Background

Oveta Culp Hobby was born on January 19, 1905, in Killeen, Texas. Her parents were Isaac William Culp and Emma Elizabeth Hoover. Oveta was the second of Ike and Emma Culp’s seven children. By the time she enrolled in the town’s elementary school, she had begun helping her mother deliver baskets of food, clothes, and cash to needy people in the community.

Her father, an attorney in Killeen, encouraged the young Oveta’s curiosity about the things that most interested him: law, government affairs, and riding horses. After school, she got into the habit of stopping at Ike Culp’s office on her way home, to listen while her father discussed his legal and legislative work and to read the books in his extensive library. By the time she was ten, the Congressional Record as part of Oveta’s regular reading, and when Ike Culp served in the state legislature in 1919, Oveta accompanied him to Austin to attend the sessions as an observer, even though that meant missing school.

Education

Oveta Culp Hobby graduated from Temple High School. She received instruction from private tutors. Her education was also supplemented by her own enthusiastic reading on a variety of topics. Along the way, she won prizes in elocution (dramatic recitation) and was chagrined when her parents forbade her to join a touring troupe of entertainers.

During Oveta's father the first term in the Texas House of Representatives in 1919, Hobby attended a year of classes at the Mary Hardin-Baylor College in Belton, Texas. She was active in the college dramatic society, but it was the law that continued to hold the greatest fascination for her.

A graduate of the University of Texas Law School, she served as parliamentarian of the Texas House of Representatives (1925–31), and in 1930 she became assistant to the city attorney of Houston.

Career

In 1925, Hobby was asked to work as a legislative parliamentarian in the Texas House of Representatives, which she carried out until 1931. At the same time, she attended classes in law at the University of Texas, but never completed her degree.

Hobby also became involved in a number of political activities in the 1920s. She helped organize the National Democratic Convention in Houston in 1928 and worked on Thomas T. Connally’s US Senate campaign. She also ran for the Texas state legislature but did not win.

Following her defeat, she changed the focus of her career and took a job in the circulation department of the Houston Post.

The president of the Houston Post was William Pettus Hobby, a friend of Hobby's father and a former governor of Texas. Hobby worked at the Post, beginning a syndicated column devoted to issues of parliamentary procedure. Over the coming years, she took on increasing responsibility at the paper, advancing from research editor in 1931 to assistant editor in 1936 and executive vice president in 1938. She and William Pettus Hobby eventually purchased the newspaper and Hobby assumed the top management role, simultaneously serving as executive director of the radio station KPRC in Houston.

World War II brought changes to Hobby’s life. From 1941 to 1942, she served as the head of the Women’s Interest Section in the War Department Bureau of Public Relations. In this role, she investigated ways in which women could serve their country and laid the groundwork for them to do so by the time that the US entered the war.

After the war was declared in December 1941, the country mobilized its troops. Discussions also began in the government about the possibility of women serving in the military. Congress passed a bill that created the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) on May 1942. Hobby became the first director of the WAAC.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt supported the WACs and was impressed with their leaders. She asked Oveta to accompany her to England just before D-day. There, Oveta met with General Eisenhower, a meeting that began a long friendship and resulted in Oveta’s crucial support for him when he later ran for president.

In 1943, she obtained the rank of colonel, when the WAAC became integrated into the army, changing its name to the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). She remained the director of the WAC throughout the war. For her dedication and effective supervision of the WAC, Hobby was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for outstanding service by the army in January 1945. She was the first woman in the Army to receive this award, which was the highest non-combat award given by the military at that time.

Hobby resigned from the WAC in July 1945 but continued to lead an active work life. She returned to The Post as its executive vice president.

Hobby maintained her interest in politics and political causes. During Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential campaign, Hobby actively supported his bid for office. After Eisenhower became president in 1953, he appointed Hobby chairman of the Federal Security Agency (FSA), which oversaw public health, education, and social security funding. In April 1953, Eisenhower created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and abolished the FSA. In the process, he named Hobby as the first secretary of the new department. In this role, she worked on matters related to health, education, and educational funding. During her time as a secretary at the department, she helped plan for the first distribution of the newly created polio vaccination in the United States in 1955. She stepped down from the job in 1955.

Throughout the rest of her life, Hobby continued to hold a number of positions in publishing and public service. Her other activities included sitting on the board of Rice University and serving on the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Achievements

• 

  Oveta Culp Hobby was one of the most prominent women in American government in the 1940s and 1950s. During World War II, she became the original director of the Women's Army Corps, providing guidance in the creation of the first military group for women in the United States. In the 1950s, she was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to serve as secretary of the newly formed cabinet department of Health, Education, and Welfare. She was only the second woman in history to hold a U.S. cabinet post.
  
  After leaving government work, Hobby returned to a successful business career in which she headed a media corporation that included a newspaper and television stations. Throughout her career, Hobby was known for upholding her ideals on social issues while weathering difficulties with composure, dignity, and style. Her policies and example helped to win increased acceptance and respect for other women pursuing careers in the military, government, and business.
  
  Hobby was given honorary degrees by universities including Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1967, Central Texas College dedicated the Oveta Culp Hobby Memorial Library. Hobby was inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1984. The US Post Office honored Hobby’s achievements in 2011 with a commemorative stamp.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mr. Chairman 1937
  • Around the world in 13 days with Oveta Culp Hobby 1947

Religion

At thirteen Oveta Culp Hobby had read the Bible three times. In the sixth grade, she won a Bible as the best speller in her class.

Politics

Oveta Culp Hobby and her husband were both Southern Democrats but soon became dissatisfied with the party throughout the 1930s. They believed Franklin D. Roosevelt's social programs overextended their original intent. After World War II, Hobby tried to sway Democratic voters to swing Republican for presidential nominees by establishing many statewide organizations.

Views

Hobby had to labor to win women assignments with Army commanders and resentful enlisted men, she played an important role in creating a positive image for the WACs. Rumors alleging that the ranks of female soldiers were filled with women of loose sexual morals and lesbians threatened to damage public support of the WACs as well as morale in the troops. As the top representative of the WACs, Hobby helped to diminish these ideas by her own example as an intelligent, dignified woman with a distinctive feminine style.

Under Hobby's leadership, the WACs gained a solid foothold in the military. By the time of her retirement from the force in the summer of 1945, the number of female soldiers had grown to 200,000. In addition, the WACs had inspired the introduction of women into the other branches of the armed forces, resulting in the creation of the WAVES in the Navy, the SPARs in the Coast Guard, and the Women Marines.

Quotations: "The rule of thumb is a simple one. Regard each man, each woman, as an individual, not as a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Jew; not as an Indian, American, or European. Like or dislike a person for his own intrinsic qualities - not because he belongs to a different race or subscribes to a different religion. Dignify man with individuality."

"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."

"A purpose gives meaning to life. It is like the hub in a wheel - with every spoke fitted into it to make a strong and perfect circle. Without such a hub, spokes will not radiate evenly and your wheel will lack strength, will tend to break apart on the first good bump it hits. Given a strong hub, a strong purpose, a person can take a surprising number of shocks and bumps on the outside rim without sustaining permanent damage."

"Brotherhood doesn't come in a package. It is not a commodity to be taken down from the shelf with one hand - it is an accomplishment of soul-searching, prayer, and perseverance."

"Twenty is a wonderful age for things to be sparked."

Membership

Oveta Culp Hobby assumed a number of other prominent positions: first chairman of the board of directors of the Bank of Texas, first female trustee of Mutual of New York, member of the board of trustees of Rice University, and countless memberships on nonprofit and governmental commissions and advisory boards.

Oveta sat on a number of charity boards including the American Red Cross, and the American Cancer Society.

She joined the board of Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, helped to found the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and served as the regional chairperson of the Mobilization for Human Needs, which had been created to address the economic deprivation that resulted from the Depression.

• 

  Red Cross , United States

• 

  Cancer Society , United States

Personality

Throughout her professional career, Oveta Culp Hobby held leadership positions, shaped major institutions and influenced large numbers of people.

Hobby appeared as a Director of the WAAC at a press conference to answer questions about the WAAC and its role in the military. Some of the questions were rather silly, such as what color underwear the women would wear under their uniforms, and whether they would be able to wear makeup but Hobby answered all of them calmly and seriously.

Physical Characteristics: Oveta Culp Hobby's traditionally elegant fashion sense, in fact, was one of her hallmarks. She frequently appeared on public occasions wearing white gloves and a hat. The billed cap that she wore while the head of the WACs became popularly known as the "Hobby cap" and became part of the official WACs uniform.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Oveta manages one of the world’s greatest medical research centers, provides operations for harelipped children and blue babies, maintains hospitals for merchant seamen and dope addicts, an insane asylum and a leprosarium. Through the Office of Education, she distributes funds to land-grant colleges and administers the teacher-student exchange program with foreign countries. She is legally concerned with the problem of tape-worm control among Alaskan caribou, with cancer research, and with the attitude of Congress toward fluoridation of children’s teeth. She prints Braille books, extends credit to deserving citizens, bosses the nation’s largest Negro university (Howard, in Washington), and brings out new editions of the Government’s most durable bestseller." -Time
  
  "By giving me my first chance, Oveta Culp Hobby changed my career path dramatically. Had she not taken the bold step of putting Houston’s first woman television reporter on the air, I would probably be a partner in a Houston law firm today. I jokingly say that I would have been wealthier, for sure, but life would probably not have been nearly as interesting!" - Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison

Interests

• Politics, law

• Politicians

  Dwight Eisenhower

• Sport & Clubs

  Horse riding

• Music & Bands

  Jolly Entertainers

Connections

In 1931, Oveta Culp married former Governor of Texas William P. Hobby, editor and future owner of the Houston Post, and took a position on the editorial staff at the Post. They had two children together.

Her son William P. Hobby, Jr., served as Lieutenant Governor of Texas from 1973 to 1991. Her daughter Jessica was married to Henry E. Catto, Jr., the former United States Ambassador to Great Britain and was an activist for environmental causes and for the Democratic Party. Hobby’s grandson Paul Hobby narrowly lost the election for comptroller of Texas to Carole Strayhorn in the 1998 general election.

Father:

Isaac William Culp

Mother:

Emma Elizabeth Hoover

Son:

William P. Hobby

Grandson:

Paul William Hobby

Daughter:

Jessica Hobby Catto

husband:

William Hobby

Friend:

Dwight Eisenhower

References

• Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women
  2003
• Oveta Culp Hobby: Colonel, Cabinet Member, Philanthropist
  2014
• The Women's Army Corps 1945-1978
  1990
• Eisenhower in War and Peace
  2013