Editor’s Note: As we gear up to celebrate 60 years of this tradition with you, let’s take a moment to remember some of the best of our previous Distinguished Alumni with Hall of Fame: Rewind. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about our outstanding alumni honorees from the past who shape the ranks of honorees of the future. Diane Dillard was named an Outstanding Young Alumna in 1994 and received the W. R. White Meritorious Service Award in 2007. Dillard is honored through her legal career, commitment to service, and role as the Alumni Association president in 1999. Click here to watch interviews and speeches from previous Hall of Fame events, or click here to learn more about this year’s event and honorees.
This article was first published in the Winter 1999 issue of The Baylor Line.
Diane Dillard gives new meaning to the phrase “a full life.” During the interview for this story, a news team arrived in her office to tape her profile as one of Houston’s “1998 Women on the Move” award winners. Her exemplary legal ability receives the highest ratings, and her teaching skills are in demand for both legal education seminars and the girls’ missions group at her church. In addition, this complex woman is an avid fan of both Jerry Jeff Walker and Vincent Van Gogh.
With all her interests and responsibilities, Dillard’s commitment to lead the Baylor Alumni Association as its president for 1999 may seem extreme — even crazy. But, to her mind, it’s a way of returning a favor. “Baylor has given me so much over the years — a scholarship, an academic education, and a way to be successful in the business world,” she explained.
She has vivid memories of sitting in Dr. Jim Vardaman’s history class when “the light bulb went on,” as she described it. “I realized that history’s not regurgitating facts, but learning how to think,” she said. She credits Baylor professors with helping her do just that. The personal attention and the faculty’s concern about her development as a person were vitally significant. “This personal attentiveness to students also translates into our law school,” Dillard said. “Professors actually know students’ names, and they remember them twenty years later.”
Big Baylor Family
Dillard’s emotional bonds with the alumni association may be genetic in origin. The Dillards are a “First Family” of Baylor. Her father, Jack H. Dillard, and three of his siblings went to Baylor. Jack met her mother, Dorothy, on campus, and he later became the first executive director of the alumni association. But the web of Baylor connections extends even further. Her aunt and uncle gave significantly to the construction of the Hughes-Dillard Alumni Center in the 1970s, and Diane Dillard’s two brothers, Jack K. and Donald, and her husband, Andrew Hanen, attended Baylor.
When it came time to survey prospective colleges, Dillard was recruited by Wellesley and Bryn Mawr. Being interested in both, she went to have a look. But, as she vividly remembers, her father responded, “Go anywhere you would like. I’ll pay for Baylor.”
Dillard also inherited her love for new challenges from her parents. Her father, who died in 1988, was inspirational in her life. He worked on a newspaper and served as an FBI agent, executive director of the alumni association, senator’s assistant, and a lawyer. When he entered Baylor’s School of Law at age forty-nine, Dillard was a seventh- grader. She remembers hearing him discuss some tests he had just taken and thinking, “This is fascinating. This is what I want to do.”
Daring Spirit
After graduating from the Baylor School of Law in 1979, Diane Dillard practiced law for eight years in Houston before co-founding a law firm in 1987. Dillard & Ray was the first law firm in Houston owned by women. When Elizabeth Ray resigned in 1993, the firm reorganized to become the Dillard Law Firm.
“Everything was a challenge,” Dillard said of those early years. “We wanted to run a firm the way we thought a firm should be run. So we held our noses and jumped in. It was an incredible learning experience.” She remains grateful for good clients who had extreme faith in their services and were willing to work with a smaller firm.
Dillard’s sense of humor and depth of knowledge make her a popular speaker for Texas’ annual continuing legal education system. Her special emphasis is on ethics and professional behavior, a topic in which she became interested when ethics rules changed in 1980. The subject of ethics connected with every aspect of her life and provided her with the challenge of addressing a topic that could be dry from an interesting angle.
Trials and Rewards
In 1986, Dillard went through the devastating experience of losing her
“It’s very important that working men and women volunteer to work with children. It’s not acceptable to say, ‘I’m too busy.’”
brother-in-law to AIDS. “Fortunately he had family in Houston who could help. But many of the people we saw at the hospital had no help with such necessities as making wills or funeral arrangements,” she said.
She and her husband, Andrew Hanen, realized they could teach willing lawyers to meet such legal needs. “Lawyers whose specialties were not in the areas needed could get training to help. Their memories could be refreshed,” she explained.
At the time, Hanen was president of the Houston Young Lawyers Association (HYLA). Together, they founded the HYLA AIDS Committee in the late 1 980s to provide pro bono legal services to indigent people with AIDS, and Dillard chaired the committee from 1991 to 1992.
Her law firm agreed to manage intake services for the committee, responding to phone requests, but the work quickly outgrew Dillard’s office. Fortunately, the committee received grant money to meet the needs full-time. “We were proud that this got off the ground so quickly,” she explained. The Houston Bar Association later took on this work as one of its committees.
This teamwork illustrates the broader partnership that Dillard and her husband enjoy. They met at law school and married in 1980. “He encouraged me to do more than I thought I could do,” she said. A litigation partner in the Houston firm of Hanen, Alexander, Johnson & Spalding, Hanen is also president-elect of the Houston Bar Association and coordinated its participation in last year’s Habitat for Humanity work week in Houston.
Though Dillard can handle the intricate details of commercial real estate law and explain complicated policies in understandable terms, “the hardest thing I do is being a mom,” she confessed. Her “precocious, extremely delightful” seven-year-old daughter, Kelly, is already preparing for a career as a political leader, a doctor, or — at least — a Baylor cheerleader. She’s already on her fourth BU cheerleader outfit, Dillard said, so “the brainwashing is almost complete.”
Far from Stereotypical
Dillard went to Baylor knowing she wanted to be a lawyer at a time when few women were doing so. She predicts that her old friends wouldn’t be surprised to learn of her legal career, but she imagines they would be “bowled over” to hear that she teaches young children. Each Wednesday night she leads first- and second-grade girls in the missions program at South Main Baptist Church. “While I’m still career-oriented, I’ve learned that a career isn’t the most important thing for a meaningful life,” she said.
“It’s very important that working men and women volunteer to work with children. It’s not acceptable to say, ‘I’m too busy,’” she said. Dillard has also been a pro bono legal advisor and a volunteer with the Sunshine Kids Foundation in Houston, a nonprofit group helping children with cancer.
One might guess that, with all of her commitments, Dillard must have a wealth of time management secrets to share. Or maybe not. “I am tired,” she said with a laugh. But owning her own business does give her flexibility for family time and volunteer work. And trips to the Colorado mountains are “a slice of heaven” that keep her renewed, she said. “You only have one life,” she reflected, offering an explanation for the fullness of hers.
These days her dreams move beyond the goals she planned in her student days. She thinks about writing, teaching, or practicing law in a different setting “to keep the creative juices flowing.”
One thing’s for sure — Dillard looks forward to being part of reaching into the future as alumni president. “With the gift of the new building, we want to become more inclusive,” she said. “We want the alumni association to grow and include younger members.” No doubt this “Woman on the Move” will find success quickly coming into view during the year to come.
