keep Former WAC Head Busy,” Christian Science Monitor, April 13, 1949. 108 Numan V. Bartley argues that states’ rights arguments in Texas combined civil rights with the tidelands issue. See Numan V. Bartley, The New South, 1945-1980 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 97-100,

153 the primer explained how the nomination and election mechanics worked. After looking at the primer, at least 400,000 people would know how to vote for Eisenhower.109 Hobby’s political armamentarium included other weapons. In a rare front-page editorial on Sunday, April 13, 1952, the Houston Post proclaimed, “We Like Ike” and endorsed the general in both the primary election and, assuming he was the Republican candidate, in the general election to follow.110 Political campaigns need money. The amount of Oveta Hobby’s early donation to the Eisenhower campaign is not included in the archives consulted for this monograph, but it was of sufficient size to induce a belated thank-you letter, signed in Eisenhower’s distinctive handwriting.111 The campaign recognized the potential of additional Hobby involvement, and in May she was named to the advisory board of Citizens for Eisenhower, a campaign activist group.112 The next step for Ike’s candidacy in Texas was the primary election, at the time followed by a precinct convention, held immediately after the polls closed. The purpose of this very local meeting was to select delegates to attend the county convention, with delegates proceeding from the county level to the state nominating convention. In 1952 the Republican nominating contest in Texas, as in most states, was between Eisenhower and Taft. In Texas precincts, rival slates competed, and the slate that lost the precinct convention frequently held a rump session, naming their choice of delegates to go to the county convention. There, delegates were chosen to go to the state convention. The state convention in 1952 was held in Mineral Wells, a small town west of Ft. Worth known for its medicinal waters. At the convention, rival slates supporting Eisenhower and Taft clashed. Taft loyalists were in parliamentary control of the convention and ruled that the Texas delegation to the national convention would vote for the Ohio senator. At that, repeating what had happened at the precinct level, the Eisenhower supporters marched a block down the street to another hall and convened a

109 Time, “More than Orchid-Bearers,” November 24, 1952, 20; John R. Brown to Alvin H. Lane, June 23, 1952, Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS (hereafter cited as DDEL). 110 “We Like Ike,” Houston Post, April 13, 1952, 1. “I Like Ike” was Eisenhower’s memorable slogan throughout the campaign, appearing on hats, bumper stickers, and particularly on campaign buttons. 111 Dwight D. Eisenhower to Oveta Culp Hobby, Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL. Note that the donation came from Oveta Hobby, not from Oveta and Will Hobby. 112 “Ten Named to Advisory Committee of Citizens for Eisenhower,” press release, May 9, 1952. Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL.

154 rump state convention. Oveta Hobby was there, made the march, and found herself standing near the rear of the makeshift convention hall. In the excitement, cheering for Ike, she climbed on a folding chair. Next to her was a reporter from her competitor, the Houston Press. The reporter warned her of the danger of standing on a folding chair and she got down, still cheering.113 The Eisenhower versus Taft delegate battle resumed at the Republican national convention in Chicago, in July. Texas sent two sets of delegates, each claiming to represent the results of the convention in Mineral Wells. Hobby did not attend, but sent reporter Brian Spinks, who not only sent back press reports of the convention, but also presented documentation to support seating the Eisenhower delegation. Telegrams went back and forth between Chicago and Houston; Hobby wired a Houston delegate that “An overwhelming number of Texas Republicans favor the nomination of General Dwight D. Eisenhower.”114 A “floor vote” by all delegates at the convention eventually gave the Texas delegation to Eisenhower.115 Eisenhower won the party’s nomination, and soon after, Hobby’s name came up in connection with a group to be called “Democrats for Eisenhower.” Tex McCrory, an Eisenhower campaign official at the national level, advocated appointing Hobby to head the group.116 Hobby wrote a Houston campaign official, suggesting a “Texans for Eisenhower” organization aimed at “getting out the biggest women’s vote in the history of the state.”117 A Democrat supporter of Ike’s, writing to Hobby from Corpus Christi

113 Brian Spinks, “Supporters of Ike Stage Bolt: Action of Taft Forces Called ‘Biggest Steal,’” Houston Post, May 28, 1952, 1; Ben Kaplan, “Ike Picked a Remarkable Woman in Our Mrs. Hobby,” Houston Press, November 26, 1952. Post reporter Spinks later accompanied Hobby to Washington to record her tenure on the Eisenhower cabinet. 114 Oveta Culp Hobby telegram to M. S. McCorquodale, June 30, 1952; Dillon Anderson telegram to Oveta Culp Hobby, date indistinct; both from Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL. Anderson, a Houston lawyer in the Eisenhower camp, reported to Hobby on the prospects of action by the executive committee and the credentials committee, ruling on acceptance of the Eisenhower delegates from Texas. 115 The Glory of Making Sense,” Time, July 18, 1952, online unpaginated. 116 Tex McCrory to Oveta Culp Hobby, July 15, 1952. Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL. 117 Oveta Culp Hobby to W. H. Francis, Jr., August 6, 1952; Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL. Maston Nixon, an Eisenhower supporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, made other suggestions about weaning Texas Democrats away from their historical voting patterns. Maston Nixon to Oveta Culp Hobby, July 16, 1952; Maston Nixon to Oveta Culp Hobby, July 18, 1952; Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL.

155 suggested a billboard design with the legend, “Ike is for giving the Tidelands back to the school children of Texas.”118 Democrats for Eisenhower opened its New York headquarters three weeks before the election, part of a campaign strategy emphasizing the growing momentum of support for Eisenhower. Many states had similar ad hoc committees, more than half headed by Democrats; one of Hobby’s objectives was to supply state organizations with strategies designed to persuade more Democrat voters to vote against what Ike called “Stevenson- Trumanism.” Hobby told the press, “These Democrats [being appealed to by the Eisenhower campaign] are not forsaking the Democratic Party. They are simply, for this election, rejecting the party of Truman and Stevenson. . . .”119 In the last days of the campaign, each Houston Post editorial page began with an editorial stressing the reasons Post readers should vote for Eisenhower.120 And, day after day, page one of the Post included a story emphasizing why Ike was the man.121 Eisenhower won the election, winning in Texas by what the Post characterized as a “sensationally great majority.” The popularity of the general resulted in a Republican majority in both the U.S. House and Senate, which the Post noted in one of a series of post-election editorials celebrating the Eisenhower victory.122

118 Maston Nixon to Oveta Culp Hobby, August 11, 1952; Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL. Nixon made other suggestions about weaning Texas Democrats away from their historical voting patterns, insisting that voting for Eisenhower would not make Republicans out of good Democrats. Maston Nixon to Oveta Culp Hobby, July 16, 1952; Maston Nixon to Oveta Culp Hobby, July 18, 1952. 119 Associated Press, “Mrs. Hobby Is Head of ‘Dems for Ike’ Group,” Houston Chronicle, October 21, 1952; Press release, Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon Press Department, October 20, 1952. Hobby papers, box 1, folder 1, DDEL. Strategies emphasized the South, where the “Democrats for Eisenhower” campaign would be more effective. Other strategies were aimed at attracting women voters; a Citizens for Eisenhower campaign newsletter titled “The Women Talk” stressed that “Over 50% of the voters of the United States of America are women.” 120 Lead Houston Post editorials in the days before the election included “Time to Resolve Fundamental Issues of Presidential Race,” emphasizing the Korean war and the need to address putative corruption in Washington; “Shall Ike Follow MacArthur,” decrying the premature loss of the “genius of MacArthur;” “Korea: a Challenge to Congress,” asserting that Truman’s decision to send troops to Korea averted Congressional authority; and “Idea of Taking Government out of Business Gains Headway,” which supported continued privatization of wartime industries financed by the federal government. Editorials, Houston Post, November 3-6, 1952. 121 Al Shire, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. 122 Following Eisenhower’s election Post editorials congratulated the electorate for its wisdom and looked forward to improvements in Washington. Editorials, Houston Post, November 6-27, 1952.

156 Popular governor Allen Shivers, joined by Senator Price Daniels, both Democrats, publicly supported Eisenhower, joining most of the state’s newspapers.123 To all, the overriding issue was the ownership of the oil and gas under coastal waters. One of the first bills President Eisenhower signed into law in 1953 gave the tidelands unambiguously to Texas.124

123 Jack Bass and Walter De Vries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequencies since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 310. 124 Banks, Money, 147.

157

Figure 14 “The Hobby Team,” 1950. Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed.

Figure 15 Oveta Culp Hobby, 1952. Encyclopedia Britannica.

158 CHAPTER FIVE

1953-1995

Oveta Culp Hobby, with Will, Bill and Jessica present in the chamber, was the subject of a Senate confirmation hearing on January 19, 1953, her forty-eighth birthday. With Texas Senators Lyndon B. Johnson and Price Daniel orchestrating the event, senators of both parties professed admiration for Hobby’s experience and abilities. Lyndon Johnson introduced Governor, Bill and Jessica to the panel. The record of the hearing included a list of Hobby memberships and honorary degrees and awards, together with a list of her financial assets. Among her holdings was a fifty percent stake in the Houston Post Company.1 Hobby’s appointment as head of the Federal Security Agency and heir- presumptive to lead the successor department met with general approval. A syndicated newspaper columnist expressed admiration for Eisenhower’s choice, pointing out that the president accomplished three objectives with a single selection. He paid a debt to Texas voters by selecting one of their public figures; he paid a debt to women voters; and he acknowledged an obligation to the nation’s newspaper publishers and editors for their support in the election.2 The endorsements were not universal. Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Republican of Maine, spoke to the board of directors of the National Federation of Republican Women and complained that Eisenhower should have selected a Republican woman, not a Democrat, for his cabinet. Smith acknowledged Hobby’s qualifications, including the political import of her influence on Democrat voters; she stressed her personal friendship with Hobby as well. Nevertheless, the veteran senator believed the post should have been awarded to a Republican. She said if any single group deserved

1 “Hearing before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Eighty-third Congress, First Session, on Nominations of George M. Humphrey, Secretary of the Treasury-Designate, Oveta Culp Hobby, Federal Security Administrator-Designate,” Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953. The day was also the anniversary of the births of both Bill and Jessica Hobby. 2 Malcolm W. Bingay, “Old Philosopher Gives Mrs. Hobby High Praise,” Houston Chronicle, January 11, 1953.

159 credit for the Eisenhower victory, “it is the Republican women” who “marched to the polls with blood in their eyes.”3 Dwight Eisenhower’s appointment of Hobby was deliberate. Many scholars have studied Eisenhower’s politics; nearly always they have categorized him as a “moderate,” or a “liberal Republican.” Historian Robert Griffith described Eisenhower’s success in civilian life of accomplishing his objectives through deft use of conciliation.4 Always a peacemaker, able to construct workable compromises, Ike called his approach “the middle way,” a phrase he used often.5 He wrote that the task of leadership was to bring “diversities together in a common purpose.”6 When Eisenhower chose Hobby for his cabinet he picked a person with a political frame of mind much like his own. Hobby’s characterization of herself as an independent, together with her record of supporting Democrats and Republicans, depending upon the election, and opposing the extremes of either the political left or the political right, place her in – or at least, near – the middle of the road, with Eisenhower. The Hoover Commission’s recommendation to agglomerate several New Deal agencies into a cabinet-level department was sensible, even obvious. Mississippi’s John Bell Williams tried to muster opposition to the plan, but most in Congress were in favor. The department proposed by the Hoover Commission was designed to include Roosevelt- era agencies together with other entities that preceded Roosevelt, resulting in a single department concerned with, as its name denoted, the health, education, and welfare of the American people. When Hobby became administrator of the Federal Security Agency, she assumed control of five principal constituent agencies: the Social Security Administration, the largest in terms of numbers of citizens served and the amount of funds controlled; the Office of Education; the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation; the Food and Drug Administration; and the Public Health Service, which included the National Institutes of Health.7

3 United Press, untitled wire service report, January 16, 1953. Hobby papers, box 50, DDEL. 4 Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 87, no. 1 (February 1982): 92, 110. 5 The Eisenhower Diaries, Robert H. Ferrell, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 153. 6 Dwight D. Eisenhower to William Phillips, June 5, 1953. Ann Whitman File, Names Series, box 25, DDEL. 7 “Lady in Command,” Time, May 4, 1953, online unpaginated; Brian Spinks, “The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,” unpublished manuscript, circa 1960, chap. 3, 2, (hereafter cited as Spinks

160 When the House of Representatives passed the enabling legislation changing the Federal Security Agency into the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), the debate was uproarious. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, an opponent of the measure, read to the House some of the speeches made by Republicans during the 1950 debates over an almost identical measure. He poked fun at his colleagues with the taunt, “If it was a rotten egg in 1950, three more years of aging won’t make it fresh.” Becoming serious, Williams contended that the House was “fashioning a tool today that some future left-wing president could utilize to bring ‘socialized medicine’ to the country.” Representative Williams was in the minority; with strong bi-partisan support, the bill passed. 8 The American Medical Association (AMA) had long opposed reorganization plans, fearing that any strengthening of the federal regulatory apparatus over medical issues represented a concession that could lead to compulsory health insurance, or what the AMA condemned as “socialized medicine.” Hobby’s political savvy came into play; she created the new position of special assistant to the Secretary for health and medical affairs, a liaison between the medical establishment and HEW. The AMA relaxed somewhat and allowed Congress to approve the Eisenhower proposal. Querying Hobby about her bureaucratic tactics, a reporter asked if Hobby intended to trim expenditures of “earmarked” funds, defined as funds directed by Congress to specific programs. Hobby’s answer was evasive; she left the impression that earmarks might be scrutinized, but she stopped short of saying the practice would be restrained.9 The liberal magazine New Republic characterized the Eisenhower cabinet as “eight millionaires and a plumber,” an epithet that the nation’s media immediately picked up and popularized.10 Hobby became the ninth millionaire on the cabinet, with the result

manuscript). The FSA included five “orphan agencies” that became part of the successor department. These were small government ventures that did not belong anywhere else: St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a venerable institution focusing on mental illness; Columbia Institution for the Deaf, comprised of Gallaudet College and a school to train teachers of the deaf; Howard University, a school for black students specializing in physician training; Freedman’s Hospital, focusing on health care for black Americans; and American Printing House for the Blind. 8 Harold B. Hinton, “New Department Is Voted by House,” New York Times, March 19, 1953. 9 Bess Furman, “Mrs. Hobby to Set Health Policies; She Favors Voluntary Programs,” New York Times, May 9, 1953. 10 Gary Donaldson, Abundance and Anxiety: America, 1945-1960 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997) 79. Martin P. Durkin, the Secretary of Labor, was formerly president of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the U.S. and Canada, also known as UA.

161 that Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell suggested that the cabinet had become “nine men and a hobby.”11 When Congress approved the 1953 budget, it did not provide funding for the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, or for the secretary’s support staff. The department did not exist during the time the budget was under consideration, and Congress would not ordinarily authorize expenditure for a contingency of this nature. This timing problem meant that Secretary Hobby’s salary and office expenses were not part of the new department’s budget. The new department headquarters did not have funding beyond that appropriated for its operating subsidiaries. Among other consequences, this clouded situation made it more difficult to fill such critical positions as Assistant Secretary and Special Assistant for Medical Affairs.12 The new department required a headquarters staff. Hobby got high-powered help in the form of Nelson Rockefeller, appointed by Eisenhower to be Under Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The position was second highest in the department, after Secretary Hobby, and Hobby welcomed her new subordinate, referring to him as her “general manager,” a designation he also used.13 Rockefeller sported impressive credentials for the job. He entered government service in 1940 as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. He served in other capacities in government and at the time of his appointment was Chairman of the President’s Advisory Commission on Government Organization, an outgrowth of the Hoover Commission.14 In addition to an under secretary, Congress provided for two assistant secretaries. Hobby quickly filled the positions.15

11 Ruth Montgomery, “Labor Secretary Finds Nickname for Cabinet,” New York Daily News, January 23, 1954. 12 New York Times, “Money Woes Beset New Cabinet Unit,” New York Times, July 13, 1953. 13 Gordon W. Blackwell, “Mrs. Hobby’s Outlook: Controversies Everywhere,” Nation’s Business, January, 1954, 75. 14 New York Times, “Nelson A. Rockefeller Is Named to High Post in New Department,” New York Times, May 29, 1953. The other members of the advisory group were Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, the President’s brother and president of Pennsylvania State College, and Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, acting Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization. In 1958 President Eisenhower named Flemming the third Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. He had served on the Hoover Commission with Hobby. He had a personal interest in HEW activities: as a child, he had been a polio victim. 15 New York Times, “27-Year-Old New Yorker Named Welfare Aide in ‘Little Cabinet,’” New York Times, January 23, 1954. One of her selections was Roswell B. Perkins, a brilliant young lawyer. Like Hobby, Perkins was an early achiever, graduating cum laude from Harvard at nineteen. He was one of the youngest

162 Hobby dramatized her work habits when she held her first staff meeting. At the appointed meeting time, she ordered the door to the conference room locked. All those who were tardy were locked out. She told those in the room that next time, everyone would come to the meeting on time. Hobby’s work habits impressed the people with whom she worked, and the working press came to share their view. A feature story in a New York newspaper called attention to Hobby’s work ethic with the sub-headline “When She Learns Job, Oveta Hobby May Trim Her Week to 70 Hrs.” The secretary’s success as a businesswoman helped explain how she had ascended to her present station. The newspaper feature drew attention to her financial resources and social rank with interior and exterior photographs of the Hobby mansion in Houston. Other photographs featured her attractive children – Bill, then in college, and Jessica, in a private school in New York.16 Hobby told reporters that she typically ate lunch at her desk, usually a salad. Her own description of long work days, homework in the evenings, and Saturday work matches the descriptions of coworkers and other observers.17 President Eisenhower was fully aware of Hobby’s regimen. When he left Washington to take a few days vacation for the Thanksgiving holiday in 1954, he left behind a letter to his HEW Secretary gently directing her to take a few days off for the holiday. She had told him she planned not to work on Thanksgiving Day; he wrote that he wanted her “to get out of this place no later than tomorrow morning (Wednesday) and not be back before Monday.” He stipulated that she should not “lug off with you a brief case full of papers” or stay in telephone contact with the office. His concern was that he did not want her to “become bored, sick, or just plain tired of your job.”18

people ever appointed at the level of assistant cabinet secretary. After government service he returned to the Wall Street law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton where he remained of counsel as recently as March 2008. 16 Felton West, “Reminiscences,” Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., (private printing, 1997), 30; Worth Gatewood, “This Woman’s Work,” New York Daily News, March 21, 1953. 17 Oveta Culp Hobby, “A Job that Touches Nearly Everyone Leaves Little Time for Dinners, Talks,” Houston Post, September 21, 1953. Hobby’s luncheon salad was a staple of her self-description. Columnist Drew Pearson, sometimes complimentary, sometimes critical of Hobby, wrote that she “eats a fruit salad at her desk to keep her trim figure.” Drew Pearson, "Washington Merry-Go-Round," typescript, September 8, 1953, Drew Pearson's Washington Merry-Go-Round Collection, American University, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as Pearson typescript). 18 Dwight D. Eisenhower to Oveta Culp Hobby, November 24, 1953. Ann Whitman Files, Series 19, box 3, DDEL. Note that the highly likely way for Eisenhower to find out Hobby intended to work through the holiday weekend was for her to tell him, directly or indirectly. Hobby worked hard, and she consistently

163 While feature writers were complimentary, even adulatory, other reporters had less positive things to say. Their complaint was that Hobby was not accessible, that she held the press at bay. Despite her background in newspaper publishing – or perhaps because of it – Hobby handled press relations by having almost no relations. Recognizing that the independent press would not submit to her supervision, she reacted by limiting her contact with this threat, and by maintaining all possible control on the rare occasions when dealing with the press was desirable or unavoidable. Allen Drury wrote a syndicated essay that described Hobby’s charm and at the same time described how she dominated her infrequent press conferences.19 As reporters entered the room, secretaries handed them large information packets. When Hobby arrived, exactly on time and dressed in chic, conservative clothes, she politely and firmly explained the ground rules. She then read her prepared statement in “a carefully modulated and effective voice,” and accepted questions. However, the questions were required to be about specific subjects, as set forth in the ground rules. Drury summarized the meeting, “The secretary gets away with it, and even those who resent the treatment soon find themselves going along with it, mollified by real charm and real ability.” During the press conference Drury attended, Hobby articulated clearly her views on several topics. She was not in favor of school construction financing. At the same time she was positive on the issue of expanding Social Security, insisting that all American workers deserved coverage. Drury observed that Hobby’s job was to administer liberal programs in a conservative manner and judged that she was doing well at it.20 The secretary’s control over the media was not absolute. In at least one instance she overreached, at least in the opinion of some in the press. The occasion was a planned appearance on a national radio show, the Mutual Broadcasting System’s “Reporters’ Roundup,” where she would be interviewed by two veteran reporters. Shortly before the interview she sent a prepared script to the reporters together with the stipulation that they could ask questions only from her script, then wait while she read her prepared answers.

made sure that her employees, the press, her colleagues, including the president, were aware of it. See “Lady in Command,” Time, May 4, 1953, online unpaginated, for details of her long workdays and hurried meals, details available only from Hobby. 19 Hobby held no regular press conferences and met with the press only six times. See William V. Shannon, “Mrs. Hobby: The Studied Approach,” New York Post, May 1, 1955. 20 Allen Drury, “Oveta Wins You with Charm, Ability,” Minneapolis Star, January 21, 1954. Drury, a native Houstonian, later wrote novels about the Eisenhower years and the Cold War.

164 They were to be “her straight men,” in one account of the story. The reporters fired back their counter-ultimatum: She would submit to the questions of their choosing or they would cancel the interview, go on air with a description of her demands, and interview instead Senator Wayne Morse, her most severe critic. They called her bluff, and she agreed to do it their way. It may have been a mistake. In the course of the interview she made a statement that came back to haunt her for years, saying that the Salk vaccine program had not been mishandled, and if it had, it was the fault of Surgeon-General Leonard Scheele.21

Hobby held a decided opinion on the role of the federal government in family life and she stated it clearly in an article she wrote for World Call, a Protestant periodical. She listed the needs of American children, including improved health care, better educational opportunities, programs to combat juvenile delinquency, and others. But she wrote of a hierarchy of accountability. Parents have the greatest responsibility for the welfare of children, followed in order by communities, then states. The federal government? “We in the federal government are here to help you do your jobs more effectively, not to do them for you.” (Emphasis Hobby’s.)22 As Hobby later explained to a New York Times reporter, quoting the U.S. Constitution, “I take as a guideline to promote the general welfare rather than to provide for the general welfare.”23 Incoming Secretary Hobby’s middle-of-the-road approach did not oblige her to defend many New Deal initiatives. Eisenhower had already announced her position in his administration when an editorial appeared in the Houston Post emphasizing an Eisenhower election promise and Republican campaign pledge for a top-to-bottom review of the federal bureaucracy, with special attention directed to agencies and bureaus established in recent years – many of the entities that Hobby already knew she would

21 Drew Pearson, Pearson typescript, July 1, 1955. Pearson, described by some as an investigative reporter and by others as a muckraker, was the most widely syndicated newspaper columnist of his time. Interestingly, although Hobby subscribed to a newspaper clipping service and several hundred newspapers printed this column, no copies were found in Hobby’s papers at Rice University, nor in the archives at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. 22 Oveta Culp Hobby, “Let Us Make Way for the Children,” World Call, July-August, 1953, 22-23. The magazine was a publication of the Disciples of Christ, a Protestant denomination. A large Life magazine photograph of Hobby in an elaborate evening gown jarringly accompanied the article. 23 Bess Furman, “Mrs. Hobby Rates Defense No. 1,” New York Times, April 27, 1953.

165 lead. The editorial asserted that “Washington became a dense jungle of bureaucracy in the New Deal-Fair Deal era. Power-hungry bureaucrats are firmly entrenched and they can be counted on to use every device possible to justify their existence.”24 Whether or not the power-hungry bureaucrats knew it, their new leader had drawn a line in the sand. The oft-told tales about Oveta Hobby include the account of a telephone call she made as soon as she was asked to join Eisenhower’s cabinet as Federal Security Agency Administrator and Cabinet Secretary-designate. She recounted calling J. Edgar Hoover, asking him to initiate an FBI investigation of her background and suitability for the post. FBI files confirm that her version of the initiation of the investigation is accurate. She called Hoover on November 25, 1952, and on the same day he sent teletype messages to five FBI field offices.25 The messages directed that the investigations “be thorough and cover adult life re character, loyalty, associations, ability and qualifications to occupy high government position.” He exempted scrutiny of her education and interviews of her neighbors.26 When Hobby took credit for calling for an investigation of herself, what she failed to mention that she was in friendly territory. Less than two weeks before she made the phone call, Post published an editorial calling attention to the fact that, while the Eisenhower victory might be a mandate for replacing many top federal officials, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would not be the object of replacement. The editorial went on to compliment the director and his agency for their “unceasing fight against communism” without “in any way violating the civil rights of American citizens.”27 As parliamentarian of the Texas House of Representatives, Hobby had developed valuable skills herding legislation through committees. She comprehended the give-and- take requirements of successful lawmaking and she understood how to wield her authority. This knowledge, added to her well-developed interpersonal talents, she put to good use working with the U.S. House and Senate. Fortunately for her, she had known Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson for a long time – she recounted to an interviewer that her father and Sam E. Johnson, Jr., Lyndon’s father, had worked together

24 Houston Post, “Bureaus to Undergo Examination,” Houston Post, November 23, 1952. 25 John Edgar Hoover, memorandum for Mr. Tolson, Mr. Ladd, and Mr. Nichols, November 25, 1952. From Oveta Culp Hobby FBI FOIA file; Ben Kaplan, “Ike Picked a Remarkable Woman in our Mrs. Hobby,” Houston Press, November 26, 1952. 26 J. Edgar Hoover, teletype message to field offices, November 25, 1952. From Oveta Culp Hobby FBI FOIA file. 27 Hobby’s files offer several examples of exchanges of polite notes between the two public servants.

166 in the Texas Legislature. When Johnson first ran for Congress he went to Houston to seek support and advice from Will Hobby; Will introduced Johnson to Oveta at that meeting.28 Seeking to smooth the passage of the administration’s program for her department, Hobby made the rounds of the Congressional leadership. Johnson made substantive suggestions, then introduced her to other key Senate and House members, guaranteeing accelerated consideration of her legislation.29 In May 1953 Hobby appeared on the Today show, NBC Television’s morning news and interview program with longtime host Dave Garroway. In a six-minute appearance Hobby gave a necessarily simple explanation of the reason for the formation of the new department and an idea of the scope of the department’s activities as it affected people in everyday life. She pointed out that sixty-seven million Americans were enrolled in the Social Security program, and that the activities of the Public Health Service improved the lives of almost all Americans.30 Early in his administration the new president orchestrated a television presentation featuring the administration’s early actions. He asked that it be broadcast on all three major networks of the time, and the networks agreed. The half hour planned for the show was too short for all of the cabinet to appear, so Ike chose certain departments to highlight. He chose to feature Hobby and HEW, for several reasons. Her department was new and unfamiliar to the public. Moreover, the department influenced most American lives more than did any of the other departments – through social security, public health concerns, food and drug oversight, and other agencies directly concerned with the welfare of the people. In addition to the department’s relevance, its founding chief was articulate, telegenic, and a woman. She would help put the best face on the administration. The other cabinet members appearing on this first-ever, and last-ever, presentation were Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, and Attorney General Herbert Brownell.31

28 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview by David G. McComb, Houston, TX, July 11, 1969, 1-2. Hobby family papers. 29 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview, 14. 30 J. Stewart Hunter, memorandum to Oveta Culp Hobby, May 2, 1953, with attached script of questions and answers for the “Today” Show, NBC Television, May 4, 1953. Hobby papers, box 3, DDEL. 31 “Television and radio broadcast by President Dwight Eisenhower and selected cabinet members, June 3, 1953, all networks.” Script in Hobby papers, box 31, DDEL.

167 As chief executive of the Houston Post, Hobby ran an organization averaging approximately 300 employees. Even if some of them, pressmen on the night shift, for example, did not see their leader often, they were always kept aware that she was in charge. “Mrs. Hobby wants us to . . .” expressed an imperative. Now, as the leader of the government’s synthesized new department, she found that she had the responsibility to manage about 37,000 HEW employees, and not one had ever met the head of their department. Secretary Hobby took this as a challenge and she knew how she wanted to deal with it. When she led the Women’s Section of the Army public relations apparatus, she reached her target audiences effectively with a vigorous, sustained speaking schedule. As head of the WAC, Colonel Hobby had maintained a robust schedule of travel and speeches, visiting WAC training locations and installations at home and in the European Theater. At HEW, with a majority of her subordinates in the immediate vicinity of the District of Columbia, she began a marathon round of introductory speeches aimed at attaching her face to her name. At the same time, she intended to encourage a sense of common purpose throughout the organization. She began within weeks of being sworn in as head of the Federal Security Agency, and continued the talks for the next several months. Each time she spoke, she explained the structure of the newly formed department, and she passed out both compliments and challenges.32 Her methods of exerting control over HEW were much like the techniques she employed at the Post, with the essential difference between the two management challenges being one of scale. As often as she spoke to employee groups, she spoke even more often to a multiplicity of interest groups, beginning in early February 1953 with the nation’s women’s press establishment.33 Hobby had professional connections with other organizations as well, and she employed these connections to forward her goals for the nation’s welfare.34 The fact that she was “an attractive, intelligent, articulate woman” aggravated the secretary’s scheduling problems. Hobby reported receiving 2,300 requests for speeches by early June 1953; an assistant estimated that by October the number of

32 Oveta Culp Hobby, “Administrator’s Statement to Employees of Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance,” (speech, employee meeting, Baltimore, MD, April 7, 1953). Hobby papers, box 33, DDEL. 33 Oveta Culp Hobby (speech, meeting of the Women’s National Press Club, Washington, DC, February 3, 1953). Hobby papers, box 33, DDEL. 34 Josephine Ripley, “Second Woman Cabinet Member,” Christian Science Monitor, June 4, 1953; Oveta Culp Hobby (speech, meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, DC, April 16, 1953). Hobby papers, box 33, DDEL.

168 requests had climbed to 5,000. In her first eight months in office, she made twenty-three addresses classified by her office as “major,” and additional minor ones.35 In order to illustrate the demanding speaking schedule, Appendix 1 lists sixty speeches Hobby made in 1953, not including many talks made in employee meetings. She made even more speeches in the year following. Her prodigious speaking schedule placed Hobby in front of many different kinds of audiences. As the most active public speaker in the executive branch, she became spokesman not just for her department, but for the government as a whole. When she spoke to a banquet room full of Republican major donors at the Palmer House in Chicago, her remarks were not limited to her department and its activities. The speech was comprehensive in scope and could have been delivered by the president. She led off with an update on the war in Korea, describing the transfer of action from the “smoke and shrapnel” stage to the negotiating table. She next discussed foreign policy, stressing the coherence and interrelatedness that the new administration was seeking to foster. Taking up a favorite subject, she told the crowd that the administration had proposed and Congress had adopted seventy-two percent of the recommendations of the Hoover Commission. She pointed to the cost-cutting success of the new General Services Administration, established as a direct result of Hoover findings.36 At the time she was sworn in as Federal Security Administrator, Hobby advocated that the new administration “go slow” on changes in social programs. She was critical of them generally, saying some programs were “sound in policy and shoddy” in application. Other programs may have been useful in the past but had become obsolescent. She judged, “To junk at once all that came to us from the preceding administration would be . . . unfair to the nation. . . .”37 As WAC Director, Hobby had been embroiled in continuing combat with obstructive elements of the Regular Army. She struggled to improve the WAC uniform, to assure respect for her troops, to upgrade their treatment, and to encourage more

35 Marquis Childs, “Cabinet Officers Still Overworked,” Washington Post, October 9, 1953. The journalist also noted that Hobby’s heavy speaking schedule could account for her infrequent press conferences. He noted her fourteen-hour work days, and dinner at home on a tray. 36 Oveta Culp Hobby (speech, Republican Citizens Finance Committee Dinner, Palmer House, Chicago, November 23, 1953). Hobby papers, box 86, DDEL. 37 Associated Press, “Mrs. Hobby Urges Policy of ‘Go Slow,’” Dallas Times Herald, January 22, 1953.

169 American women to join the war effort. Some skirmishes she won, some she lost, but her tenacious nature compelled her to continue her struggles. Indeed, the effort hospitalized her. She brought the same resolute nature to her position in Eisenhower’s cabinet. Here, she was caught between Eisenhower’s principles – and her own – on the one hand, and the obdurate Republican Congress, strengthened by the support of mainly Southern Democrats, on the other. The battle centered on the budget. Hobby called a press conference to explain her budget cuts. At the president’s direction, she cut sixty-four million dollars from the total budget inherited from the Truman Administration. The press conference was her first; she did not hold another for many months. Despite her background in newspaper publishing – or perhaps because of it – Hobby handled press relations by having no relations. In her tenure as HEW secretary she held no regular press conferences and met with the press only six times. 38 The Truman budget for the HEW bundle of activities inherited by the Eisenhower administration was $1,786,000,000, of which only $440,000,000 was subject to budget cuts. Hobby recommended cuts of sixty-four million dollars. Then the House and the Senate proposed additional cuts that would range from ten to thirty million dollars more. Hobby resisted the additional reductions, fighting to save services of the Office of Education, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of Vocation Rehabilitation, and several Public Health activities.39 She was caught between Congress and the president. Congress was intent on cutting HEW appropriations, even if it meant cutting services. The president, writing from the summer White House in Denver, objected to proposed cuts in “humanitarian” services on the grounds that it would hurt people who could least afford to be hurt. He insisted that Hobby not give way.40 The two budget demands – cut and keep – were irreconcilable. Both Hobby and her president were caught in the dilemma. Eventually, Eisenhower kept peace in the party by conceding to Congress. Although he had lost the battle, he was planning his future strategy. A year after he won

38 Bess Furman, “Mrs. Hobby Rates Defense No. 1,” New York Times, April 27, 1953; Worth Gatewood, “This Woman’s Work,” New York Daily News, March 21, 1953; William V. Shannon, “Mrs. Hobby: The Studied Approach,” New York Post, May 1, 1955. 39 Oveta Culp Hobby, memorandum prepared for meeting with Congressional leaders, July 7, 1953. Hobby papers, box 14, DDEL. 40 Dwight D. Eisenhower to Oveta Culp Hobby, August 20, 1953. Hobby papers, box 185, DDEL.

170 the election, Eisenhower wrote his brother Milton, President of Pennsylvania State University, summarizing his administration’s efforts, department by department. Health, Education, and Welfare, which Ike called the “Welfare Department” rated one terse paragraph, about the same in length as most other departments: I think I shall ask for some extensions of the privileges in social security and old age benefits; some increase to public housing and slum clearance. I hope in this area to establish clearly that the concern of this Administration is for all the people, and that we recognize that there are more people of low incomes than there are of high incomes.41

These two simple sentences say a lot about the president’s middle-of-the-road approach to social programs. Yet, while the good-hearted general was musing about the needy in his personal correspondence, the officer charged with the responsibility of cutting or keeping programs cut ten percent from school lunch funding and abolished the federal- state program for the education of children of migratory farm workers.42 Hobby’s views, as set forth in her writing and in speeches, were harmonious with Eisenhower’s. In the month the president wrote his brother, the Gannett newspaper chain published guest editorials written by cabinet members. In Hobby’s piece she reaffirmed the administration’s promise to maintain the social gains of previous administrations. She went on to summarize the activities of the department in its first months of existence, but omitted all reference to budget cuts and other reductions. The newspapers ran her apologia uncritically, without pointing out the inconsistencies between the administration’s assurances and its actions.43 Writing for Nation’s Business, the monthly magazine of the United States Chamber of Commerce, Hobby summarized the accomplishments of her first year at the helm of the department.44 Uncharacteristically for this business booster publication, the

41 Dwight Eisenhower to Milton Eisenhower, November 6, 1953. Hobby papers, box 3, DDEL. 42 William V. Shannon, “Mrs. Hobby: The Studied Approach,” New York Post, May 1, 1955. 43 Oveta Culp Hobby, “The Human Side of Government – a New Cabinet Post,” Rochester (NY) Times- Union, November 20, 1953; Oveta Culp Hobby, “Department of Health, Education, Welfare Represents Human Side of Government,” Danville (IL) Commercial News, November 18, 1953. 44 Oveta Culp Hobby, “New Approach to Federal Aid,” Nation’s Business, January, 1954, 72-74.

171 magazine disputed some of her claims, in a column that started on the same page as the conclusion of Hobby’s article. The columnist quoted both President Eisenhower and Secretary Hobby, pledging to maintain, even extend, the social programs inherited from the Truman years. The columnist called attention to several programs weakened by the administration’s budget cuts and by reductions in health grants-in-aid programs to the states. These reductions damaged the morale of department staff members, causing them to question the future of some programs and, not incidentally, their own future career prospects. Management morale in the new department was also shaken by Hobby’s statement that “We hope to have people whose political philosophy is in harmony with that of the administration.”45 On April 3, 1954 Secretary Hobby testified before a Senate committee on education, trying to convince Alabama Democrat Senator Lister Hill that holding forty- eight state conferences on education, followed by a national convocation, would be faster than Hill’s preferred method of simply providing the states with school construction grant funds, a technique successfully used to encourage new hospital construction. Hobby’s Commissioner of Education, Dr. Samuel M. Brownell, came to the Secretary’s defense, arguing that schools were different from hospitals because of the element of local control.46 Senator Hill listened, then gave voice to his objections to her strategy of delay, pointing out that there had already been seven national conferences on the subject, and seven million dollars spent on a survey. Other members of the committee agreed with Hill, and hearings continued on a bill to authorize the grants.47 Hobby took her message of opposition to one of the country’s premium venues for advocating policy. In the first-ever address by a female cabinet officer to the National Press Club, she asserted that the $100 million annual school building appropriation “would be the greatest deterrent to school construction.” She explained her reasoning.

45 Gordon W. Blackwell, “Mrs. Hobby’s Outlook: Controversies Everywhere,” Nation’s Business, 74-78. The columnist was a health policy analyst on the faculty of the University of North Carolina. 46 Bess Furman, “Aid to Education Put Up to States,” New York Times, April 3, 1954. Samuel M. Brownell was the older brother of Attorney General Herbert Brownell and a professor of education at Yale University. 47 Drew Pearson, Pearson typescript, May 18, 1954. Southern segregationists opposed federal aid as a threat to continued segregation of schools. For details of the opposition see George A. Kizer, “Federal Aid to Education: 1945-1963k,” History of Education Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring 1970), 84-102.

172 With funds available, local communities would be tempted to wait for federal funding. She advocated a “ground swell” of popular sentiment at the local level.48 The issue of federal aid to education would not go away. In early 1955, at the beginning of her third year in office, Hobby proposed a financing program featuring federal purchase of school bonds to encourage school construction. Ike was favorable to the plan, remarking that he ranked education as important as national defense. Vice president Nixon also favored the measure, suggesting it would enhance Ike’s reputation as a liberal.49 The National Education Association and state education officials were disappointed, attacking the financing program as “a banker’s bill.”50 In February 1955 Hobby was once again testifying about educational matters to a congressional committee. Hobby appeared to have changed her position on the school finance bill and was now speaking, writing and testifying in behalf of the program, a mixture of federal purchase of school bonds, federal guarantees for state school bonds, matching grants for districts unable to sell bonds, and other grants for poor districts. Hobby was asked to explain why she supported the bill when she had opposed it a year earlier. Her answer was that the bill had been reformatted; now it was acceptable. In truth, the bill essentially had not changed – Hobby had changed her mind and her strategy.51 The protracted school aid issue and its final successful resolution were testimony to Hobby’s influence on Congress, to her understanding of the legislative process, and to the administration’s willingness to compromise.52 The administration was not willing to compromise on another issue. On February 15, 1953 Federal Services Administrator Hobby appeared on a television commentary program following the president’s State of the Union address to the Congress. Veteran

48 Dallas Morning News, “Mrs. Hobby Speaks Against School Aid,” Dallas Morning News, May 12, 1952. Her speech marked the first time women reporters had ever been permitted to hear a National Press Club speaker. They were allowed into the hall after club members had finished lunch. 49 Robert J. Donovan, “Firing Back at Democrats’ Post-Election Snipers,” Allentown (PA) Call, May 17, 1956. The article was one of a series syndicated from Donovan’s book Eisenhower—the Inside Story, published by Harper in June 1956. 50 William V. Shannon, “Mrs. Hobby: The Studied Approach,” New York Post, May 1, 1955. 51 Mary McGrory, “Mrs. Hobby Gets Compliments, Challenges on School Plan,” Washington Evening Star, February 15, 1955. 52 The measure as finally proposed provided seven billion dollars for school construction, a much larger total than Hobby originally envisioned. A small amount, less than three percent, was provided for improving schools that might not meet the standard of “separate but equal.” See George A. Kizer, “Federal Aid to Education: 1945-1963,” History of Education Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring, 1970): 89-90.

173 television newsman Eric Sevareid was host of the CBS Television show. Reviewing her remarks in advance of the interview, Hobby made a handwritten note on her copy of the script, “no compulsory health insurance.”53 During the interview she affirmed the position she had noted on the script. The next day’s newspapers printed her flat statement that “there will be no socialized medicine” during the Eisenhower administration. Her comments went on to stress that both the president and the Republican platform were explicit about the issue. She added that programs of medical research and development were not included in the proscription.54 Opposition to various forms of “socialized medicine” was pervasive in Congress.55 Representative John Bell Williams had given voice to his opposition on the day the House approved establishment of Hobby’s department, but his condemnation was only a part of a decades-long aversion that continued into the twenty-first century.56 The American Medical Association adamantly resisted any thought of socialized medicine. The organization’s hostility included opposition to an innovation proposed by the Eisenhower administration, the National Health Reinsurance Program. Even though the president assumed the insurance industry would join the AMA in opposing the program, Hobby went directly to the industry, requesting the help of actuaries and public policy specialists in formulating the administration’s program. Eisenhower then invited the chief

53 “Questions for Mr. Sevareid to ask Mrs. Hobby,” CBS Television program, “State of the Union,” February 15, 1953. Hobby papers, box 33, DDEL. 54 Associated Press, “No Socialized Medicine, Says Mrs. Hobby,” Houston Chronicle, February 16, 1953. Physicians were very active politically during the Eisenhower administration. The American Medical Association assessed all physician members to amass funds used to fight greater federal government participation in medicine. The Roper Public Opinion Research Center determined that ninety-seven percent of physicians voted in the 1952 presidential election and thirty percent made political campaign contributions. Fifty-six percent of physicians identified themselves as Republicans, compared with twenty-one percent claiming the Democratic Party. Additional data and conclusions are in William A. Glaser, “Doctors and Politics,” American Journal of Sociology 66, no. 3 (November 1960): 230-245; “The American Medical Association: Power, Purpose, and Politics in Organized Medicine,” Yale Law Journal 63, no. 7 (May 1954): 937-1022. According to Cary Reich, Nelson Rockefeller’s biographer, Hobby claimed she had come to Washington to bury the dream of socialized medicine. Quoted in David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 517. 55 “Socialized medicine” is a disparaging term popularized by the American Medical Association in its opposition to publicly funded health care, which many in the medical profession believe would lower physicians’ incomes and result in medical decisions made by unqualified people. The Yale Law Journal article cited above describes the well-financed public relations campaign of the AMA during the Truman administration. 56 Harold B. Hinton, “New Department Is Voted by House,” New York Times, March 19, 1953.

174 executives of twenty of the largest companies to lunch to discuss the program with them. The president and Hobby explained what they proposed to do. They assumed the insurance leaders would oppose the program, but they wanted to make sure the administration’s objectives were clear. The leaders left the White House lunch and reconvened, passing a resolution to support Hobby’s proposed legislation. The legislative effort went forward, only to be killed in Congress under strong pressure from the AMA.57 Eisenhower reacted angrily when the physicians’ association blocked the bill, pointing out that if the AMA blocked a measure as tepid as the reinsurance program, they would force the American people to support socialized medicine.58 The former colonel reacted strongly, too. Her staff at the WAC had described Hobby’s frequent reaction when challenged by strong opposition. She would cry “Hand me my sword!” while looking around for files, clipboards, or any other weapons or supplies she might need to meet the challenge. Her reaction to the AMA demonstration of its power was similar. True, critics of the Eisenhower administration pointed to administration links with conservative business and professional groups, and not without reason. Hobby’s general manager owned Rockefeller Center; one of her assistant secretaries had worked a few blocks from Rockefeller Center, high above Wall Street. When she selected a special assistant to advise her on medical matters, she was accused of appointing someone “chosen by the ruling hierarchy of the American Medical Association.”59 Charges of favoritism to conservative business and professional interests must have seemed ironic to Hobby when she challenged the association at its annual convention in New York in early June 1953. She did not sound like someone under AMA control when she spelled out the obligation of the medical community. She told the assembly that “the supply of medical care must be adequate and available to all the people.” She quickly added that medical resources should be employed “under a policy which safeguards the traditional principles of our democratic American pattern.” She warned, “If we fail to participate and lead in the solution of these problems, the solution

57 Hobby, interview, 19-20. Bill Hobby said Secretary Hobby sat in the House gallery during a night session, watching Republican House leader Charles Hallek as he worked the House floor, rounding up enough Republican votes to kill the administration’s measure. Bill Hobby, e-mail message to author, September 28, 2007. 58 Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower,” 102. 59 William V. Shannon, “Mrs. Hobby: The Studied Approach,” New York Post, May 1, 1955.

175 will be taken out of our hands, and that solution will not be a happy one.”60 Her warnings to the medical industry were consistent. Speaking to the American Hospital Association two months later, she cautioned that health care costs were a problem and required positive action to contain them. Again she held out the specter of socialized medicine as the menacing alternative to self-regulation. More than a year later, her message had not changed. She spoke again to the American Medical Association, explaining the benefits of the administration’s health reinsurance program. She posited that the scheme would protect insurance carriers, and ultimately rate payers, against catastrophic claims. “We need insurance against compulsory health insurance,” she said, “and we firmly believe that the reinsurance proposal – if enacted – provides that kind of insurance.” She held out the hope that the federal government would eventually be able to turn reinsurance over to the insurance industry.61 Dealing with the American Medical Association could be vexing, but other issues could be worse, even intractable. In one sense, the timing of Hobby’s service at HEW was fortunate. The lawsuits known collectively as Brown v. Board of Education had been percolating upward through the federal judicial system for several years. By the time the Eisenhower administration took office, it was apparent that the high court would hand down its decision before much longer. Hobby’s good fortune, in a sense, was that the Chief Justice read the Brown v. Board decision in May 1954, but the court delayed for a year the legal recommendations for how to implement the decision.62 By that time, Hobby was already in the process of disengaging from her position.63

60 New York Times, “Mrs. Hobby Warns Doctors on Tasks,” New York Times, June 2, 1953. 61 Oveta Culp Hobby (speech, American Medical Association meeting, November 29, 1954). WRC, box 30, folder 3. 62 Weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board, Hobby decided how to handle the news when it broke. Post reporters asked religious leaders in the city, representing Jews and all major Christian factions, to make statements about the decision and its consequences. She later told an interviewer, “My purpose was to present our readers with the opinion of religious leaders in how we function under the Constitution. They knew they were speaking out on the most controversial issue of our time. It took raw courage for them to speak out as they did.” Oveta Culp Hobby, interview by Marguerite Johnston, Houston, TX, undated, 1. Transcript in Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 11, WRC. When the decision came down, the religious leaders’ statements ran on the front page. 63 Hobby was not insensitive to civil rights. Before joining the Eisenhower administration she had directed the Post to use courtesy titles “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” and “Miss” when writing about African Americans. She also deplored the practice of identifying black criminals and criminal suspects when no such identification was used with white criminals. Lynn Ashby, interview by author, Houston, TX, October 13, 2006; “Mrs. Hobby Proposes Socratic Oath,” Editor and Publisher, May 6, 1950, 58. In speeches, Hobby quoted economists’ estimates of the cost of discrimination to the American economy. Prejudice, she said, deprived individuals

176 The secretary could not avoid other matters of civil rights and racial discrimination. On military bases, public schools operated by the military had recently been integrated. Across the South, however, were thirteen bases with schools operated on the base by local school districts. By state law and local practice, all were segregated. The federal Office of Education had regulatory authority over the schools, and it was to this office that black leaders turned, insisting that all schools on federal property should be integrated. Hobby delayed implementing the change, drawing fire from black and white Americans anxious to move ahead with what they saw as inevitable progress.64 Hospital construction was another area of contention about discrimination, with a planned Houston hospital at the center of the controversy. HEW was helping finance a new hospital in Hobby’s home town, one that would bar African American patients. The dispute was over federal subsidization of segregation, with Secretary Hobby willing to approve the measure.65 Enter Jane Spaulding, an experienced federal bureaucrat, an African American selected by Hobby to take charge of “minority affairs.” Spaulding believed HEW should work toward elimination of embedded discrimination; Hobby believed her department should move slowly. Some elements of the press, and especially the black press, brought into the open the feud between the two women. Hobby had fixed ideas about how to run a bureaucracy, ideas she had proved before. Spaulding had to go, but demoting or firing her seemed a distinctly bad idea. At length, a compromise was struck, and Spaulding was promoted to a higher-paying job in another department.66 Hobby turned her attention to the Food and Drug Administration, concluding that it was badly underfunded, and had been for years. She later recalled that her department

of their fair income and deprived the government of tax revenue. United Press, “Bias Called Economic Burden,” New York Times, June 9, 1953; Oveta Culp Hobby (address, Howard University Annual Charter Day Ceremonies, Washington, DC, March 2, 1954), Hobby papers, box 37, DDEL. 64 For analysis of Eisenhower, Hobby, and implementation of Brown, see Michael S. Mayer, “With Much Deliberation and Some Speed: Eisenhower and the Brown Decision,” Journal of Southern History 52, no. 1 (February 1986). A more recent treatment of the decision is James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 65 Robert M. Ratcliff, “The Spaulding Feud!” Pittsburgh Courier, January 30, 1954. 66 The Spaulding story played out in American newspapers. Ratcliff, “Spaulding Feud!” Pittsburgh Courier, January 30, 1954; Ethel Payne, “Jane Spaulding Quits Hobby, Takes New Job,” Chicago Defender, January 30, 1954; “Mrs. Spaulding Resigns Post,” Afro-American, January 26, 1954. Hobby turned to another African American as a successor to Spaulding. As adroit as that move seemed, it did not work out. The candidate refused the job. “Negro Leader Refuses Job of One Fired by Mrs. Hobby,” New York Post, February 18, 1954.

177 persuaded Congress to substantially increase Food and Drug appropriations with the result that consumer protection became much stronger.67 The HEW secretary and the Food and Drug Administration did not win all their battles. Early in Hobby’s tenure, grain inspection programs put in place by the Truman administration resulted in the government seizing forty-five carloads of wheat found to be contaminated by rat droppings at the rate of more than one dropping per pint. The outraged grain dealers who owned the wheat complained to Congress and to the White House, going so far as threatening not to handle future grain bought by the Agriculture Department under its farm price support programs. As a result of political pressure, Ezra Taft Benson’s Agriculture Department and Hobby’s Food and Drug Administration abandoned the program of federal grain inspection, turning responsibility back to the industry and its “voluntary cooperation” program to prevent grain contamination. Powerful grain dealers were satisfied with the status quo ante. Millers and bakers, who supported improved measures of controlling contamination, were not pleased with the reversal.68 Many of Oveta Culp Hobby’s accomplishments as founding secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare were paradigmatic of bureaucratic efficiency. She put into effect management concepts and structures recommended by the Hoover Commission. The innovations were not only approved by the Eisenhower administration and the Republican Party, they were also supported by many Democrats, going back to the Truman administration, when the Hoover group was originally formed. One major incident serves to illuminate her accomplishments and at the same time show the difficulties attendant to taking “the middle path” that Secretary Hobby and President Eisenhower worked to pursue. Polio was a major public health problem in the years following World War II. 69 Other diseases were more prevalent, more dangerous to health and well-being, but the apparently random spacing of epidemic outbreaks and the disturbing consequences of infection made the disease seem even more dangerous than it was.

67 Hobby, interview by McComb. 68 Drew Pearson, Pearson typescript, May 18, 1953. 69 Common usage for the name of the disease has evolved over time; poliomyelitis was displaced by infantile paralysis, which was later set aside in favor of polio.

178 Under the prevailing public health ethos of the first half of the twentieth century, most medical research was funded and conducted privately, with little participation by the federal government. During the 1920s and 1930s the Rockefeller Foundation funded and the Rockefeller Institute conducted almost all polio research in the U.S. The federal government basically provided nothing. It would be years before the National Institutes of Health began large-scale grants for research. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a polio survivor, founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to raise funds for polio research and to direct that research. Beginning in 1939 and for the next several years, in an arrangement that seems unusual by modern standards, the National Foundation paid for polio research at the National Institutes of Health, a rare instance of a private agency subsidizing the work of the U. S. Public Health Service.70 In the public mind, Roosevelt and the Foundation were linked, an association that continued after his death in 1945. For the first twenty years of its existence, the organization was directed by Basil O’Connor, Roosevelt’s former law partner. For that period, O’Connor effectively controlled polio research in the U.S.71 His objective was not just the conquest of polio, but the conquest of polio by the National Foundation.72 The research effort broadened and by late 1953 Dr. Jonas Salk, working at the University of Pittsburgh, had developed and tested a vaccine that seemed to work and was ready for large-scale field trials.73 In early 1954 Salk reported the vaccination of seven thousand children with no adverse effects. It was time for larger trials.74 By late 1954 Salk and his research team completed the last and largest field trial involving vaccinations of nearly two million children. Tabulation and analysis of the test data were conducted at the University of Michigan, with results not available until shortly before

70 Saul Benison, “The History of Polio Research in the United States: Appraisal and Lessons,” The Twentieth-Century Sciences: Studies in the Biology of Ideas (New York: Norton, 1972), 319. 71 Benison, “History,” 333. 72 Roger Vaughan, Listen to the Music: the Life of Hilary Koprowski (New York: Springer, 2000), 49. 73 Richard Carter, Breakthrough: the Saga of Jonas Salk (New York: Trident Press, 1965), 201-02. 74 Carter, Breakthrough, 219. Competing technologies confused the vaccine issue, with Salk’s live virus vaccine pitted against Albert Sabin’s killed virus vaccine, a marginally safer product. The National Foundation and HEW supported Salk’s vaccine because it was ready for distribution. For more, see David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

179 the onset of the 1955 polio season.75 This did not leave enough time to produce millions of doses of vaccine for the coming season. At this point, Basil O’Connor was for practical purposes the world’s polio vaccine tsar; he placed orders with six pharmaceutical companies for a total of twenty-seven million doses of Salk vaccine, enough to provide three-shot protection to nine million children. His plan was to make the vaccine available, free, to the nation’s first- and second-grade children. O’Connor made his high-stakes gamble without waiting for the results of the University of Michigan analysis and despite the risk that HEW might not license the vaccine.76 On April 12, 1955, ten years to the day after Roosevelt’s fatal stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia, the National Foundation scheduled a celebratory press conference in a large auditorium at the University of Michigan.77 The University’s lengthy report confirmed that the Salk vaccine was effective in preventing polio, and, equally important, that it was safe. Following the press conference in Ann Arbor, Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby and Surgeon General Leonard A. Scheele waited in Washington for a panel of experts meeting concurrently in Ann Arbor to give the technical approval necessary for HEW to proceed with licensing the vaccine. At length, Hobby and Scheele received the telephone call they were waiting for, and Hobby placed her signature on the license documents.78 However, HEW – Secretary Hobby – had made no provision for the distribution of the vaccine the National Foundation had ordered, and had no plans to order the millions of doses that would be required for a complete national immunization program. The National Foundation planned to make the vaccine already on order available at no cost, paid for by the Foundation. The administration, with Secretary Hobby as its agent, was opposed to the Foundation’s plan, saying free vaccine would set a dangerous precedent. The administration did not intend to sponsor government interference with

75 Carter, Breakthrough, 255. For test verification purposes, several hundred thousand children were given placebos, not Salk vaccine. As compensation, the National Foundation proposed that the test subjects be given priority when vaccine became available. 76 Carter, Breakthrough, 301. 77 A scientist present at the press conference said, “It was as if four supermarkets were having their premieres on the same day . . . It was a souring experience and a black eye for us all.” Quoted in Oshinsky, Polio, 207. 78 Tony Gould, A Summer Plague: Polio and its Survivors (New Haven: Yale, 1995), 151. Jonas Salk attended the technical review meeting.

180 private enterprise – the distribution and sale of polio vaccine.79 Hobby wanted to wait to see if the states paid for vaccine before committing the federal government. Seeking to respond to public clamor and Democratic criticism, Eisenhower seemed to change the administration’s position, advocating that federal funds be available to make sure no child would be denied vaccine because of inability to pay.80 For days, most vaccine remained unshipped, waiting for HEW to announce its allocation plan. The manufacturers, however, lost control of their unshipped inventory and significant amounts found their way into the black market and into export markets. Eisenhower, still under pressure, announced vaccine might be free to some. His press secretary, asked to clarify Ike’s statement, resorted to ambiguity to avoid a clear answer. Called up to explain her actions to the Democrat-controlled Congress, Secretary Hobby spiritedly defended her inaction with a breathtaking statement: “I think no one could have foreseen the public demand.” Soon after these memorable words, the founder of the WACs and longtime Republican stalwart resigned as HEW secretary, citing the need to go home and take care of her husband. Surgeon General Scheele and other HEW staff officials involved in the vaccine debacle resigned soon after.81 Columnist Drew Pearson judged that Surgeon General Leonard Scheele was the “scapegoat of the Salk snafu.” Defending Scheele in late 1955, Pearson wrote that Hobby had not prepared for distribution of Salk vaccine when Scheele first urged it. According to Pearson’s version of the events, as the time to provide for distribution approached, Hobby rushed the vaccine to the public, perhaps prematurely. The public looked for someone to blame for the subsequent problems, Pearson wrote that Hobby pushed off the responsibility on her Surgeon General.82 Called to appear at a Senate hearing on the subject of free vaccine for all children, Basil O’Connor quietly spoke in favor of the idea. Eventually, the Republican

79 “Mrs. Hobby Terms Free Shots Costly,” New York Times, June 17, 1955. Hobby called free vaccine a “back door to socialized medicine,” and stated that taxes to pay for the vaccine would be more expensive than physician’s fees. 80 Carter, Breakthrough, 303. Eisenhower appeared to be confused; the public was clearly confused by the options open to the government and to physicians. “Who Will Get the Vaccine?” Time, April 25, 1955, online unpaginated. 81 Gould, Plague, 156. All her life, Hobby spoke very precisely. This memorable comment was a very rare slip. 82 Drew Pearson, Pearson typescript, December 2, 1955.

181 administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress acceded to the requirements of the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical lobby, passing a bill providing for an anemic fund available for individual states to call upon as needed.83 Accounts of the Salk distribution controversy fail to include a revealing epilogue. Marion B. Folsom succeeded Hobby as HEW secretary. In December 1956, eighteen months after the Salk vaccine controversy, Folsom spoke to the National Press Club in Washington. He reminded his audience of the sharp criticism of Secretary Hobby and Surgeon General Scheele; he recalled the demands for government intervention in vaccine production and calls for drastic punishment of black marketers. Folsom updated his audience: at the time of his speech in December 1956, unsold stockpiles of vaccine crowded warehouses and drugstore shelves. There was enough vaccine in commercial inventory to inoculate every child and young adult in the country who had not already been inoculated. The Washington Star reported on Folsom’s speech and emphasized a rhetorical question asked by the secretary – why were the people who shouted so loudly the previous year not shouting now about public apathy?84 Rollout of the Salk vaccine was marred further by production flaws on the part of Cutter Laboratories, one of the pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccine. By the end of April 1955, twenty-six cases of paralytic polio were attributable to Cutter; more soon followed. For the next three weeks, Salk, the Foundation, HEW, and other agencies and organizations worked to unravel the problem and to measure its seriousness. Only Cutter was implicated; the other manufacturers’ products proved safe. Ultimately the processing failure was identified: Cutter had taken production shortcuts and HEW’s testing laboratories failed to catch the problem during testing procedures. More bureaucrats’ heads rolled, and Secretary Hobby’s tarnished reputation sank further.85 At least one student of the period, Richard Carter, believes the Cold War added to the impression of mismanagement of the Salk vaccine. Not long after Salk’s vaccine was accepted, a Russian-American researcher, Albert Sabin, announced the results of tests on his polio vaccine. Developed also with funding from the National Foundation for

83 Carter, Breakthrough, 304-07. 84 Washington Star, “Confounding the Alarmists,” Washington Star, December 21, 1956. 85 Carter, Breakthrough, 309-38. Hobby’s predicament spawned rumors of her impending resignation. A national business newsweekly reported, “It has the look of a coverup.” “Salk Vaccine: What’s behind the Story of Confusion?” Business Week, June 4, 1955, 90.

182 Infantile Paralysis, Sabin technology was proved to be marginally better than Salk’s and the U.S. ultimately switched to it. When HEW certified the Salk vaccine and mass inoculations started, immediate interest in Sabin’s version waned. Sabin turned to the Soviet Union, which had been watching his research with interest. The Soviets immediately put mass quantities of Sabin vaccine into production and immunized the entire nation very quickly, in embarrassing contrast to the U.S. experience. The result was perception of a “polio gap” similar to the “missile gap,” the perceived technical inferiority of U.S. military equipment during the same period. In June 1961 the American Medical Association, breaking longstanding policy, endorsed a commercial product – the Sabin vaccine. Taking it a step further, the AMA also endorsed mass vaccination. While not going so far as to specifically advocate free vaccinations, the AMA’s endorsement left room even for this step. Richard Carter pointed out that the Kennedy administration was formulating Medicare legislation, anathema to the medical profession. Recognizing the threat, and recognizing the profession’s public image problems, the AMA House of Delegates decided on a strong political statement to placate the American public.86 Secretary Hobby was concerned about Will Hobby’s health, and wanted to return to Houston to help take care of him. She delayed returning until immediately after the Salk vaccine program was launched. Because of sharp criticism of her handling of distribution of the vaccine, the press attributed the timing of her resignation to the Salk flap. President Eisenhower, in his public acceptance of her resignation, pointedly said that she had declared her intention to leave months before. He accepted the resignation of “the best man in the cabinet” on July 13, 1955. She returned home to nurse Governor, whose health improved. He survived another ten years, dying in 1964 at the age of eighty-six.87

Oveta Culp Hobby’s public life concluded with her return to Houston from Washington. She came back to Governor, to the Houston Post, to participation in civic

86 Carter, Breakthrough, 371-72. 87 James Barron, “Oveta Culp Hobby, Founder of the WACs and First Secretary of Health, Dies at 90,” New York Times, August 17, 1995. The Times obituary notice included the often-quoted “best man in the cabinet” judgment of Secretary of Treasury George M. Humphrey.

183 affairs, and to Suite 8-F. She resumed her role as one of the reigning members of Houston’s ruling class. She returned to a problem that had been festering for years. The Houston leadership was concerned about the desegregation of public facilities in the nation’s largest segregated city. Across the South, violence marked the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. In Suite 8-F and across the Houston business community, an objective was to prevent such occurrences. A strategy evolved. White southern response to integration was triggered by news reports. If news coverage resulted in adverse reactions, not publishing the story would prevent them. The Post, the Chronicle, and the Press agreed to suppress coverage of lunch counter integration.88 Foley’s Department Store, Houston’s and Texas’s largest, took the lead among downtown lunch counter operators. Robert W. Dundas, Sr., a Foley’s executive and veteran employee, realized that if their store was seen to integrate first, white adverse reaction would immediately center on their company. But if many downtown lunch counters began serving African Americans at the same time, protesters would not be able to single out an individual business for reprisal. Over a period of weeks, Dundas convinced seventy downtown lunch counter operators to join the plan, then worked with the city’s African American leaders, and downtown Houston was integrated. Over time, retailers removed the “Colored” and “White” signs over water fountains and on restroom doors.89 Oveta Hobby explained the muted press coverage to her staff. She directed that no photographs would appear in the Houston Post showing an African American seated at a lunch counter. No news story would appear. She later explained her tactics: “I said we will have no undue publicity on the school or hotel or lunchroom desegregation. We will not give the goons any incentive to come to a school or restaurant.” She continued, saying there would be “No photographers, no feature stories, nothing, unless it became a matter for the police blotter.” (Emphasis Hobby’s.) Post journalists were aghast. City

88 In Atlanta, GA, business and political leaders adopted a similar strategy, named “A City Too Busy to Hate.” Like Houston, Atlanta credits its relatively sensitive handling of civil rights tensions with helping the city avoid serious confrontations. Nevertheless, race-related issues continued to emerge. See B. Drummond Ayres, Jr., “Mayor of Atlanta Suspends Police Head, Giving the City's Image a Blow; Accused of Showing Examination 'The City Too Busy to Hate,'” New York Times, March 11, 1978. 89 Bill Hobby, interview with author, Houston, TX, January 9, 2007.

184 editor Ralph O’Leary, race relations specialist Blair Justice, and managing editor Frank King all protested the decision, in vain.90 A week after integration was accomplished, the three newspapers ran brief articles, buried in the back pages.91 During the decade of the 1960s, the Post and rival Chronicle gradually added news coverage of black Houstonians, while denying editorial support of civil rights activists. Their editorial pages sometimes offered criticism of such extreme segregationists as George Wallace.92 Oveta and Will Hobby had been friends and political supporters of Lyndon Johnson since before World War II. When Johnson joined John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential campaign, the Hobbys and the Post – and most of the Houston establishment – also joined in the effort. Johnson was, after all, a creation of George and Herman Brown, LBJ’s financial backers since the early days of his career.93 While Oveta Hobby would never again serve the nation in a full-time capacity, Johnson persuaded her to serve in advisory capacities on a presidential commission on Selective Service, and on the HEW Vietnam Health Education Task Force. Johnson asked for Hobby’s help in determining the future of public television; she recommended the structure that became the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Johnson subsequently appointed her to the CPB board, a post she held for four years.94 Hobby’s return to private life was timely. Corporate America was responding to social changes in the status of women by according greater recognition to female business acumen. Women advanced in the ranks of business management, and corporate boards began to invite women to become directors. Mutual Insurance Company of New

90 Oveta Culp Hobby, interview by Marguerite Johnston, Houston, TX, undated, 1. Transcript in Marguerite Johnston Barnes papers, box 11, folder 11, WRC. 91 Three sources agree on the details of the news embargo. Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 28, 2007; “JFK’s Death, Integration, and Men on the Moon,” Houston Chronicle, October 5, 2001; “Blackout in Houston,” Time, September 12, 1960, online unpaginated. Time disapproved of the newspapers’ decision, questioning the right of the media to suppress a major news story. The Houston Press initially refused to cooperate with the Post and Chronicle; when Dundas threatened to withdraw Foley’s advertising, Press management reconsidered. 92 Chandler Davidson, Biracial Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Metropolitan South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 136. 93 The Browns financed Lyndon Johnson’s political campaigns, and Johnson-directed appropriations financed the Browns’ construction empire. A recent description of the Johnson-Brown relationship is in Joseph A. Pratt and Christopher J. Castaneda, Builders: Herman and George R. Brown (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 61-64, 182-188. In 1955 Johnson had a serious heart attack; it occurred while he was visiting the Browns on their farm near Middleburg, Virginia. Isabel Brown Wilson, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 24, 2007. 94 “Senate Confirms Nominees For Public Broadcast Posts” New York Times, March 13, 1968.

185 York made Oveta Culp Hobby its first female director; she soon agreed to serve on the boards of General Aniline and Film Company and General Foods Corporation.95 Hobby joined the board of trustees of Rice University, the first woman to do so. Rice was confronting a dilemma. The trust documents establishing the university restricted its student body to whites only, and the board was divided as to whether or not to attempt to “break” the trust.96 At stake was federal funding, denied to discriminatory educational institutions. Also at stake was essential fairness, particularly in an era when the country’s racial attitudes were changing.97 Hobby joined sides with the trustees who favored integrating the student body. At length, the board changed the trust documents and effected integration.98 While she was active in public affairs and in the management of other corporations, Hobby did not neglect her own business interests. She expanded her media holdings in the early 1960s with the purchase of the Galveston News, the Galveston Tribune, and the Texas City Sun; after four years she sold the newspapers for a profit.99 At its peak the communications company published three newspapers and operated six television stations and two radio stations in five states.100 For years, there was speculation about the future of the Post. Bill Hobby was active in management, but in 1972 he was elected to one of his father’s old positions, that of lieutenant governor of the state. It was a position he clearly enjoyed, but one that kept him away from the Post for extended periods.101 Jessica Hobby Catto lived in the

95 Richard Rutter, “Nine New Directors Are Added To the Board of General Aniline, New York Times, February 3, 1965; “General Foods Elects Mrs. Hobby” New York Times, February 3, 1966. 96 The trust provisions were defended in court by a group of alumni opposed to the admission of African Americans. Bill Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 9, 2007. 97 William Marsh Rice had limited the student body of his institute to white men and women. Over the years, admission standards were stretched to include students of Asian and Hispanic descent. Only black students were proscribed. Hobby, interview. 98 For an analysis of black admissions to Rice in the years following the change of policy see “The Roller- Coaster Ride of Black Matriculations at Rice University,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 30 (Winter, 2000-2001): 51-53. 99 “Houston Post,” Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ articles/HH/eeh4.html (accessed September 4, 2006). 100 Bill Hobby, e-mail message to author, March 21, 2008. 101 The state of Texas apparently enjoyed his tenure. He was repeatedly re-elected, eventually serving eighteen years, longer than any other Texas Lt. Governor.

186 Washington, D.C., area, and later moved to San Antonio. In 1983 the Hobby family put the Post up for sale; within a few months, the Toronto Sun bought the newspaper.102 As Hobby grew older, she reduced her non-business activities, withdrawing more and more into the company of her two closest friends, George and Alice Brown. She refused to be part of the social scene; she would not be a “trophy guest.”103 In 1984, in the span of a few months, both Browns died. At this, Hobby withdrew almost completely from any outside activities – “she went in.” The last years of her life were spent reclusively; she seldom left her high-rise condominium home. Hobby selected and designed the condominium with her customary attention to detail. Hobby asked her assistant to call a fire chief and ask how high Houston Fire Department ladders would reach. When Hobby learned ladders would reach the eighth floor of the condominium building she was considering, she bought the eighth floor.104 Her floor plan was unusual. Always concerned about noise and distraction, she linked the maid’s room to the front door by means of a circuitous hallway. The maid could answer the front door without going through any of the rooms where Hobby might be.105 The white-haired woman was not completely isolated. Her assistant kept her in touch with her office, and her daughter-in-law and granddaughters were always welcome.106 She did not give up the telephone, and friends and family describe her days as being spent on the phone, keeping up with “the word on the street,” and watching the parliamentary action on C-Span.107 Her control over events continued beyond death. Hobby died on August 16, 1995, at the age of ninety. She had stipulated that Marguerite Johnston Barnes should deliver her funeral eulogy. Barnes did so, drawing heavily on the “biography” – the prepared

102 The Houston Post was sold two more times; the final buyer was the Hearst Corporation, which had recently bought the Houston Chronicle from the foundation that had operated it for years. Immediately after buying the Post, Hearst closed it. 103 Diana Hobby, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 30, 2007. 104 Peggy Buchanan, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 12, 2007. 105 Jim Lindsey, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 13, 2007. 106 Buchanan, interview; Diana Hobby, interview. 107 Isabel Brown Wilson interview by author, Houston, TX, January 24, 2007. A Corpus Christi newspaper publisher spoke with Hobby regularly by phone for the last ten years of her life. He wrote that she was “absolutely current on world and national events” and apparently read three or four daily newspapers. Edward H. Hart, Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed., 26. Jane Ely, the Post’s political analyst for many years, recalls getting phone calls from her former boss asking, “What’s going on? What’s the word on the street?” Jane Ely, interview by author, Houston, TX, January 25, 2007.

187 obituary – that the two women had written and updated. Oveta Culp Hobby not only directed her entire life, she composed her own eulogy.108

108 The archives at the Woodson Research Center include the last version of her biography-obituary, including the handwritten modifications Hobby asked Barnes to make in January, 1995, a few months before Hobby’s death.

188

Figure 16 Business Week, May 16, 1953

189

Figure 17 Oveta Culp Hobby takes the oath of office as Federal Security Administrator from Chief Justice Fred Vinson as President Dwight Eisenhower looks on. Social Security Administration.

Figure 18 President Dwight Eisenhower with his Cabinet and Vice President Richard Nixon. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

190

Figure 19 Secretary of Health, Education, And Welfare Oveta Culp Hobby. George Bush Presidential Library.

Figure 20 President Eisenhower presents an award to Jonas Salk. Secretary Hobby, who also spoke, is immediately behind the President. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

191

Figure 21 Time, May 4, 1953.

192

Figure 22 Oveta Culp Hobby on the pressroom floor of the Houston Post. Texas Monthly, October, 1978.

193 CONCLUSION

The life of Oveta Culp Hobby is a study of self-engineering, of contrivance in a benign sense. In a remarkable demonstration of discipline over a period that stretched through eight decades, she became what she wanted to become. Her life was characterized by hard work – she studied hard, put in long hours, and approached her responsibilities with determination. As publisher of the Post she worked six days a week; when she accepted the challenge of organizing the Women’s Army Corps and the equally daunting challenge of reorganizing inchoate federal agencies, she responded with energy and diligence. She read work materials religiously, learned the details of the organizations she commanded, listened to subordinates, modified plans when indicated, and articulated the results she expected. Her job performance was judged at the time to be impressive, often brilliant – a judgment that stands. With a life that spanned the years from 1905 until 1995, Hobby saw many transformations in America. She influenced the outcome of several, considered here by their social effect, not by chronology. As head of the Women’s Army Corps, Hobby was charged by Congress with the task of recruiting African American women to reach ten percent of WAC total recruitment. The Army was officially racially segregated, including the women’s corps. Hobby had no choice but to comply with segregated sleeping arrangements, but exercised some latitude in providing integrated dining and training rooms. Black WAC officers were not constrained from advancing in command responsibilities. The women’s corps, though officially segregated, treated female African Americans notably better than the regular Army treated its male African American soldiers. Hobby was one of the leaders among southern newspaper publishers in the favorable print treatment of African Americans. By intentionally suppressing potentially incendiary newsworthy events, she helped prevent the threat of racial violence. Voting with the majority of Rice trustees, she helped open up the university to black students. On the other side of the ledger, at HEW Hobby delayed integration of public schools on military bases and obstructed integration of hospital facilities. Following the Brown v. Board ruling, her advice to President Eisenhower was to postpone implementation as

194 long as possible. On questions of improved treatment and increased civil rights for black Americans, she did not take a leadership role, nor did she speak or write in opposition. She compromised; she took a middle path. Always pragmatic, Hobby also steered her political path down the middle. Early in the period following the end of the war in Europe, Hobby advised the government on the means and content needed to promulgate the American government’s version of news and culture to communist Eastern Europe. Later, she cooperated with the government in a surreptitious funding mechanism. With the growth of McCarthyism in the U.S., Hobby initially cautioned the public to be wary of overreaction to the communist threat. Soon, however, in Hobby’s speeches and on the editorial pages of the Houston Post, she joined the majority of the nation’s press in explicit condemnation of people and organizations deemed to be too liberal for American values. She joined the chorus of those supporting Sen. McCarthy. Only when a local group in Houston became obnoxious, even attacking her as secretary of HEW, did Hobby oppose the forces of reaction. Col. Hobby, commander of the WAC, was a problem solver. In locations scattered around the country and overseas, she confronted all the problems of people in close contact, including sanitation, winter and summer clothing, and communicable diseases. Sexually transmitted diseases, common among male soldiers, became an issue that had to be addressed for women. A similar issue was the question of distribution of condoms and other contraceptives, a sensitive subject, with many in the public paying close attention. With women came the issue of pregnancy in both married and unmarried WACs. Hobby’s policy decision was dignified and fair, with honorable discharges granted to all pregnant WACs.1 At HEW, the secretary had to deal with public demand for national health insurance, believed by most of the medical profession to lead to socialized medicine – an inflammatory issue during a time when Canada and most Western European nations had adopted some form of it. Besides health insurance, most physicians opposed any kind of government financial assistance to consumers, including free inoculations against communicable diseases. In the incendiary issue of distribution of polio vaccine, Hobby

1 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, 500-503.

195 confronted a dilemma. The free distribution method advocated by the National Foundation was the simplest and fastest way to protect the nation’s children. It also would be interpreted as a step toward greater federal participation in health care matters. It seems clear that Secretary Hobby was not indecisive in the matter. Instead, she chose to force the pharmaceutical manufacturers to rely on the standard private-sector system. Her decision may not have been in the best interest of those threatened by the disease, but it was a decision she believed to be in the best long-term interest of American health care. Hobby served on the first board of directors of the Texas Medical Center, which immediately began to grow and today is one of the largest complexes of hospitals and related health-care facilities in the world. Hobby served as an officer or director of many health-related organizations, including national and state societies addressing cancer and heart disease. Her appointment or election to a board of directors does not in itself prove her instrumentality. The pattern of being elevated to many boards over a period of many years, together with the pattern of being reelected or reappointed to boards strongly suggests the individual so treated is regarded as valuable to the group. Hobby was an asset to the boards on which she served. Appendix 2 is a list of board memberships and other honors accorded Hobby. The author makes no representation that it is complete. From an early age, Hobby’s life was surrounded with events and movements important to the advancement of women’s rights. Her mother campaigned for woman suffrage; her future husband signed it into law. Hobby was an early member of the Texas League of Women Voters, and soon its president. She was executive secretary of the Women’s Club of the Democratic Party of Texas; she ran for the state legislature. In the Public Relations Bureau of the War Department, she helped channel women’s energy away from concern about male relatives and friends, and into the war effort. Twice, her legislative contacts and power of persuasion helped rescue WAC bills stalled in Congress. The Women’s Army Corps itself was a giant affirmation of the ability of women to contribute to the country’s war effort. The all-volunteer corps failed to generate the optimistic levels of recruits forecast at times by the Army; on the other hand, recruiting quickly overwhelmed the early, conservative Army estimates. Women business entrepreneurs are relatively rare. While Hobby was not unique, her media conglomerate remains one of the largest commercial enterprises built by a

196 woman in U.S. business history. Alongside her husband, Oveta Hobby was readily accepted in Houston’s business community and, together with a number of friends and associates, provided commercial and political leadership to the city and contributed to the leadership of the state. These civic organizers, frequently identified as the ruling elite, exerted a conservative, pro-business influence on the state, and particularly on the city. The benefits of the control are arguable, but the power of this control can not be successfully contested. The conversion of the Democratic South into the largely Republican South was a result of tectonic forces of racism, culture, and political power. It is not possible to credit the change to a single individual or group. That stipulated, it is useful to list Oveta Hobby’s contributions to the shift, including editorial support of Republican presidential candidates from the 1940 election onward; editorial criticism of New Deal measures, supplemented by criticism from the speaker’s rostrum; and, in particular, her role as head of Democrats for Eisenhower during the 1952 election. For a woman who essentially skipped college training, Hobby devoted considerable time and effort to advance higher education. She raised funds for the city university; served on the board of regents of six state colleges; contributed ideas to institutions as diverse as Harvard University and Clark School for the Deaf. As a trustee at Rice University she helped the school rectify a fundamental fault. The educational establishment recognized her contributions with seventeen honorary doctorates, listed in Appendix 3, awarded by schools ranging from a regional teachers’ college to Columbia University. The Houston Press, a competitor of Hobby’s Post, once headlined, “A remarkable woman, our Mrs. Hobby.” This region’s history includes other remarkable women whose lives and efforts are not fully appreciated. The enlightening influences of Florence Sterling and Estelle Sharp were not limited to Oveta Culp Hobby; both women were leaders in political and social advancement in Houston, and in Texas. Hortense Ward, the first woman admitted to the Texas bar and, for a brief period, the first – and to date, only – woman chief justice of the state supreme court, deserves the attention of legal scholars and students of women’s interests. What is startling, however, is the previous lack of a thorough consideration of Oveta Culp Hobby. It is difficult to guess why her influence and

197 contributions have so far been neglected. During her life, Hobby emphasized that she was not a feminist, and no scholar of feminism or anti-feminism has stepped forward to contradict her. Her name almost never appears in the extensive literature of the rise of southern Republicanism, an omission that underscores the gendered narrative of that political shift. The fact is she has been neglected. The objective of this monograph is to correct the oversight and open the door to future studies of twentieth-century women who made a difference.

198 APPENDIX 1

SPEECHES GIVEN BY SECRETARY OF HEW OVETA CULP HOBBY 1953

DATE ORGANIZATION

January 21 Republican National Committee, Women’s Division Washington, DC

January Federal Security Agency Employees, Washington, DC

February Federal Security Agency Employees, Washington, DC

February Howard University Faculty and Staff, Washington, DC

February 3 Women’s National Press Club, Washington, DC

February 15 “State of the Union” Television Program, Washington, DC

February 19 National Conference of Christians and Jews, Boston, MA

February 27 Texas State Society Dinner, Washington, DC

March 2 Texas University Ex-Student Association, Washington, DC

March 20 Unidentified group and location, (Journalists)

March 23 The Economics Club, Chicago, IL

March 31 Johnson Luncheon at Capitol, Washington, DC

199 DATE ORGANIZATION

April 16 American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, DC

April 22 States’ Vocational Rehabilitation Council, Washington, DC

April 23 President’s Committee for Employment of the Physically Handicapped, Washington, DC

April 23 Republican National Committee, Women’s Division Spring Conference, Washington, DC

April 27 Press Conference (no location)

May 4 NBC “Today Show,” Washington, DC

May 8 Conference on Elementary Education, Washington, DC

May 12 National Association of State Directors of Vocational Education, Washington, DC

May 21 National Conference of Business Paper Editors, Washington, DC

May 22 “Teacher of the Year” with Mrs. Eisenhower at the White House, Washington, DC

May 22 Congressional Club, before Congressional Wives, Washington, DC

May 26 B’nai B’rith, Northeastern Conference, Monticello, NY

May 27 General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Washington, DC

200 DATE ORGANIZATION

June 1 American Medical Association House of Delegates, New York, NY

June 3 White House Television Program (all channels) with President Eisenhower and various Cabinet members, Washington, DC

June 8 Ohio Wesleyan University Commencement Exercise, Delaware, OH

June 11 “Washington, USA” CBS Radio interview, Washington, DC

June 14 Radio Interview, Radio Station KWK, St. Louis, MO (recorded in Washington, DC)

June 18 Federal Civil Defense Administration, National Civil Defense Training Center, Olney, MD

June 22 American National Red Cross Convention, Washington, DC

June 30 Award to Dr. Henry M. Friedman, Public Health Service, Washington, DC

July 2 National Institutes of Health, Clinical Center Dedication, Bethesda, MD

July 8 Conference on Aging of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

July 25 New York Herald Tribune Fresh Air Fund Dedication of Camping Center, East Fishkill, NY (speech read by Joan Reid)

201 DATE ORGANIZATION

August 7 Bryant College, Commencement Exercise and acceptance of an honorary degree, Providence, RI

August 11 Grain Sanitation Advisory Committee (no location)

August 18 American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, Houston, TX

August 25 Los Angeles Chapter, American National Red Cross, Los Angeles, CA

August 27 Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, Pasadena, CA

August 31 American Hospital Association, National Meeting, San Francisco, CA

August 31 Press & Union League Club Gang Dinner, San Francisco, CA

September 8 National Urban League 40th Anniversary Dinner, Philadelphia, PA

September 13 Jewish Hospital, Cornerstone Laying, Louisville, KY

September 21 Sullivan County Republican Dinner, Kiamesha Lake, NY

September 24 American Federation of Labor Annual Convention, St. Louis, MO

October 5 Republican Program Dinner, Dayton, OH

October 8 Luncheon of Air Force Officers Wives Club, Washington, DC

202

DATE ORGANIZATION

October 10 Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association Convention, Harrisonburg, PA

October 15 Future Farmers of America, Kansas City, KS

October 16 Greater Kansas City Mental Health Foundation, Kansas City, KS

October 27 National Rehabilitation Association, Miami Beach, FL

November 4-7 Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, Boca Raton, FL (Sec. Hobby spoke via audio tape)

November 13 National Social Welfare Annual Meeting, New York, NY

November 14 Washington Post Book and Author Luncheon, Washington, DC

November 19 Spartanburg County Foundation, Spartanburg, SC (speech read by Nelson Rockefeller)

November 23 Republican Citizens’ Finance Committee, Chicago, IL

December 4 American Public Welfare Association, Chicago IL

December 6 Rich Township High School Dedication, Park Forest, IL

December 7 HEW Regional-Departmental Conference, Washington, DC (luncheon speech and dinner introduction)

Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

203 APPENDIX 2

OVETA CULP HOBBY: REPRESENTATIVE HONORS AND ACTIVITIES

Academy of Texas, Charter Member Advertising Federation of America, Board Member Advisory Committee for Economic Development American Cancer Society, Board Member American Design Award Committee, Board Member American National Red Cross, Board Member American Society of Newspaper Editors, Board Member Award for Advancement and Diffusion of Knowledge and Understanding (1967) Bank of Texas, Board Member Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, Board Member Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report, Board Member Clark School for the Deaf, Sponsor Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Member Committee for the White House Conference on Education Board of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships Committee of 75 for the University of Texas Continental Oil Company Scholarship Award Committee Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Founding Board Member Crusade for Freedom Cuban Freedom Committee Eisenhower Birthplace Memorial Park, Board Member Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation, National Council General Aniline and Film Corporation, Board Member General Foods Corporation, Board Member George C. Marshall Scholarships, Advisory Board Graduate School for Education, Harvard University, Visiting Committee Great Books Foundation, Board Member Headliners Club, Publisher of the Year (1960) Health, Education andWelfare Vietnam Health Education Task Force Houston Symphony Society, Board of Directors Institute of International Education, Southwest Advisory Board Marshall Scholarships, Southern Regional Committee Missouri School of Journalism’s 50th Anniversary Committee Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Lifetime Trustee National Advisory Board of the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Member National Advisory Commission on Selective Service National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Member National Conference of Christians and Jews, Honored (with Will Hobby) (1951) National Jewish Hospital, Honor Award(1962) People to People President Commission on Civilian National Honors

204 President’s Commission on Employment of the Physically Handicapped Research Institute of America, Living History Award (1960) Rice University, Trustee Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project Sam Rayburn Foundations, Member Board of Development Society for Rehabilitation of the Facially Disfigured, Board Member Texas A&M Century Council Texas Heart Association, Board Member Texas Medical Center, Founding Board Member Texas State Teachers Colleges, Board Member United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information and the Press, Delegate Women’s Field Army, Texas Director

Sources: Oveta Culp Hobby, Al Shire, ed. Woodson Research Center, Rice University Editor and Publisher, February, 1951

205 APPENDIX 3

OVETA CULP HOBBY: HONORARY DEGREES

WAC Period through 1953

Baylor University Sam Houston State Teacher’s College University of Chattanooga Colorado Women’s College Bard College

HEW Ohio Wesleyan University Bryant College Columbia University Smith College Middlebury College Lafayette College The University of Pennsylvania Colby College

Post-HEW

Fairleigh-Dickinson Mary Hardin-Baylor College Western College C.W. Post College

Source: Woodson Research Center, Rice University

206 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Interviews

Ashby, Lynn, October 19, 2006. Former editorial page editor of the Houston Post.

Buchanan, Peggy, January 12, 2007. Hobby's assistant for thirty-five years.

Carpenter, Liz, January 15, 2007. Journalist and member of the Lyndon Johnson administration.

Davidson, Chandler, October 19, 2006. Political science professor and author of studies of southern partisan politics.

Ely, Jane, January 25, 2007. Veteran political reporter, Houston Post.

Hobby, Diana, January 30, 2007. Daughter-in-law of Oveta Hobby, and William’s wife.

Hobby, Willam P., Jr., January 10 and 29, 2007. Son of Oveta Culp Hobby and William P. Hobby. Former Lt. Governor of Texas. Adjunct political science professor at Rice University.

Lindsey, Jim, January 13, 2007. Houston psychiatrist and Hobby neighbor.

Shire, Al, January 10, 12 and 17, February 1 and 26, 2007. Former Post editor and author of a commemorative life story commissioned by Hobby family.

Treadwell, Mattie, January 25, 2007. Author of the War Department’s definitive history of the wartime WAC.

Wilson, Isabel Brown, January 24, 2007. Daughter of Oveta Hobby’s two best friends.

Archives and Manuscript Collections

M. D. Anderson Library, University of Houston, Houston, Texas

Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, Texas

Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers Oveta Culp Hobby Papers Ann Whitman Papers

207

Oveta Culp Hobby Library, Central Texas College, Killeen Texas

Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas

Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas

Townsend Library, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton, Texas

Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, Texas

Marguerite Johnson Barnes Papers Oveta Culp Hobby Papers Jesse H. Jones Papers

Published diaries and memoirs

Bandel, Betty. An Officer and a Lady: The World War II Letters of Lt. Col. Betty Bandel, Women’s Army Corps. Sylvia J. Bugbee, ed. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2004.

Braden, Joan. Just Enough Rope. New York: Villard Books, 1989.

Earley, Charity Adams. One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1989.

Eisenhower, Dwight David. Mandate for Change, 1953-1956. Garden City: Doubleday, 1963.

Henderson, Aileen Kilgore. Stateside Soldier: Life in the Women’s Army Corps, 1944- 1945. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.

Magazine articles

Blair, Emily Newell. “Woman Soldier Number One.” Liberty (August 1, 1942): 43-48.

Blackwell, Gordon W. “Mrs. Hobby’s Outlook: Controversies Everywhere.” Nation’s Business (January 1954): 33-37.

Gardner, William H. “Mr. and Mrs. Texas.” Texas Parade (March 1953): 13-19.

208 Goeden, Louise Edna. “Don’t Tell Anyone, but WAC is Thirty Five this Month.” The American Legion Magazine (July 1977): 12-14.

Greenburg, Margaret H. “‘A Debt to Democracy, A Date with Destiny.’” Army (May 1987): 54-58.

Gresham, Mark. “William Pettus Hobby, 1878-1964.” DBA Magazine (July 1992): 48.

Hurt III, Harry. “The Last of the Great Ladies.” Texas Monthly (October 1978): 143-237.

Hastings, Morris. “The Woman ‘Colonel’ from Texas.” Texas Parade (October 4, 1942): 13-15.

Hobby, Oveta Culp. “Let Us Make Way for the Children.” World Call (July-August 1953): 24-27.

Hobby, Oveta Culp. “New Approach to Federal Aid.” Nation’s Business (January 1954): 62-68.

Morehead, Albert H. “Meet Col. Hobby and Capt. McAfee.” Redbook Magazine (March 1944): 36-38, 70, 72.

Newspapers

Houston Chronicle Houston Post New York Herald Tribune New York Times

Secondary Sources

Books

[No author or editor], Texian Who’s Who: a biographical dictionary of the state of Texas. Dallas: Texian Company, 1937.

Allgor, Catherine. Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000.

209 Badger, Anthony. New Deal: The Depression Years. 1933-1940. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989.

Bainbridge, John. The Super-Americans: A picture of life in the United States, as brought into focus, bigger than life, in the land of the millionaires—Texas. New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1972.

Baird, A. Craig, ed. Representative American Speeches, 1953-1954. New York: Wilson, 1954.

Banks, Jimmy. Money, Marbles and Chalk: The Wondrous World of Texas Politics. Austin: Texas Publishing Company, 1971.

Baruch, Bernard. Bernard M. Baruch: The Public Years. New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1960.

Bartley, Numan V. The New South, 1945-1980. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995

Bass, Jack and Walter DeVries. The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequence since 1945. New York: Basic Books, 1976.

Bell, Daniel, ed. The Radical Right. 3rd ed. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002.

Benton, Wilbourn E. Texas: Its Government and Politics. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

Biles, Roger. The South and the New Deal. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993.

Birdwell, Russell. Women in Battle Dress. Forward by Oveta Culp Hobby. New York: Fine Editions Press, 1942.

Black, Earl and Merle Black. The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

Block, Maxine and E. Mary Trow. Current Biography: Who’s News and Why/1942. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1942.

Boyer, Paul S. Promises to Keep: The United States since World War II. 2nd ed. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1995.

Brammer. Billy Lee. The Gay Place. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.

210 Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1976.

Broadwater, Jeff. Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Bryce, Robert. Pipe dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron. New York: Public Affairs, 2002.

Buenger, Walter L. “Jesse Jones.” Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington. Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr., Michael L. Collins, and Patrick Cox, eds. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993, 66-85.

Carleton, Don. Red Scare! Right-wing Hysteria. Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas. Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985.

Carter, Richard. Breakthrough: The Saga of Jonas Salk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965.

Casey, Michael S. “Oveta Culp Hobby: Director of the Wartime Women’s Army Corps. Donald W. Whisenhunt, ed. The Human Tradition in America between the Wars, 1920-1945. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2002.

Chapman, Betty Trapp. Houston Women: Invisible Threads in the Tapestry. Virginia Beach: Donning Company, 2000.

Clark, James A., and Weldon Hart. The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby. New York: Random House, 1958.

Cox, Patrick. The First Texas News Barons. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

Crawford, Ann Fears. Frankie: Mrs. R. D. Randolph and Texas Liberal Politics. Austin: Eakin Press, 1999.

Crawford, Ann Fears, and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale. Women in Texas: Their Lives, Their Experiences, Their Accomplishments. Austin: State House Press, 1992.

Dahl, Robert A. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.

211 Dallek, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Daniel, Pete. Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Davidson, Chandler. Biracial Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Metropolitan South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

_____, Chandler. Race and Class in Texas Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

_____, Chandler and Bernard Grofman, eds. Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Donaldson, Gary. Abundance and Anxiety: America, 1945-1960. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.

Downs, Jane, and Nancy Baker Jones. Women and Texas History. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1993.

Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation before the Civil Rights Movement in the South. New York: Knopf, 1994.

Feagin, Joe R. Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political-Economic Perspective. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Feldman, Glenn, “Beginning of the End of the new Deal Coalition,” History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie. Gordon E. Harvey, Richard D. Starnes, and Glenn Feldman, eds. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.

Fried, Richard M. Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Fuermann, George. Houston: Land of the Big Rich. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951.

______, George. Reluctant Empire. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957.

Glaser, James M. Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996.

Glaser, James M. The Hand of the Past in Contemporary Southern Politics. New Haven Yale University Press, 2005.

212

Gould, Tony. A Summer Plague: Polio and its Survivors. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Griffith, Robert. The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970.

Grossman, Andrew D. Neither Dead nor Red: Civilian Defense and American Political Development during the Early Cold War. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Gruhzit-Hoyt, Olga. They Also Served: American Women in World War II. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1995.

Guinn, Jack. The Caperberry Bush. Boston: Little, Brown, 1954.

Gunther, John. Inside U.S.A. New York: Knopf, 1947.

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Hanson, Joyce A. Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.

Hawley, Ellis W. The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917-1933. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992. Heale, M. J. American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830-1970. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Helmes, Winifred G. Orchids in the Ice Box: The Story of Bertha Adkins and Other Influential Women in the Eisenhower Administration. Chapel Hill: Chapel Hill Press, 2002.

Hendrickson, Kenneth E., Jr., Michael L. Collins, and Patrick Cox. Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Hobby, Oveta Culp. Around the world in 13 days with Oveta Culp Hobby. Houston, Tex: private printing, 1947.

Hutchison, Kay Bailey. American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Johnston, Marguerite. Houston: The Unknown City, 1856-1946. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991.

213

Jones, Nancy Baker, and Ruthe Winegarten. Capitol Women: Texas Female Legislators, 1923-1999. Austin : University of Texas Press, 2000.

Jones, Jesse H, and Edward Angly. Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC (1932-1945). New York: MacMillan, 1951.

Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Key, V. O., Jr. American State Politics: An Introduction. New York: Knopf, 1956.

______, V. O., Jr. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.

Korda, Michael. Ike: An American Hero. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.

Ladino, Robyn Duff. Desegregating Texas schools : Eisenhower, Shivers, and the crisis at Mansfield High. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

Lamare, James W. Texas Politics: Economics, Power and Policy. 3"' edition St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1988. (Original 1981)

Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal 1932-1940. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Lind, Michael. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. New York: Basic Books, 2003.

Lublin, David. The Republican South: Democratization arid Partisan Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

MacGregor, Morris J., Jr. Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965. Defense Studies Series. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1981.

Markowitz, Norman D. The Rise andFall of the People's Century: Henry Agard Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941-1948. New York: Free Press, 1973

Marler, Charles H. “William Hobby and Oveta Hobby,” American Newspaper Publishers, 1950-1990. Perry J. Ashley, ed. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993.

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York; Basic Books, 1988

214 McArthur, Judith N., Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women’s Progressive Culture in Texas, 1893-1918. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

McArthur, Judith N., and Harold L. Smith. Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist’s Life in Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. New York: Times Books, 1984.

McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Books Division of Random House, 1977.

Meyer, Leisa D. Creating G.I. Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women's Army Corps during World War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Miller, Douglas T. and Marion Nowak. The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. Garden City: Doubleday, 1975.

Miller, Thomas Lloyd. The Public Lands of Texas, 1519-1970. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.

Moore, Brenda L., To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas during World War II. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Morden, Bettie J. The Women’s Army Corps, 1945-1978. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1990.

Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma: the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Oshinsky, David M. Polio: An American Story. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

James T. Patterson. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Pratt, Joseph A., and Christopher J. Castaneda. Builders: Herman and George R. Brown. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999.

Putney, Martha S, When the Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1992.

215 Rae, Nicol C. The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present. New York; Oxford University Press, 1989.

Reinhard, David W. The Republican Right since 1945. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.

Richardson, Rupert N., Ernest Wallace, and Adrian Anderson. Texas: The Lone Star State. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981.

Rymph, Catherine E. Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Scott, Anne Firor. Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Scher, Richard K. Politics in the New South: Republicanism. Race and Leadership in the Twentieth Centwy. 2nd edition Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Schuyler, Lorraine Gates. The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Princeton: Princeton, University Press, 1998.

Smith, Douglas L. The New Deal in the Urban South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.

Stephenson, Wendall Holmes and E. Merton Coulter, eds. A History of the South, Volume XI. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.

Sterling, Ross S. and Ed Kilman. Ross Sterling, Texan: A Memoir by the Founder of Humble Oil and Refining Company. Don Carleton, ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Swansbrough, Robert H. and David M. Brodsky, eds. The South's New Politics: Realignment and Dealignment. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.

Tilly, Louise A., and Patricia Gurin, eds. Women, Politics, and Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990.

Treadwell, Mattie E. The Women’s Army Corps. United States Army in World War II, Special Studies. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1954.

216

Timmons, Bascom. Jesse H. Jones: The Man and the Statesman. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1956.

Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997

Weigand, Cindy. Texas Women in World War II. Landham, MD: Republic of Texas Press, 2003.

Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill. New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Williams, Vera S. WACs: Women’s Army Corps. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1997.

Woodard, J. David. The New Southern Politics. Boulder, Lynne Rienner, 2006.

Young. Nancy Beck. Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, & the American Dream. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2000.

Journal Articles

Allen, Ann. “The News Media and the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps: Protagonists for a Cause,” Military Affairs 50, no. 2 (1986): 77-83.

Ames, Jessie Daniel, "Editorial Treatment of Lynchings," The Public Opinion Quarterly 2 no. 1 (January 1938): 77-84.

Barry, Frank J. “The Evolution of the Enforcement Provisions of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act: A Study of the Difficulty in Developing Effective Legislation,” Michigan Law Review 68, no. 6 (May 1970): 1103-30.

Buenger, Walter L. “Between Community and Corporation: The Southern Roots of Jesse H. Jones and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation” The Journal of Southern History 56, no. 3 (August 1990): 481-510.

Campbell, D'Ann. "Women in Uniform: The World War II Experiment," Military Affairs 51, no. 3 (July 1987): 137-39

217 Chafee, Zechariah, Jr. “Some Problems of the Draft International Covenant on Human Rights,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95, no. 5 (October 17, 1951): 471-89.

Cone, Stacey. “Presuming a Right to Deceive: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, the CIA and the News Media,” Journalism History 24, no. 4 (Winter 1998-1999): 148-56.

Cott, Nancy F. “Across the Great Divide: Women in Politics before and after 1920,” in Louise Tilly and Patricia Guerin, eds., Women, Politics, and Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991.

Cotter, Cornelius P. “Eisenhower As Party Leader,” Political Science Quarterly 98, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 255-83. Dowd, Jacqueline Dowd. “Second Thoughts: On Writing a Feminist Biography,” Feminist Studies 13, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 19-37. duCille, Ann. “The Shirley Temple of My Familiar,” Transition 73 (June 1998): 10- 32.

Green, Elna C. "From Antisuffragism to Anti-Communism: The Conservative Career of Ida M. Darden," The Journal of Southern History 65, no. 2 (May 1999): 287-316.

Griffith, Robert. “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” The American Historical Review 87, no 1 (February 1982): 87-122.

Jacoby, Sanford M. “Employers and the Welfare State: The Role of Marion B. Folsom,” The Journal of American History 80, no. 2 (September 1993): 525-56.

Kerber, Linda K. “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (June 1988): 9- 39.

David L. Kirp, “Retreat into Legalism: The Little Rock School Desegregation Case in Historic Perspective,” PS: Political Science and Politics 30, no. 3 (September 1997): 443-47.

Kizer, George A. “Federal Aid to Education: 1945-1963,” History of Education Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 84-102.

Mayer, Michael S. “With Much Deliberation and Some Speed: Eisenhower and the Brown Decision,” The Journal of Southern History 52, no. 1 (February 1986): 43-76.

218 Meyer, Leisa D. "Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women's Army Corps during World War II," Feminist Studies 18, no. 3, The Lesbian Issue (Autumn 1992): 581-601.

Molotch, Harvey. “The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place,” American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 2 (September, 1976): 309-32.

Nelson, Anna Kasten. “Anna M. Rosenberg, an ‘Honorary Man,’” The Journal of Military History 68, no. 1 (January 2004): 133-61.

Nordyke, Lewis T. "Ladies and Lynchings," Survey Graphic 28 (November 1939) 683- 86.

O’Reilly, Kenneth. “Racial Integration: The Battle General Eisenhower Chose Not to Fight,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 18 (Winter 1997): 110-19.

Pratt, Joseph. “Civic Leadership in Houston,” Houston Review of History and Culture 1, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 2-7.

Rossiter, Margaret W. “Science and Public Policy since World War II,” Osiris, 2nd Series, vol. 1, Historical Writing on American Science (1985): 273-94.

Schachman, Howard K. “From ‘Publish or Perish’ to ‘Patent and Prosper.’” Journal of Biological Chemistry 281, no. 11 (March 2006): 6889-6903.

Schneider, Mark. “Undermining the Growth Machine: The Missing Link between Local Economic Development and Fiscal Payoffs,” Journal of Politics 54, no. 1 (February 1992): 214-30.

Shannon, J. B. “Presidential Politics in the South,” The Journal of Politics 10, no. 3 (August 1948): 464-89.

Taylor, A. Elizabeth. “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas.” The Journal of Southern History 17, no. 2 (May 1951): 194-215.

Uttaro, Ralph A. “The Voices of America in International Radio Propaganda, Law and Contemporary Problems 45 no. 1 (Winter 1982): 103-22.

Dissertations and Theses

Crockford, Vanessa A. “Oveta Culp Hobby and her ‘Lieutenants’: Transformational Leadership in Action in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps of World War II.” Master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2003.

219 Jackson, Emma Louise Moyer. “Petticoat Politics: Political Activism among Texas Women in the 1920s.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, August, 1980.

Jewett, Aubrey W. "Partisan Change in Southern State Legislatures." Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1997.

Sills, Rebbekah S. “‘We Shall Not Fail Freedom:’ Oveta Culp Hobby’s Role in the Implementation and Formation of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.” Master’s thesis, Baylor University, 2007.

Sutphen, Debra Lynn. “Conservative Warrior: Oveta Culp Hobby and the Administration of America’s Health, Education, and Welfare, 1953-1955.” Ph. D. diss., Washington State University, 1997.

Walsh, Kelli Cardenas. “Oveta Culp Hobby: A Transformational Leader from the Texas Legislature to Washington, D.C.” Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2006.

Online Resources

New York Times online www.nytimes.com Time online www.time.com Handbook of Texas online http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/

220

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Robert T. Pando received a bachelor of arts degree in interdepartmental social studies from West Texas A & M University in June 1960, and a master of arts degree in interdisciplinary social science from Florida State University in 2003. The title of his master’s thesis is “Shrouded in Cheesecloth: The Demise of Shade Tobacco in Florida and Georgia.”

221