Foxhall, Lois Sager, 1917-1989

Born to Emory H. Sager and Irene Kelly Sager in Memphis, Texas, Lois Sager Foxhall (1917-1989) was a Dallas Morning News journalist and served as one of the first female war correspondents during World War II. After graduating from Childress High School, Foxhall attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman’s University), before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Communications in 1939 and was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Following her graduation, she worked in UT Austin’s Department of Public Relations.

Foxhall began her career as a journalist in the mid-1930s, initially writing for her hometown newspaper, the Childress Daily Index . In 1943, she was hired as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News . She gained a great deal of acclaim after authoring a series of articles on juvenile delinquency during wartime, which were later reprinted as a pamphlet by UT Austin’s Hogg Foundation. During World War II, she became the first foreign female war correspondent from the Southwest U.S. after the Dallas Morning News sent her on assignment to Europe. Foxhall wrote on a wide range of economic and social issues, including rehabilitation and reconstruction in Germany as well as the response of the United Nations and the Nuremberg Trials. Headquartered in Weisbaden, Germany, she traveled throughout East Germany and other European countries, interviewing refugees, the displaced, and American soldiers.

Following the war, Foxhall received the prestigious Nieman Foundation Fellowship journalism award from Harvard University in 1947. Studying modern history and international relations for two years, Foxhall returned to the Dallas Morning News as a writer for the Austin Bureau a year later.

On October 31, 1949, she married Lewis Foxhall, with whom she had three children: Nene, Carol, and Lewis. Foxhall settled with her family in Memphis, Texas, and continued to write for the Dallas Morning News as a free-lance journalist until the mid-1970s. Her articles from this period concern family life, women’s issues, politics, and other social commentary. Following her death in 1989, her daughter Nene E. Foxhall established the Lois Sager Foxhall Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Journalism at UT Austin.

Sources:

Former Journalist Lois Foxhall dies at 72. Houston Chronicle . Last modified July 6, 1989. http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1989_636333/former-journalist-lois-foxhall-dies-at-72.html .

Lois Sager Foxhall Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Journalism. University of Texas at Austin Development Office. Accessed March 30, 2012. http://endowments.giving.utexas.edu/5464/ .

From the guide to the Foxhall, Lois Sager, Collection 2011-406., 1917-2011 (bulk 1936-1976), (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)