As Hockaday reaches its centennial year, the community is looking back on our past and recognizing individuals who have made Hockaday the place that it is today. This list includes numerous teachers, administrators, students, parents, board members and donors. One of these people is Margaret McDermott. Despite the life McDermott has lead, she is still incredibly relatable, clear headed and forward thinking. Her house, though modest, holds some of the finest art collections in the Dallas community; it includes work by Picasso, Braque and Renoir (this interview was conducted with the backdrop of one of Monet’s famous “Waterlilies” series paintings).
A conversation with her leads to inevitable self-reflection, as meeting a person of such kindness and generosity often does. But most of all, she is a role model for girls throughout Dallas as a woman who has done astonishing things throughout her life and continues to do so. All of this is remarkable, but it withholds one crucial detail: Margaret McDermott is 101 years old.
Philanthropy
If you were to meet McDermott, she would never mention the good she had done for the city of Dallas and the greater community. Some highlights of her philanthropy include her donation of $3 million to the Meyerson Symphony Center, her creation of the Eugene McDermott scholars program at the University of Texas at Dallas and, most relevant to Hockaday, the endowment of Hockaday’s “Eugene McDermott Headmistress,” titled in honor of her late husband. This donation to the school means that the budget for Hockaday’s headmistress comes exclusively from McDermott’s gift, simultaneously attracting quality candidates for the job while leaving the money that would be used for the salary for other areas of the school.
This philanthropist has earned a reputation for her humility. As Dallas Morning News reporter Alan Peppard wrote in Feb. 2012, “In a town that loves to brag, Margaret McDermott remains the exception…[she has] continued to do more civic good and take less credit than perhaps anyone in the history of our city.”
Hockaday, Then and Now
McDermott offers a perspective on Hockaday that few others can give to the school; she has seen the school through its entirety and even knew founder Ela Hockaday personally. Instead of a second-hand description of Ela that students and faculty have become familiar with, McDermott offers her own first-hand perspective.
“[Ela] was [an] aristocratic and a perfect lady. She encouraged girls to study and work hard and was like a general under a regime, but she also cared for her students like they were her family,” McDermott said.
McDermott was given the honorary position of a life trustee to the school in 1976.
Current Eugene McDermott Headmistress Kim Wargo commented on the importance of the McDermott influence on Hockaday and the greater Dallas area.
“Margaret told me that she and Eugene believed leadership to be absolutely vital,” Wargo said. “To them, a healthy institution grows through leadership, and to invest in leadership is to invest in the entire community and their future, so that’s where they have focused frequently in the organizations they partner with.”
Wargo, who has kept in touch with McDermott since their initial introduction in 2010 by attending luncheons and corresponding through handwritten letters, also said that McDermott has high expectations for those she works with.
“If you’re invited to meet with her, you better be ready for good conversation and have an idea to contribute,” said Wargo. “She wants everyone around to contribute to the conversation at some point, and she keeps you on your toes.”
McDermott herself prefers to keep busy contributing to her community, and still packs a full schedule into each day following the principle she and her late husband, the Texas Instruments, Inc. co-founder, held dear.
“Eugene believed that financial success should be shared, so he did. And he showed me how to do it too,” McDermott said. “Even when [Eugene] was just getting started, we weren’t sure if we could finance all the projects we hoped to. We still did, because he said, and I still believe, we will run out of time to do good before we run out of money.”
Looking To the Future
In addition to her generosity and perspective on the school, McDermott’s ability to be candid in conversation is nothing short of refreshing and often hilarious. When reminiscing about the differences in the school from the ‘40s, when she was an active member of the board, to now, she had one key observation: “The girls were smart and independent then and they’re still smart and independent now, but today they look a lot different. In the ‘40s, the girls wore bloomers and obviously that isn’t true today; the girls are more adorable now.”
Aside from the school’s uniform, McDermott also noted the change in the lives of the girls from when she was a high school student in Texas herself, to today.
“Think of these girls and what they’ve done, where they’ve been at my age; I’d only been to Colorado Springs,” McDermott joked, “So they’re better than we were, and frankly they should be.”
An important figure of support and growth for the school, McDermott embodies so much of what the school stands for. She knows that it will only continue to become better in its next 100 years.
“I have great expectations for the future of the school and the future of its students, and I know Hockaday shares these expectations with me,” she said. “The school is a relic of education, and it’s furnishing a varied education for the girls of Dallas, Texas and the world. It has been so fun to be a part of it.”
– Molly Montgomery
