By Randy Fiedler

On Aug. 21, 2013, the first students moved into Hallie Earle Hall, part of Baylor’s brand-new East Village Residential Community and home of the University’s Science and Health Living-Learning Center.

Since then, hundreds of Baylor students preparing for careers in health care have made Hallie Earle Hall their campus home, but some of them might not know just how special the woman was whose life and career are memorialized in the building’s name.

Hallie Earle was born near Hewitt on Sept. 27, 1880, on the small ranch south of Waco that her family had owned since before the Civil War.

Earle graduated from Baylor in 1901, one of 17 women in a class of 17. She then completed a master of science degree at Baylor in 1902, and her talent was honored by having her master’s thesis placed in the cornerstone of the new Carroll Science Building.

After three years spent teaching school in Gainesville, Earle entered Baylor University Medical School in Dallas as the only woman in her class. When she graduated with an MD degree in 1907, she set a record for the highest grade point average ever posted to that date, a distinction that stood for many years.

Earle specialized in gynecology, and did postgraduate work in Chicago and New Orleans in addition to completing an internship at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital.

Coming back to Central Texas in 1908, Earle first practiced medicine at Torbett Hospital in Marlin, near Waco. In 1915 she moved to Waco and opened a medical office, becoming the city’s first licensed female physician, Her practiced centered on women, and she assisted with medical examinations of coeds in Baylor’s physical education program.

Earle never married and practiced medicine in Waco for 33 years, retiring in 1948 to move back to the family ranch.

But medicine was just one of two fields in which Earle can be considered a pioneer –– the other involved being a weather observer for almost half a century.

Earle’s father, Isham Earle, had begun keeping weather observation records on his farm in 1879. After he retired in 1916, Hallie continued making weather observations and keeping detailed records, and for years she was the only weather observer in Central Texas. In 1960, the United States Weather Bureau presented Earle with the John Campanius Holm Award in recognition of her outstanding work.

Earle died on Nov. 1, 1963, and is buried in Waco’s historic Oakwood Cemetery. In 1996, the Texas Historical Commission placed a marker on her grave commemorating her accomplishments.