Born in Walnut Springs, Texas, Alice Youree (1905-2002) attended Meridian Junior College, where she met Floy Charles Mac McConnell (1903-1991). The couple married in 1925, while Mac was principal of Meridian High School, and in 1932, Alice and Mac both received bachelor’s degrees from Baylor University. At the start of World War II, Mac resigned his position as superintendent of Gladewater schools to serve as a captain in the U. S. Air Corps in North Africa and India. Alice succeeded her husband as superintendent before becoming resident supervisor of the Girls’ War Work Center in Waco. She later served as a lecturing consultant for the University of Texas at Austin’s Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and as dean of women at Texas College of Arts and Industries, now Texas A & M University-Kingsville. Following the war, Alice earned a master’s degree from East Texas State University in 1947 and worked for Austin Public Schools until she was appointed director of the Scottish Rite Dormitory, housing students of the University of Texas at Austin, in 1950. Following her retirement, Alice published Time of Upheaval: Excerpts from a Couple’s World War II Letters Reveal Life in the Military Service and War-Time Texas (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1989), which chronicles Alice’s experiences during the war.
From the guide to the McConnell, Alice Y. and F. C. papers 95-015., [ca. 1900]-1989, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)
