A Loving Tribute To Ebby Halliday Acers For Teaching Gratitude

At 3 p.m. on Thursday, a multitude of people will convene at Park Cities Baptist Church to celebrate Ebby Halliday Acers’ 104 years of life. Many will pay homage to the great lady who influenced and befriended so many, both professionally and personally. MySweetCharity asked one of Dallas’ premier wordsmiths, Don Glendenning, to describe his memories of Ebby. From his submission below, it is obvious that the loss of his dear friend inspired an extremely touching and “grateful” tribute. For your consideration —

Gratitude brought me to Ebby Halliday Acers.

It was 1999 at the Thanks-Giving Square Foundation that she was leading as the first woman president, yet another in an innumerable line of “firsts” for a woman who never saw barriers, only opportunities. Introduced by a mutual great friend, Steve Durham, for my assistance with a challenging issue of the moment for the charity, it was “admiration and adoration at first sight” for me, although gracious and forgiving as she surely was with everyone, most certainly including me, within minutes of our acquaintanceship she was firmly holding me in her gaze, quietly controlling the room, and asserting:  “You’re repeating yourself.” And I was — chewing on the uncomfortable gristle of an awkward matter that she, inexorably, already had deduced to its practical, inevitable conclusion.

And so began, however improbably, one of the central friendships of my life.

“Ebby.” Two distinctive syllables of a charmingly anachronistic name . . . a life of 104 years is apt to produce at least a few anachronisms . . . a single name that has communicated for decades to a vast metropolitan area a singular identity. And more than an identity:  an ideal . . . the concept that a person of good will, integrity, insight and industry can achieve greatness no matter how modest his or her beginnings, and in the personification of “Ebby,” to do so through a living embodiment of the Golden Rule, always putting the wellbeing of others first, and coming to do well only after, and as a by-product of, doing good.

In her professional life, she was “Ebby Halliday” — and when she used her professional last name, with a jubilant but understated intonation, it always made me think of the combination of “holiday” and “hallelujah.” Just hearing the name has always made me smile. But in her personal and philanthropic life, she was “Ebby Halliday Acers,” her married name, invoking the unquestioned love of her life and partner in all great endeavors, Maurice Acers. This was the nuance of her identity that I relished above all others. While Maurice predeceased his bride by many years, theirs was a partnership that she lived throughout her life, and to hear her speak of Maurice was to experience the embodiment of an exceptional love, true soul mates that completed and enhanced one another, and that Ebby kept alive in spirit and in fact for the more than two decades by which she survived him.

And then, there was her ukulele, her inimitable wit, her singularly confident if not entirely pitch-perfect singing voice, and her consummate showmanship. A number of years ago, Ebby did me the enormous honor of serving as an honorary chair for a fundraiser of which I was the object, and then capped it off by pulling out her ukulele and intoning her trademark “we honor an honorable Texan . . .” which always ended, many hearty ballroom-gasping laughs later, with “and remember the Alamo.” I could never repay the favor, but I tried, relying upon the notions of self-abasement and humiliation as fall-back coinage when the gold of actual talent is not available. In introducing Ebby as the featured speaker for a United Way Tocqueville luncheon a few years later (and remember that Ebby, together with Ruth Sharp Altshuler and Caroline Rose Hunt, were, together, the embodiment of Tocqueville), with the requisite support of the (gratefully, genuinely talented) “Levee Singers” beloved by Ebby and so many other Dallasites (and who loved Ebby enough to risk their reputations playing as my back-up band and singers), I sang my own version of that much-overlooked-in-my-view Broadway tune from decades ago “Big D,” converted to “Big E” — with the refrain: “Big E, my oh yes; Big E, little b, little b, y; Big E, little b, little b, y; Big E, little b, little b, y — YES!”  Okay, you had to be there . . . many of you were . . . and, well, maybe even being there wasn’t nearly enough. But I think Ebby genuinely relished my pitiable effort to repay her, in some small, talentless measure, in kind. Or maybe she was just fascinated, as so many professed to be, that I could turn that exceedingly bright red and still not require hospitalization.

“The Ebby Show” had genuinely universal appeal. And I had the privilege of witnessing an extraordinary example of just how universal that appeal truly was. In 2005, Ebby was one of the recipients of the Horatio Alger Award, presented annually in a massive Washington, D.C. ballroom with fabulous fanfare. She was in the company of billionaires, Fortune 500 CEO’s and at least one astronaut. And to the masses of those in attendance, Ebby was the relative “unknown.” My wife Carol [Glendenning] and I were seated at a table of guests assembled from across the country, there to honor their friends whom they clearly considered “national household names.” No one had heard of Ebby, and had little interest in our telling them about her. We felt like minor pariahs, that is, until Ebby took the stage, and then even we turned into minor rock stars in our corner of the ballroom, just for being her acquaintances. Our mutual friend Steve Durham again was center-stage as Ebby’s introducer. And then Ebby, whose presence alone had captured the spirit of the vast room, set her notes aside and just “talked.” She had everyone’s total, complete, and rapt attention. She spoke wildly in excess of her “allotted” time, but not one person in the room longed for anything but for her to just keep talking, to keep sharing her magnificent life perspectives, her laughter, her joy, her gratitude. I’m a Dallasite, so I have witnessed and participated in countless sincere (okay, and quite a few perfunctory) standing ovations. But I have experienced one and only one “Leaping Ovation,” — and that is precisely what Ebby received when she closed her glowing remarks. I felt genuinely sorry for the poor astronaut who had to receive his award after Ebby left the stage . . . I’m almost certain that even he was wishing that Ebby was still holding forth, as she was all anyone could think of, as she had so consummately filled, elevated and elated every heart in the room.

Yes, gratitude brought me to Ebby, and gratitude will continue to be the bond that will forever bind me to her, as I join countless others in celebration of, and appreciation for, a life that has so immeasurably enriched the lives of so many, and our community as a whole.