At the Houston Post in
the Fifties, the Womens Department had an office all its own in
a corner of the crowded City Room. All the women were not
segregated there. Even in those days newspapering was equal
opportunity employment and the ladies worked among the men and gave
as good as they got. Just the Woman’s Page, Garden, Fashion
and Society Editors were cordoned off there and the environs were
just as austere as the city room. Except that the Womens Department
had an oil painting on the wall and the City Room’s walls were bare
of adornment.
The painting was a portrait of a handsome, stern-faced Army bird
colonel whose eyes followed you everywhere where you went in the
Womens Department. The colonel was the boss of The Post.
Oveta.
Oveta Culp Hobby.
She got her eagles in World War II as director of the WAC (Women’s
Army Corp). General Dwight D. Eisenhower must have been
mighty impressed with her because when he became President he
picked her to be the first Secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare.
She was a cover girl for U.S. News and World Report in 1952,
for Business Week in 1953 and for Time Magazine
twice, in 1944 as “WAC’s Colonel Hobby” (cover price for Time
then was fifteen cents), and in 1953 as “Mrs. Secretary Hobby”
(and the cover price had jumped five cents).
Oveta Culp was born in 1905 in Killeen, a little town in central
Texas northwest of Austin, the state capital. Her father
was a state legislator and she was introduced to politics at an
early age. She was only 14 when she went to Austin with
him. At 20 she was parliamentarian of the Texas House.
Governor William P. Hobby was a friend of her father. When
she married him in 1931 he was a newspaper executive. She
joined him in the newspaper business and eventually they became
a major force in the Houston media, owning The Houston Post, a
radio station and the NBC television affiliate. They had
two children, William Hobby Jr., who later became one of the State's
most able lieutenant governors, and before that worked at the
Post (where I used to steal cigars out of his desk, but
that’s another story), and Jessica, now Jessica Catto.
It was as TV editor of the Post that I got to know her.
Well, not really, but she did say “Hello” to me when I saw her
in the halls at the paper and I knew who she was. I guess
she knew who I was, too, sort of. She was standing
outside her office one day with an important looking man
and stopped me to introduce me to him. I don’t remember
his name but he was a Federal official.
She said, “David is one of our best reporters.”
I wondered if she knew that when a TV-connected story needed
to be covered the City Editor would muse out loud whether “to
send Westheimer or a real reporter.”
Another time, apparently when he couldn’t dig up a real reporter
and he had to send me to cover a banquet attended by Mrs. Hobby
and other dignitaries, she called me up to the VIP table and again
introduced me as “one of our best reporters.” Obviously
she and the City Editor never exchanged confidences.
But the best was yet to come.
I was at the Post’s TV station on Post business and Mrs.
Hobby was there, too. A station photographer needed some
help and asked me to hold a floodlight for him to light up the
scene a certain way.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said, “but I’ll try.”
Mrs. Hobby said in that clear voice of hers, “Oh, David,
I thought you could do anything.”
That gracious lady died at 90 in 1995.
