Texas. Office of the Lieutenant Governor

William (Bill) Pettus Hobby, Jr., served as Lieutenant Governor of Texas for eighteen years, from 1973 to 1991, longer than any previous holder of that office. Bill Hobby was born on January 19, 1932 in Houston, the son of former Texas Governor William P. Hobby, Sr. and Oveta Culp Hobby, commanding officer of the Women's Army Corps in World War II and later first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. He graduated with a history degree from Rice University in 1953 and then served three years (1954-1957) as an intelligence officer in the Navy. Subsequently, he began his private career in publishing and broadcasting on the staff of his father's newspaper, the Houston Post, assuming increasing managerial responsibilities and becoming executive editor and president in 1965.

Bill Hobby began his public career in 1959, serving as parliamentarian of the Texas Senate under the guidance of Lieutenant Governor Ben Ramsey. A few years later President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Presidential Task Force on Suburban Problems and to the National Citizens Advisory Committee on Vocational Rehabilitation. In 1965, Governor John Connally appointed Hobby to a term as a regent for the University of Houston. In 1969, Governor Preston Smith appointed him to the Texas Air Control Board and to the chair of the Senate Interim Committee on Welfare Reform, to conduct a review of the state's welfare system.

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