Polly Sowell
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Polly Sowell was born on November 3, 1927 in Lynchburg, Virginia. She grew up in Houston, Texas but returned to Virginia for college and graduated from Sweetbriar College. She married and moved to McAllen in 1949 where she was active as a volunteer in civic affairs and politics. She served on the library board, was president of the Junior Service League, and founder of the Valley Music Festival and the Basic Education Council. In 1960, she was elected to the State Republican Executive Committee, and in 1972 she was elected Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. President Nixon appointed her to the Inter-American Commission for Women, and she represented the United States at the organization's conference in Bogota, Columbia.
In 1979, she moved to Austin and started her career. She became Director of the Governor's Office for Volunteer Services, worked in appointments, and served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Governor Bill Clements. She helped found and served as President and Executive Director of the Texas Women's Alliance, a group of independent conservative women leaders. They led trade missions to Spain, Japan and Switzerland, and published reports on the Equal Rights Amendment, economic growth and venture capitalism, higher education, trucking deregulation, and other current issues. She founded and directed Texas Works Together, a program that provided and trained mentors for welfare mothers in twenty-two Texas cities.
President George Herbert Walker Bush appointed her to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, and in 1990 She became executive director of the Texas Department on Ageing. She was Appointments Manager for Governor George W. Bush from 1995 - 2000 and Appointments Manager for Governor Rick Perry from 2001 - 2005. After she retired, she served a six-year term on the Texas Commission on the Arts, which expired in August of 2011, and then served an unexpired term on the Humanities Texas Board.
Polly moved to The Woodlands in 2013 to be closer to her daughter, Susan. The family thanks Terry Baker for her great care of Polly over the last four years of her life. Polly is preceded in death by her parents, Wiley and Maury Rollins and her brother Wiley "Jack" Rollins. She is survived by her daughter Susan. In lieu of flowers, Polly asked that donations be made to the George and Barbara Bush Foundation or the charity of your choice.