"Major" Hobby's WAACs

The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (TIME, May 18) came into legal being last week. Immediately Secretary Stimson appointed as director one of the most remarkable Texans in Washington: Mrs. Oveta Gulp Hobby, 37-year-old mother of two. Her rank corresponds to that of an Army major. Slim, trim, quiet and pretty, Mrs. Hobby has a taste for fancy hairdos and shocking hats. In the Corps she will wear a uniform hat, but will probably continue to ruin the hairdos by running her hands through her pompadour while thinking. She does a lot of thinking. Her husband, former Texas Governor William Pettus Hobby, once told her: "Anyone with as many ideas as you have is bound to hit a good one now and then." As executive vice president and assistant editor of the Houston Post, she had so many good ideas on public relations that the Army's Colonel Ernest Dupuy asked her to head the Women's Division of the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations. Since last August she has filled the job so ably that there was never much doubt she would get the WAAC post. And her new job came as no surprise to people who knew her back in Texas as Assistant City Attorney of Houston before her marriage in 1931. Once she codified the State's banking laws.

("I did it all myself," said she. "It wasn't really such a great job.") As director of an organization which may include 150,000 women, "Major" Hobby is still unfazed, has started methodically on basic organization. Plans so far: 1) The first contingent of about 400 officer-candidates, 30 or 40 from each corps area, will go to Fort Des Moines, Iowa, on July 15 for an eight-week course; 2) when the officer nucleus is ready, the Corps will begin to take in its first 25,000 "enlisted" women, called auxiliaries (privates) or specialists (who rate higher pay); 3) three-fifths of the Corps will serve with the Aircraft Warning Service, which the Army wants taken out of amateur hands; 4) besides these there will be 27 administrative "companies" of 150 each, two companies of cooks and bakers. One of Mrs.

Hobby's first shrewd steps was to assuage the fears of Negro leaders who thought that her Texas background would make her exclude Negro women. There will be 40 Negro women in the first group of officer candidates. She said that Corps members may wear "inconspicuous" makeup, may wear civilian clothes on leave, will wear girdles if they bulge unmilitarily, will not be disciplined by confinement in Army guardhouses. As to the all-important uniform, prospective WAACs sighed with relief to find that the Army does not intend to design it. Miss Dorothy Shaver, vice president of Manhattan's Lord & Taylor, has charge of that momentous problem. Permitted to watch, as Mrs. Hobby was crisply sworn in, was Mr. Hobby. Said Reporter George Dixon of the New York Daily News: "If ever a man looked as if he was saying to himself what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here, it was Mr. Hobby."

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