28 .........
in March 1924. H.H. Adams often returned to Dallas to visit friends and relatives, and in 1936 he returned to give the graduation address at The Hockaday School. The Dallas Morning News of May 30, 1936, tells us that the graduation procession that year was led by Miss Hockaday, who was followed in the procession by Mr. Adams and others “who figured in the founding of the school,” Menter B. Terrill, Ruth Lindsley, and Dr. John O. McReynolds (it was in the home of Dr. and Mrs. McReynolds that Miss Hockaday was convinced to start her school). We know that Ruth Bower Lindsley, Horatio Hearne Adams, and Dr. and Mrs John O. McReynolds and their families were good friends, who often met socially. On the first of March, 1913, Ruth Lindsley and her husband, Henry, entertained guests at the Grand Opera performance of Lucia di Lammermoor and for supper following. The Dallas Morning News gave this account: “World’s Greatest Soprano . . . Luisa Tetrazzini Holds Four Thousand MusicLoving Texans Spellbound by the Glory of Her Golden Melody. . . . [Ruth and] Henry D. Lindsley gave a supper party last night after the Grand Opera for their guests, Mr. and Mrs. Horatio Adams, Dr. and Mrs. John O. McReynolds,
hockaday magazine
Misses Leta Adams, Mary Victoria McReynolds, and Katherine Mae [Cadis] Lindsley.” These three young women, daughters of the adults present, were all to enter the brand new Hockaday School the following September as future members of Hockaday’s Class of 1916. Mrs. Lindsley and Mr. Adams were to be key in bringing Miss Hockaday to Dallas. Dare we imagine that the conversation that March evening after the opera included the budding idea of a girls’ preparatory school for Dallas? The sequence of events that led up to the establishment of The Hockaday School some six months later has been described by Miss Hockaday and by early alumnae. Sometime in early September, Ruth Bower Lindsley and Horatio Hearne Adams determined to investigate the possibility of having a girls’ school in Dallas where their daughters would be prepared for college. They had observed the
They liked me, and I liked them. I stayed. success of Terrill Prep for boys, which opened in Dallas in 1906, so they approached the headmaster of that school, Menter B. Terrill, to ask if he knew of anyone who might establish an equivalent school for girls. Mr. Terrill advised them that when, in the 1890s, he was president of the teachers’ college at Denton (now the University of North Texas), his brightest pupil was Ela Hockaday, who received her B.A. there. “She’s the only one who can do it,” he said. So, at the request of Mrs. Lindsley and Mr. Adams, Menter Terrill sent a telegram to Miss Hockaday, who had taken a break from academics and was living on a farm in South Texas with her friend and fellow teacher, Sarah B. Trent. In the telegram, Mr. Terrill invited Miss Hockaday to come to Dallas to discuss the possibility of opening a girls’ school here. Ruth Lindsley and H.H. Adams sponsored Miss Hockaday’s trip to Dallas by train from Falfurrias, and when