Hazel Hanback papers

Hazel Smallwood Hanback (1918-) is a life-long Foggy Bottom neighborhood resident, graduate of The George Washington University and served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1979-1996. She worked for the federal government for most of her career, and was awarded the Department of Defense Certificate of Merit for by President Johnson in 1965. She was also a recipient of the Department of the Navy Career Achievement Award.

Hazel Hanback was born September 19, 1918 in Sibley hospital in Washington, D.C. Shortly after her birth her parents moved to a house at 2159 New York Avenue, which is now the locale of the State Department. After graduating from Central High School, Mrs. Hanback enrolled at GW, earning an A.B. degree in 1940. Following graduation, she began a career in government, first as a receptionist for Secretary of State Cordell Hull. She followed that with a stint at the War Production Board learning to write procedure manuals. One of her works, the Department of Defense Professional Manual, is still in existence.

Before transferring to the Department of Defense in 1949 Mrs. Hanback served as a federal housing expediter. It was a job fraught with politics and controversy. She visited 425 cities closing up rent offices. Of her long government service, Hanback said in a 1997 interview, "I stayed in the government because I thought it was important. If I found myself in a job I didn't like too much, I made it interesting to me."

In 1979 she was elected to the GW Board of Trustees, at which time she was director of the Documentation Division of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. She was involved in many university and neighborhood organizations: a member of the General Alumni Association's Governing Board for many year beginning in 1972; president and board chairman of the University Club; past president of the West End Citizen's Association; and President of the Columbian Women, an association that raises scholarship monies for women students. In 1972 she won an alumni service award.

Mrs. Hanback married Bill Hanback, a fellow GW graduate (A.B., 1932, LL.B., 1934), a lawyer and later judge, whom she had know since she was twelve years old, on September 26, 1942.

Note also that two oral histories were done with Mrs. Hanback in 1995 and 1996, and can be found in MS0371, the Oral History Collection.

N.B. This history note was written in 2005