When H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt founded The Holdsworth Center in 2017, he named it for his mother, Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth. Watching her advocate for others made a deep impact on Charles, shaping his core beliefs and philosophy of giving. Today, her legacy lives on in the Center’s values to be of service, believe in people and drive for excellence and equity. Her life was a shining example of what it means to embody all three. This is her story.
One solitary life
Intelligent. Strong. Persevering. The embodiment of absolute determination. Always compassionate.
These are words used to describe Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth, a woman who believed deeply that “one solitary life can make a difference” and showed it with her extraordinary actions.
Born in a small ranch house on the prairie in deep South Texas in 1903, Mary Elizabeth moved with her parents to Mapimi, a mining town in Coahuila, Mexico, then to Kerrville when she was nine.
As a young woman, she followed in the footsteps of family members from England who became teachers in Texas. She taught in a small school for all ages in Center Point and, later, in Kerrville in the Hill Country. For a long time after, she would talk about how much she cared for her students, making a deep impression on her youngest son, Charles Butt.
The busy dining room
In 1924, Mary Elizabeth married Howard E. Butt, who ran the family grocery store founded in Kerrville by his mother, Florence. Four years later, they moved to the Rio Grande Valley.
Deeply moved by the debilitating poverty, poor health care and subpar schools of the Depression-era, segregated South, Mary Elizabeth worked tirelessly to promote social justice and alleviate suffering. Her dining room became the area office for the State Crippled Children’s Program, and she helped launch a diagnosis and treatment program for tuberculosis throughout the Valley.
Mary Elizabeth gave birth to four children – Howard, Jr., Eleanor and Charles. Her fourth child, Mary Beth, was stillborn.
Intelligent. Strong. Persevering. The embodiment of absolute determination. Always compassionate.
In 1940, the family moved to Corpus Christi, where the headquarters of H-E-B had been relocated. As the business grew, the family home once again became a hub of activity for local causes, including improving the juvenile justice system and caring for those stricken with tuberculosis, still a major health challenge before antibiotics.
From her home, Mary Elizabeth helped organize the Nueces County Home for the Aged, the Nueces County Tuberculosis Hospital, the district American Cancer Society, the Y.W.C.A. and a daycare center for Black children that continues to serve the community today and is available to all.
A fight for better treatment
Mary Elizabeth’s most enduring legacy began in 1955, when she became the first woman appointed to the state’s governing board for mental hospitals. While the men on the board were mostly concerned with budgets and buildings, she studied mental health issues and policies across the country and traveled to every mental hospital and state school in Texas – another first for the board.
What she saw was appalling. Food, furnishings, cleanliness, medical care – everything was substandard. In one hospital housing 1,400 patients, there was one psychiatrist. Effective drugs came later.
Mary Elizabeth spent the next 26 years fighting for better treatment, more resources and a move toward community-based services so that mentally ill and disabled people could stay in their homes and receive good care.
She added curtains and family-style tables to the institutional dining halls, replaced the metal cups and trays with traditional dinnerware and added more healthy food to the menus. In the summer, she brought hundreds of patients to a family-owned camp outside of Kerrville to enjoy swimming, hiking and outdoor sports.
The best man on the board
At the Texas Capitol, she advocated persistently for more resources, always reminding state officials to do what was ethically right rather than politically advantageous.
Set upon an objective… (she) pursues it with the doggedness that would disgrace a Marine sergeant.
Though she was more comfortable working behind the scenes than in the spotlight, Mary Elizabeth did not shy away from conflict and was never timid about challenging inequity. Powerful men did not intimidate her – she spoke her views plainly and firmly.
A state official once commented, “Set upon an objective…(she) pursues it with the doggedness that would disgrace a Marine sergeant.” According to a board member who served alongside her, Mary Elizabeth was “the best man on the board.”
Teacher, philanthropist, wife, mother and pioneering advocate for social justice, Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth died in 1993 at her home in Corpus Christi at the age of 90.
Source: Scheer, Mary Kelley: “Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt and the Politics of Mental Health Care Reform in Texas, 1940-65,” Chapter 6 in Never Without Honor: Studies in Courage in Tribute to Ben H. Procter
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