Hobby, Oveta Culp

orig. Oveta Culp

born Jan. 19, 1905, Killeen, Texas, U.S.

died Aug. 16, 1995, Houston, Texas

U.S. publisher and government official.

A graduate of the University of Texas Law School, she was parliamentarian of the Texas legislature from 1925 to 1931. In 1931 she married William P. Hobby, publisher of the Houston Post-Dispatch, and went to work for the newspaper, becoming its executive vice president in 1938. From 1942 to 1945 she headed the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (later Women's Army Corps). In 1953 she was appointed director of the Federal Security Agency, which was reorganized as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; as secretary of the department (1953–55), she was only the second woman to hold a U.S. cabinet position. She became chairman of the board of the Post in 1965.

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▪ 1996

      U.S. newspaper executive and public servant (b. Jan. 19, 1905, Killeen, Texas—d. Aug. 16, 1995, Houston, Texas), was the first U.S. secretary of health, education, and welfare and later, through family media holdings, became one of the country's wealthiest women. Culp served as parliamentarian of the Texas House of Representatives (1925-31) and as assistant to the city attorney of Houston (1930) before marrying William Pettus Hobby, the publisher of the Houston Post, in 1931 and going to work for that paper. By 1938 her organizational skills had earned her the position of executive vice president. In 1941 Hobby was asked to organize and head a women's division of the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations. The next year she was put in charge of the new Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, which was given full army status in 1943 and renamed the Women's Army Corps. Hobby remained in command, with the rank of colonel, until she left the army in 1945 and returned to Houston and her work at the Post. In 1953 she was appointed administrator of the Federal Security Agency, and later that year, with the agency's elevation to Cabinet status as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Hobby became the second woman to hold a U.S. Cabinet post. She resigned in 1955 to look after her seriously ill husband in Houston, and she helped him run the business until his death in 1964. She became chairman of the board of the Post the next year, and in 1983 she sold the paper, which was subsequently resold and later closed. Other family media outlets were sold in 1992.

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▪ United States government official

née  Oveta Culp 

born Jan. 19, 1905, Killeen, Texas, U.S.

died Aug. 16, 1995, Houston, Texas

      American editor and publisher of the Houston Post (1952–53), first director of the U.S. Women's Army Corps (1942–45), and first secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1953–55).

      Oveta Culp was educated privately and for a time attended Mary Hardin-Baylor College. 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. In 1931 she married William Pettus Hobby, a former governor of Texas (1917–21) and publisher of the Houston Post-Dispatch (later the Houston Post). She went to work for the newspaper, introduced a number of features of interest to women, and by 1938 was executive vice president.

      In 1937 she published a handbook on parliamentary law titled “Mr. Chairman,” and in 1939 and 1941 she again served briefly in her former post in the Texas House. In July 1941 she was appointed chief of the women's division of the Bureau of Public Relations in the War Department. She subsequently helped develop plans for a women's auxiliary branch for the army, and on creation of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (the name was later changed to Women's Army Corps [WAC]) on May 14, 1942, she was appointed director with relative rank of major, later raised to colonel. She directed the corps throughout World War II, until July 1945, by which time the WAC had grown to a force of 100,000.

      After the war Hobby resigned her commission to return to the Post as coeditor and publisher. Hobby also worked as a director of KPRC radio and television broadcasting in Houston, served as a consultant to the Hoover Commission investigating governmental efficiency, and became active in national Republican politics, helping elect Dwight D. Eisenhower (Eisenhower, Dwight D.) to the presidency and in January 1953 was named director of the Federal Security Administration (FSA). In March the FSA was elevated to Cabinet status as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Hobby, as the first secretary of HEW, became in April the second woman to hold a U.S. Cabinet position. She retained the post until resigning in July 1955. In that year she became president and editor of the Post; she became chairman of the board of the Post in 1965 and remained in that position until the paper was sold in 1983 to the Toronto Sun Publishing Company. She was a director of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 1968 and of a number of other corporations.

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