Upon hearing the news that the “Grand Dame of Dallas Real Estate” had passed, KERA’s Kat Chow and Eric Aasen called up Candy to get her impression on what a loss this was for our community. An icon of entrepreneurship and a household name in North Texas, Ebby was so widely adored that her name was trending on social media yesterday. Nationally. Maybe internationally!
She was born in 1911 in a small town in Arkansas. Her father died when she was 5 years old. She moved to a farm in Kansas with her mother and stepfather.
“Ebby took that grit — I call it Midwestern grit — and she turned it into a powerhouse,” said Candy Evans, who runs a local real estate blog, Candy’s Dirt.
Evans says that even when Halliday was a kid, she was an entrepreneur. When Halliday was 8 years old, she’d ride her pony from farm to farm, selling Cloverine ointment to soothe burns and bug bites.
This taught her how to hustle, how to run a small business.
“And what she did was, she went into sales,” Evans said. “She had a lovely personality, she was a beautiful woman. … And so she sold.”
You can listen to the segment online to hear the whole story or watch some of the great interviews that took a closer look at this amazing woman.
