Portrait of Oveta Culp Hobby

Oveta Culp Hobby led the Women’s Army Corps and a cabinet department

ByRenée Castellano

Photo: Harris & Ewing, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Oveta Culp was born in Killeen, Texas, in 1905. She served as parliamentarian of the Texas House of Representatives while still in her 20s and wrote a book on parliamentary procedure. In 1931 she married William P. Hobby, a former Texas governor and publisher of the Houston Post.

She worked her way up at the Post, from research editor to executive vice president.

The Women’s Army Corps

In 1942, the Army asked her to lead the new Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which became the Women’s Army Corps in 1943. As its director, with the rank of colonel, she oversaw tens of thousands of women serving in the Army in jobs from clerks to mechanics. She received the Distinguished Service Medal.

The Cabinet

In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed her the first secretary of the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She was only the second woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. During her tenure, the department managed the release of the Salk polio vaccine in 1955.

Back in Houston

She returned to Houston and ran the Post and the family’s broadcasting businesses. Her son, Bill Hobby, served as lieutenant governor of Texas for 18 years.

She died in 1995. Houston’s Hobby Airport is named for her husband, and Hobby Center for the Performing Arts honors the family. She is remembered as one of the most influential Texans of her era.

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