Oveta Culp Hobby and the Women's Army Corps

The Handbook of Texas fills in the Killeen girl behind the title. At five or six Oveta Culp declined to sign a temperance pledge and take the white ribbon, reasoning that she might want a drink when grown and would not promise what she might not keep. By ten she had read the Congressional Record. When her father took his legislative seat in 1919, fourteen-year-old Oveta went along to Austin to watch the sessions. She studied at Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton and led the Jolly Entertainers, teenage musicians who gave benefit concerts to buy church organs.

What the plaque says

Oveta Culp Hobby and the Women's Army Corps Oveta Culp Hobby served as the director of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) during World War II. Her organizational skills and leadership helped make the WAC a respected part of the American military and opened new possibilities for women in U.S. postwar society. Born in Killeen on January 19, 1905, Oveta was the second of seven children of Isaac W. and Emma Elizabeth (Hoover) Culp. A good student, she developed an interest in law and state government from her father, a state representative. She gained skills as a legislative parliamentarian and as a reporter for the Austin Statesman before moving to Houston. There she renewed a family friendship with former governor William P. Hobby, president of the Houston Post-Dispatch. They married on February 23, 1931. In May 1942, with America at war, Oveta Culp Hobby was appointed director of the newly organized Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). Under Colonel Hobby's leadership, the WAAC provided American women the opportunity to help in the war effort. The first WAAC officers graduated in August 1942. Less than a year later, the WAAC became part of the U.S. Army as the WAC. By the end of the war, more than 99,000 members of the WAC served with army commands in all theaters of the war. Colonel Hobby resigned in June 1945 and returned to Houston. She remained there and continued her service to the city, and from 1953 to 1955 served as the first U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during Pres. Dwight Eisenhower's administration. A decorated World War II officer and respected business and civic leader, Oveta Culp Hobby died in Houston on August 16, 1995. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 22 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 23 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Hancock Springs Park — 27 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.

More markers nearby

• Santa Fe Depot — 0.3 mi
• City of Killeen — 1.1 mi
• The Hiram B. Reynolds Property — 1.1 mi
• Killeen Herald — 1.4 mi