Ebby Halliday Awarded 79th Linz Award

The Linz Award is one of the oldest and most prestigious civic honors a Dallasite can receive, and today Ebby Halliday joined the ranks of Ray L. Hunt, Raymond Nasher, Robert L. Thornton III, H. Ross Perot, Ralph B. Rogers and 79 years of glittering civic-minded movers and shakers whose community and humanitarian efforts have provided the greatest benefit to our city. I was thrilled when Senator Florence Shapiro introduced Ebby and quoted from the D Magazine story I wrote about her last year, my day with Ebby Halliday that had me begging for a nap while the then 96 year old ran circles around me. Now Ebby is 97, still going more than strong, and today at the Fairmont Hotel wowed the crowd with her humor and punch. When she moved to Dallas in 1938, she said, the population was 285,000. The other day she made a phone call on behalf of one of her agents to a homeowner — the housekeeper answered the phone. Ebby asked to have the homeowner phone her back. When she left her name, the housekeeper exclaimed, “Ebby Halliday, Lordy is she still alive?”

A few other snippets that did not make it into the D story:

We were having lunch at Methodist Hospital, at a Lions Club luncheon. Ebby ate her lunch and then as the program began, leaned back in her chair for a bit, eyes closed. Aha, I recall thinking, she’s catching 30 winks — so this is how she survives. I wondered if I dared shut my eyes as well. Betty Turner, Ebby’s long-time assistant, must have seen me scoping the subject of my interview. Betty leaned over and whispered to me, she’s not sleeping, she loves hearing the voice of the speaker — it reminds her of Maurice.

Maurice Acers was Ebby’s husband. They enjoyed an amazing relationship and were devoted to one another. One other rare story she told me I’ll never forget. Beside her bed are tons of books, one in particular she cherished. Ebby was educated in a simple country school where materials and books were scarce. A shining student, her teacher let her take home a book of her choosing one time as a reward for doing well on an exam. Ebby loved that book and was proud of being able to bring it home. But her step-father was not so happy. He said something to the effect of, if you’ve got time to sit around reading that you’ve got too much time on your hands. Go do some chores. Then he tossed the little book in the fire.

I asked Ebby, was he a very cruel man? Was he mean to you?

She answered me very, very slowly, looking at me clearly with her gorgeous blue eyes.

“He could be quite a challenge,” she said with measured restraint.

Years later, every time she and Maurice would travel, he would slip into a bookstore trying to find that book for Ebby trying, in effect, to undo some of the wrong that had been cast upon her in her youth. He never did find it, but years later utilizing the internet, his daughters did.

And the little book sits on her bedside table.