William P. Hobby

Born in 1878 in Moscow, Texas, Hobby attended local public schools.

He started working at the age of 17 as a circulation clerk for the Houston Post in 1895. Several years later, he was promoted to business writer in August 1901. In 1907 he left the Post to become manager and part owner of the Beaumont Enterprise, and he acquired the entire paper shortly thereafter.

Political career

Hobby decided to enter politics and joined the Democratic Party. In 1914 he ran for and was elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas. After Governor James Edward Ferguson, known as "Pa" Ferguson, was impeached and forced to resign from office in 1917, Hobby succeeded him. At age 39, he was the youngest governor in the history of the state up to that point.

Campaign card for William Pettus Hobby

Hobby soundly defeated Ferguson in the 1918 Democratic primary and won the general election and governorship in his own right, serving a full term to 1921. During his years of service, the southern border of Texas was a place of frequent conflict, as revolutionaries from the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) entered the United States to attack farms, irrigation systems and railroads. The Texas Rangers, militias and US troops patrolled the border, and atrocities were committed by both sides.

In early 1919, a Joint Committee of the Texas Senate and House conducted hearings to investigate actions by the Texas Rangers along the border. They conducted hearings for two weeks, and had 83 witnesses. Among the incidents recounted was the Porvenir Massacre of January 1918 in West Texas, where militia and Texas Rangers summarily killed 15 Mexican-American men and boys near their farming village. The legislature passed a bill to regulate the Rangers and professionalize the service. Their numbers were reduced. Historians estimate that the Rangers killed up to 5,000 people, mostly ethnic Mexicans, from 1914 to 1919.[1]

(Ferguson was impeached and convicted in a corruption case, and prohibited from serving in state electoral office again.)

As governor, Hobby appointed Joseph A. Kemp, the railroad and oil industrialist from Wichita Falls, to the University of Texas Board of Regents, a position which Kemp held from 1917 to 1921.[2]

After leaving the governorship, Hobby returned to the Beaumont Enterprise. In 1924 he was invited to become the president of the Houston Post. In August 1955, Hobby became chairman of the board of the Houston Post Company. By that time, the company also owned the radio station, KPRC, and the television station, KPRC-TV. His wife, Oveta Culp Hobby (see below), served as president and editor.

In 1931, Hobby married Oveta Culp. She later was appointed as the first Secretary of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare (its name was changed after a later reorganization).

Hobby served as a member on the Board of Directors of Texas Technological College.[3]

His son William P. Hobby Jr. also served as lieutenant governor of Texas from 1973 to 1991. His daughter, Jessica, was married to Henry E. Catto Jr., who became the Ambassador of the United States to the Court of St James's. His grandson, Paul Hobby, narrowly lost the election for comptroller of Texas in the 1998 general election. Republican Carole Keeton Strayhorn won that election.

Several public facilities were named for him:

• William P. Hobby Airport[4] in Houston, Texas
• Hobby Elementary School in Houston, Texas
• Hobby Middle School in San Antonio, Texas
• Hobby Center For The Performing Arts in Houston, TX

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• James Anthony Clark and Weldon Hart, The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby (New York: Random House, 1958).
• Lewis L. Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1992).

• William Pettus Hobby from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Initial messages of Governor W. P. Hobby to the thirty-sixth legislature, state of Texas: Jan. 14, 1919 and Jan. 22, 1919, hosted by the Portal to Texas History