Bar None History

In 1981, as Chair-Elect of the Dallas Bar Association Minority Participation Committee, Larry Maxwell and Darrell Jordan, DBA President-Elect, requested that the Dallas Bar Foundation in conjunction with the Dallas Bar Association fund a full tuition, three year scholarship to a qualified minority student at Southern Methodist University School of Law. Judge Sarah T. Hughes made the motion and the diversity scholarship was founded. In honor of Judge Hughes’s outstanding support and monetary contributions to the DBF, the minority scholarship was named in her honor. The 1981 commitment to fund $12,500 for one student’s first year tuition at SMU School of Law was the first grant awarded by the DBF.

In 1982, the Hoblitzelle awarded $30,000 for the funding of the Sarah T. Hughes Diversity Fellowship Fund. The King Foundation awarded a $5,000 grant and DBA solicitations netted $7,800. For the next few years attempts to endow the Sarah T. Hughes Diversity Fellowship fell short. In 1985, Tom Timmons, Chair of the DBA Entertainment Committee, suggested a benefit talent show to raise money for the scholarship fund to supplement grant commitments from the Dresser Foundation and the Communities Foundation of Texas. The first musical, variety show was performed in the spring of 1986 at Union Station.

From 1981 – 2000, one Hughes Scholar was chosen each year. Beginning in 2001 under the leadership of Ken Mighell, students who received the Hughes Scholarship no longer lost their previously awarded Dean’s Scholarship.  By awarding the Hughes Scholarship in addition to previously awarded Dean’s Scholarships, the DBF has been able to increase the number of Hughes Scholars awarded each fall. Including the entering class of 2005, there are a total of 34 Hughes Scholars.

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Bar None which was founded in 1986, the Dallas Bar Association Production company set a goal of $1,000,000 net revenue raised for the Sarah T. Hughes Diversity Scholarships since their first show in 1986.  Under the fundraising leadership at Past DBA Presidents Ken Mighell and Mark Shank, the goal was reached and surpassed.

Martha Hardwick Hofmeister has directed every show since the first. Rhonda Hunter has performed and choreographed every show since 1986. Tom Mighell began producing the show in 1996.

In 2000, the DBF awarded a grant of $15,000 to produce the Bar None Singers CD “How Could You Believe Me? Proceeds from the sale of the CD were contributed to the Sarah T. Hughes Scholarship as were proceeds from the sale of Darwin Payne’s biography Indomitable Sarah: The Life of Judge Sarah T. Hughes during Bar None XIX.