MARCH 26, 1878
William Pettus Hobby born in Moscow, Polk County, Texas.
JANUARY 19, 1905
OCH (Oveta Culp Hobby) born in Killeen, Bell County, Texas, second of seven children of attorney Isaac William Culp and Emma Elizabeth Hoover Culp. OCH was named after a character in a romance novel.1 “Her first name was an Indian word that her parents chose because it rhymed with Juanita, the name of one of her sisters.”2 “Her mother named her Oveta, an Indian word for ‘forget,’ after a character in a romantic novel and because the name rhymed with that of the Culp’s first daughter, Juanita.”3
1910
At age five, OCH refuses to sign a temperance pledge.4
1914
William Hobby Sr. elected lieutenant governor of Texas.
1915
Her father’s favorite, OCH read the Congressional Record in his office at age ten.
1916
Hobby Sr. reelected lieutenant governor of Texas.
Hobby Sr. becomes acting governor of Texas.
SEPTEMBER 25, 1917
Hobby Sr. becomes governor of Texas when James Ferguson resigns.
1918
Hobby Sr. elected governor of Texas.
FEBRUARY 28, 1918
Texas legislature ratifies federal prohibition amendment.
MARCH 28, 1918
Texas women win the right to vote in state primary elections.
NOVEMBER 11, 1918
World War I ends. Culp family moves to Temple, Texas.5
1919
OCH goes with her father to Austin when he wins a seat in the Texas Legislature.6 http://www.texasalmanac.com/history/timeline/20th/
FEBRUARY 5, 1919
Governor Hobby signs full suffrage bill.
NOVEMBER 1919
Texas voters pass prohibition amendment.
AUGUST 26, 1920
Nineteenth Amendment ratified by the last state needed for passage, Tennessee, giving the vote to women nationwide.
1917–1921
William P. Hobby Sr. serves as governor of Texas.
1922
OCH attends Mary Hardin-Baylor College for one year and studies liberal arts.7
UNKNOWN YEAR
OCH attends South Texas Law School and studies law (also has private tutors from 1921 to 1923).
OCH works at the Capitol in Austin “codifying banking laws for the State Banking Commission, while letting her mother think she was taking a degree at the UT law school.”8
1924
William Hobby, now a successful publisher and one of Texas’s most popular governors, appointed president of the Houston Post-Dispatch newspaper.9
1925
A year shy of being old enough to vote, at age twenty, OCH appointed parliamentarian of the Texas legislature.10
1926–1930
“Attends classes at UT, audits lectures at its law school; becomes clerk for State Banking Commission and codifies the States of Texas’s banking laws; clerks for the House judiciary and criminal jurisprudence committees.”11
1926
OCH goes to work as a clerk in the circulation department of the Houston Post-Dispatch.12
1928
OCH serves as executive secretary of the Women’s Democratic Club in Houston; helps plan Democratic National Convention held in Houston in 1928; works in Tom Connally’s headquarters during his campaign for the U.S. Senate.13 Works on senatorial and mayoral campaigns.14
1928
Between sessions as parliamentarian, OCH codifies state banking laws.
Willie Cooper Hobby, first wife of former Governor William P. Hobby, dies. Oveta and William Hobby start dating outside of office hours.15
1930
OCH makes an unsuccessful run for the Texas House of Representatives, but is defeated by a member of the then-resurgent Ku Klux Klan.16 “Her opponent whispered that she was ‘a parliamentarian and a Unitarian.’ She lost. It was the last time she ran for office.”17 OCH loses the race by four thousand votes.18
1930–1931
OCH is assistant to Houston city attorney: briefs law, writes opinions, drafts ordinances.
“Joins the Houston Post-Dispatch as assistant to a cartoonist, transfers to the circulation department, begins friendship with former Gov. William Pettus Hobby, her father’s friend and now president of the newspaper and owner of KPRC Radio.”19
1931
OCH returns to Austin as parliamentarian (serves through 1931, with incomplete terms in 1939 and 1941).20 Elected state president of the League of Women Voters.21
OCH marries former Governor William Hobby Sr., then president of the Houston Post. She was twenty-six, he was fifty-three. They were married in Temple, Texas, by the Rev. C. R. Shirar. She goes to work for the Post as a research editor.22 “William Hobby restores the newspaper’s original name, the Houston Post.”23
1931–1938
OCH is research editor, book editor, assistant editor at the Houston Post.
JANUARY 19, 1932
William P. Hobby Jr. is born, on his mother’s twenty-seventh birthday.24
1932–1939
OCH is book editor and research editor of the Post, writes editorials and produces articles on community issues. Is the sole woman member on a citizens committee, which in 1935–1937 plans a flood control program for Houston. Writes Mr. Chairman, a handbook on parliamentary procedure which is adopted as a textbook by Texas public schools in 1938. Promoted to assistant editor of the Post in 1937. Appointed Texas chairman of the advisory committee on women’s participation in the 1939 New York World’s Fair.25
1936
OCH’s book on parliamentary procedure, Mr. Chairman, is published by the Economy Company.
1936–1937
OCH is a member of the Texas Centennial celebration advisory committee.26
Oveta and William Hobby survive airplane crash near Ferris, twenty miles south of Dallas. (Washington Post 6–13-36). They were flying home from Dallas where they had gone to hear President Roosevelt speak.27
1937
OCH’s book on parliamentary procedure, Mr. Chairman, is reprinted by the Economy Company. She is elected a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors—only the second woman in its membership.28
JANUARY 19, 1937
Jessica Hobby Catto born, on her mother’s thirty-second birthday.29
NOVEMBER 1937
OCH appointed Texas chairman of the Advisory Committee on Women’s Participation for the New York World’s Fair, 1939.30
1938
OCH named executive vice president of the Post.31 “Under her direction, the Post began covering events important to Houston’s black community and featuring blacks in newspaper stories.”32
OCTOBER 1938
Mr. Chairman adopted as a textbook in Texas public schools.33
1939
Hobbys buy the Post from Houston financier Jesse Jones, who also owns the rival Houston Chronicle, for about $4 million.34
JANUARY 1939
Serves as parliamentarian during the Texas legislative session.35
Germany invades Poland, marking the beginning of World War II.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1939
France and Britain declare war on Germany.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1940
FDR signs the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, passed by Congress two days earlier, starting the “first peacetime conscription in US history. . . . This Selective Service Act required that men between the ages of 21 and 30 register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men aged 18 to 45 were made liable for military service, and all men aged 18 to 65 were required to register.”36
JANUARY 1941
Serves as parliamentarian during the Texas legislative session.37 (Serves incomplete session.38)
MAY 28, 1941
Congresswomen Edith Nourse Rogers introduces House Resolution 4906 (H.R. 4906), “a bill to establish a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps for Service with the Army of the United States.”
SUMMER 1941
Public Music Association chartered in Houston, with OCH appointed as president; provides summer music concerts in Hermann Park.39
While in Washington, D.C., attending an FCC meeting on KPRC business, OCH receives a phone call from General David Surles asking her to come to the War Department and organize a section on women’s activities; she refuses, but agrees to take home a sample of letters he’s been getting from women nationwide and draw up organizational chart on ways women could serve.40
JULY 1941
“At the request of Gen. David Surles, she organizes in Washington, D.C., the new Women’s Interest Section of the War Department Bureau of Public Relations, to furnish information to draftees’ relatives. Nominated by Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, she assists the group planning legislation for the Women’s Auxiliary Corps; and is the only female representative of the War Department negotiating with the Bureau of the Budget and participating in Congressional hearings on the WAAC.”41
DECEMBER 7, 1941
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
DECEMBER 8, 1941
FDR declares war on Japan after bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. officially enters World War II.
DECEMBER 11, 1941
Hitler declares war on the U.S. on behalf of Germany.
1942–1945
OCH is director of the Women’s Auxiliary Corps and then the Women’s Army Corps.
Bill signed creating the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.42
MAY 16, 1942
Secretary of War Henry Stimson appoints OCH director and first commanding officer of the WAAC with the rank of colonel.43 OCH takes oath of office, becomes the first woman to hold the rank of colonel in the U.S. military.44
SEPTEMBER 1942
OCH expands the listing of jobs women are certified to fill in the military from 54 to 239, expanding the corps from a few thousand women to 100,000.45
MID-OCTOBER 1942
OCH and Eleanor Roosevelt are invited by Queen Elizabeth to travel to England to “see how the British women are aiding in the war effort.”46
OCTOBER 21, 1942
Eleanor Roosevelt, OCH, Betty Bandel, and others flew to England in one of the first commercial transatlantic flights to see how the British women were performing in the war effort.47
1943
WAACS receive full Army status and drop the word “Auxiliary” from the name, becoming the Women’s Army Corps.48
MAY 16, 1943
OCH gives speech to the Texas State Society of Washington, D.C., recorded in the Appendix to the Congressional Record on May 17, 1943.
1943
“Awarded honorary LL.D. by Baylor University; Sam Houston State Teachers College; University of Chattanooga.”49
OCH gives speech to the Texas State Society of Washington, D.C., recorded in the Appendix to the Congressional Record on May 17, 1943.
JULY 5, 1943
“Takes oath of office as Director, Women’s Army Corps, becoming the first woman admitted to the new Army component.”50
1945
“William P. Hobby and Oveta Culp Hobby establish the Houston-based Hobby Family Foundation, with philanthropic interests in health care, social services and community development.”51
JANUARY 8, 1945
OCH is presented the Distinguished Service Medal by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.52
JULY 1945
OCH retires as colonel and leader of the Women’s Army Corps, saying, “My mission . . . has been completed.” She was exhausted.53
JULY 12, 1945
“Resigns as WAC Director, due to the serious illness of Will Hobby and the state of her own health. The 1941 vision of a corps of 25,000 women performing noncombatant service had broadened to recruit more than 99,000 by April, 1945, with WACS qualifying for 406 of the 628 military occupations.”54
LATE 1945
OCH makes her first important purchases of art at the end of World War II.55
1946
“OCH made her classic quote, ‘I think I’ll like Houston if they ever get it finished.’”56
Served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Conference on Freedom of Information and the Press in Geneva.57
NOVEMBER 10, 1948
OCH named president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.58
1950
OCH spends months working at national headquarters of Citizens for Eisenhower in New York.59 Bard College awards her an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Humane Letters.
1952
U.S. experiences polio epidemic.
NOVEMBER 25, 1952
Eisenhower appoints OCH administrator of the Federal Security Agency, “the department of the federal government in charge of the health, education, and economic security of individual citizens.”60
1953
The Federal Security Agency is renamed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) and its secretary made part of the president’s cabinet.
APRIL 11,1953
OCH appointed the nation’s first secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, a cabinet position; second woman to hold a cabinet position after Frances Perkins under FDR. OCH preferred to be called “Mrs. Secretary.”61
JUNE 8, 1953
Ohio Wesleyan University awards OCH an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Laws.
DECEMBER 6, 1953
HEW Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby says U.S. schools lack 72,000 teachers and 345,000 classrooms.
OCH serves as a trustee for the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, Inc., to train “rising young leaders” in non-Communist nations to help solve their countries’ most urgent social and economic problems.
NOVEMBER 8, 1953
OCH appears on cover of the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine.62
MARCH 22, 1954
OCH drafts “a new bill dealing with health insurance, to encourage private insurance companies to offer greater protection.”63
1954
OCH praised as having the patience to postpone the announcement of the Salk vaccine until it had been properly tested.64
1955
OCH’s resignation as Secretary of HEW “prompted Treasury Secretary George Humphrey to gasp, ‘What? The best man in the Cabinet resigning?’”65 Resigns to return to Houston and care for her ailing husband.66 Takes position as president of the Houston Post.
MAY 1956
OCH awarded honorary Doctor of Human Letters from Mary Hardin-Baylor College.67
1960
OCH receives the Living History Award from the Research Institute of America.68
JUNE 7, 1964
William P. Hobby Sr. dies.
1966
OCH elected to the General Foods Corporation board of directors.69
OCH serves as a trustee for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.70
1967
OCH first woman named to serve on the board of trustees of Rice University.71 OCH awarded the Carnegie Corporation Award for the Advancement and Diffusion of Knowledge.72
DECEMBER 12, 1967
Ribbon-cutting ceremony officially opening the Oveta Culp Hobby Memorial Library at Central Texas College in Killeen, with LBJ in attendance.73
1968
President Lyndon Johnson names OCH to the Public Broadcasting Board.74
JANUARY 20, 1969
Appointed an honorary Lifetime Member in the 147th Fighter Group, Texas National Guard, Ellington Field, Houston, Texas.
1978
Women’s Army Corps disestablished.75
OCTOBER 18, 1978
“Presented with the George Catlett Marshall Medal for Public Service, the highest award given by the Association of the U.S. Army and awarded for ‘selfless and outstanding service’ to the nation. She was the nineteenth recipient of this award and the first woman.”76
1979
Receives Rotary Club of Houston’s Distinguished Citizen Award, in recognition of accomplishments to better the community.77
1983
OCH sells the Post to the Toronto Sun Publishing Co. for about $130 million.
William P. Hobby Jr. swears in Ann Richards as governor of Texas.
APRIL 14, 1983
First U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps established at a woman’s university becomes the Oveta Culp Hobby Battalion at Texas Woman’s University.
1984
Oveta inducted into the first Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in the business and finance category.
JANUARY 19, 1986
Historical marker dedication and unveiling, Eighth Street and Young Avenue, OCH’s home birthplace, Killeen, Texas.
1973–1991
William P. Hobby Jr. serves as Texas Lieutenant Governor.
1992
H&C Communications, Inc., a family enterprise, sells its five television stations, estimated selling price $600 million.78
1994
Forbes magazine lists OCH as the country’s 287th wealthiest person, estimating the worth of her and her family’s assets at $400 million.79
APRIL 16, 1994
Mary-Hardin Baylor College honors OCH at its homecoming.
APRIL 1995
OCH suffers stroke.
AUGUST 16, 1995
OCH dies at age ninety in Houston, Texas, of a stroke. Buried in Glenwood Cemetery, Houston, Texas.
“Fort Hood dedicates the Oveta Culp Hobby University Center, offering bachelor’s degrees in a program co-sponsored by Texas A&M University, Prairie View A&M, Tarleton State University, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Central Texas College, and the University of Central Texas.”80
OCTOBER 5, 1996
OCH inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y. The citation reads, in part, “You were respectful of the power you wielded in influential positions, you made the road smoother for the women who followed you.”81