Rice remembers Diana Hobby

Diana Poteat Stallings Hobby, who helped establish the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice, died July 4 with her family by her side. She was 83.

Diana Hobby

The Hobby Center was created at Rice in 2010 with support from Hobby and her husband, former Texas Lt. Gov. William “Bill” P. Hobby Jr. ’53. Both are Rice alumni. The Hobby Center conducts research and education to advance understanding of the causes and consequences of demographic, economic, geographic, social and environmental conditions impacting the current conditions in, and the future of, Texas and other areas in the nation.

“Houston has lost a remarkable citizen, and Rice an accomplished and supportive graduate,” said Rice University President David Leebron. “Diana was elegance without pretension and brilliance without condescension. Her impact on both people and institutions was immense.”

The Hobbys are Rice Associates and members of the William Marsh Rice Society and the Legacy Society in recognition of the many donations they have made to the university personally and through the Hobby Family Foundation. The Hobbys were also recipients of Rice’s Gold Medal in 2001. Diana Hobby also served as a member of the Rice: The Next Century Campaign Leadership Committee and a board member of the Friends of Fondren. From 1979 to 1991, she was an associate editor of Rice’s scholarly journal, “Studies in English Literature,” for which she worked to expand circulation and to raise funds to increase its size and scope.

A New York City native, Diana Hobby graduated from Chatham Hall School in 1948 and Radcliffe College in 1952. She was working for Chatham Hall when she married Bill in 1954. She and Bill lived in Washington, D.C., where he served in the Navy until 1957. While in Washington, she earned an M.A. in English literature from Georgetown University and worked for the Experiment in International Living and the Central Intelligence Agency. They later moved to Houston, where Diana received her doctorate in English from Rice in 1981.

In Houston, Diana Hobby was book editor of the Houston Post in the 1950s and 1960s. She was a William Butler Yeats scholar and wrote her dissertation on his work. She was associate editor of Studies in English Literature from 1979 to 1991 and associate editor emeritus thereafter.

She had a great love of the English language, a passion for literature, was a supporter of libraries and a lifelong patron of the humanities in Texas, according to her family.

Diana Hobby is survived by her husband and their children and their spouses, Laura and John Beckworth, Paul and Janet Hobby, Andrew and Teresa Hobby, Kate and Steve Gibson, and their grandchildren Will, Carter, and John Beckworth, Grace, Walker and Eric Hobby, Caroline, Carson, and Wheeler Gibson, and Spencer Gourley. She is also survived by her sister and brother-in-law, Sylvia and Will Lowe of Alexandria, Va.

Funeral services will be held July 8.

Rice University centennial historian Melissa Kean’s entry about Diana Hobby has been posted on her “Rice History Corner.”  You can read it by clicking here.