Dorothy Evans Mayes

Dorothy Evans Mayes (1898 – 1994), wife of Wendell Wise Mayes, was a noted Texas artist. She was born to Ewing Oliphant Evans and Maude Shelley Evans in 1898 in Hondo, Mexico where her father was a physician with the Mexican International Railroad. She grew up in San Antonio where she went to high school and then attended the College of Industrial Arts, now called Texas Woman’s University. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and was married to Wendell Wise Mayes in 1922 in San Antonio. They moved to Brownwood in 1932 and purchased the Brownwood Banner newspaper.
Dorothy was a source of support and encouragement to her husband, who established a major statewide broadcast group beginning in 1941. She was active in several Brownwood service organizations and the Episcopal Church. She served as a regent of the Mary Garland Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution.

Her interest in art began at about the age of ten when her mother hired an art teacher to come to their home in San Antonio. This interest in art remained with her the rest of her life. During her young adulthood, she studied under several instructors, and she began to paint in earnest in the 1960s. The gallery of the Howard Payne University Department of Art is named in memory of Wendell and Dorothy Mayes.

Dorothy Mayes died March 3, 1994, at the age of 95. In addition to her children, Wendell Mayes, Jr. and Jane Ellen Jamar, she was survived by seven grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.