By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Coordinator
Vivian Anderson Castleberry, one of Athens’ brightest daughters, passed away on Wednesday, October 4, 2017, at the age of 95. She led what she herself called “an extraordinary life.” Castleberry was a trailblazing Dallas journalist, author, social justice activist, champion of women, friend to both the powerful and downtrodden, and devoted wife and mother.
She was born Vivian Lou Anderson in 1922 in Lindale, Texas. In 1932, her parents packed up and moved their three children and six jersey cows to a small farm about a mile from the current Athens High School. She called that move the best thing that ever happened to her. Athens schools were excellent, she said, and the teachers “remarkably fine.”
Castleberry’s mother emphasized education during a time many people thought too much school for a girl was a waste. Her father was a veteran of World War I. Castleberry referred often to her father saying at the dinner table, “There are always better ways of solving human problems than by killing each other.”
Throughout high school, Castleberry took one extracurricular activity after another. Her senior year, she was president of the student council, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper and member of a debate team that won third place in state. She had plenty of friends, but did not date — not even Curtis Castleberry, the classmate she would marry years later, and who prophetically signed her yearbook “be seein’ ya.” They would later fall in love, appropriately enough, through letters exchanged as he served as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II.
Vivian Castleberry (still Anderson at the time) graduated as valedictorian from Athens High School in 1940 and attended Southern Methodist University on an academic scholarship. She became an editor at SMU’s student newspaper after leading a successful vote-in campaign to overturn the school’s no-women-journalist edict.
After graduating, she went to work for a petroleum engineering magazine, and in 1946 married Curtis Castleberry. Her husband enrolled at Texas A&M, where she became one of the first female editors of the university’s student newspaper. They eventually made their way back to Dallas, and in the mid-1950s, Vivian Castleberry went to work for the Dallas Times Herald as women’s home editor. Over her 28-year tenure, she drastically expanded and improved the section, widening its scope to topics previously untouched.
“I didn’t want to write about things; I wanted to write about people,” she said. “I knew women were interested in more than just fashion or cooking or what was happening at the country club. And I was right.”
Castleberry was the first journalist in the South to write about breast cancer, and was on the frontlines of covering many other topics formally considered taboo, such as domestic violence, child abuse, and obstacles facing disabled individuals. Several years into her time at the Herald, Castleberry was appointed as the first female member of the newspaper’s editorial board. She recalled taking a long walk with her husband the day before her first board meeting and confessing to him she felt she might not be up to the task.
“The next day when I got home, Curtis asked me how it went,” she recalled. “I told him, ‘You won’t believe this, but they spent the first half-hour of the meeting just talking about the Cowboys’ game.’ … I didn’t doubt my ability after that.”
Curtis Castleberry died in 2013 after 67 years of marriage. Vivian Castleberry called her husband “the most liberated man in America,” allowing her to continue her journalism career — at time there was no such thing as maternity leave — as they also partnered in raising five daughters.
Castleberry left the Times Herald in 1984 after 28 years, having helped revolutionized how newspapers covered women’s issues. Ten days after retirement from the Herald, she traveled to Russia as part of a peace initiative. The trip would prove to be life changing, and out of it came several more trips and her founding of Peacemakers Incorporated, an organization dedicated to empowering peacemakers, locally and globally, through education, communication and action.
In 2016, Castleberry was inducted into the inaugural class of the Athens Hornet Hall of Fame. She authored several books, is the namesake of the University of North Texas Castleberry Peace Institute, held a doctor of humane letters from SMU, was inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1984, was featured in a Texas Trailblazer documentary broadcast on KERA, and selected by “Women’s eNews” as one of the “21 leaders of the 21st Century.” KERA TV will re-air the Trailblazer documentary on Sunday, Oct. 15, at 6 p.m. and Friday, Oct. 27, at 7:30 p.m.
Castleberry is survived by daughters Catherine Tracy of Peachtree, Ga.; Carol Tate of Omaha, Neb.; Chanda Robertson of Clifton; Keeta Rupp of Forney; and Kim Saucedo of Rowlett; 14 grandchildren; and 27 great-grandchildren.
Memorials may be made to Peacemakers Inc., the North Texas Food Bank or a charity of choice.