The Bobbie Hargis Todd Scholarship supports SFA students who are children or spouses of officers killed in the line of duty with preference given to students pursuing a degree in elementary education.
Bobbie’s father, Nacogdoches Deputy Sheriff John Arlington Hargis, was killed while serving an arrest warrant in 1928, when Bobbie was only 18 months old. The scholarship was established by her children, Bobbie Ann Todd Anderson and Richard Todd, in memory of their mother, whose life dramatically changed after her father’s death.
“My grandmother and her five children had to do whatever they could to survive and move forward,” Anderson said. “My mom and her siblings certainly would have benefited from financial assistance like this for college.”
Fortunately, Bobbie was able to live at home with her mother a few blocks from SFA. Her older siblings managed to chip in and help pay her tuition. While attending SFA, she was a cheerleader and member of the Fideles Social Club. During her freshman year, she began dating World War II veteran Joe “Orville” Todd, and they married Feb. 22, 1948.
Employed first at the Rusk County Courthouse, it was after the birth of her first two children that Bobbie made the decision, encouraged by her husband, to return to college. She commuted daily to SFA and earned her degree in elementary education in 1957. She then taught third and fourth grade in the Henderson Independent School District for 23 years.
Texas Ranger Jim Hicks said the child or spouse of an officer killed in the line of duty can make one of two choices. “They can give up, or they can press forward. This scholarship is a tool that can help them move forward,” Hicks said.
Sabine County Sheriff Thomas Maddox, president of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, knew Bobbie and understood how hard she worked to be successful. “She also had a special way of making you feel like the most important person in the world,” he said. “She would have been very proud of this scholarship.”