During World War II, he served in the Air Force and directed the Aviation Psychology Program, helping to establish the selection process for that branch of the military.
This enterprise would help to embolden the deinstitutionalization movement and put emphasis on community care for the mentally ill. Based in part on his experience during World War II of helping to establish the selection process for the United States Air Force, he was appointed the first director of selection for the Peace Corps by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
[3] Also in 1961 Hobbs initiated an 8-year pilot project to address the need for effective and affordable mental health programs for children.
Project Re-ED, for the re-education of emotionally disturbed children, was funded by a National Institutes of Health grant involving residential programs at the Cumberland House in Nashville, Tennessee, and the Wright School in Durham, North Carolina.
The report the commission presented would lead to the conception of child advocacy and early bills such as an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act made to include the handicapped, disadvantaged, and mentally ill youth.
In 1972, Edward Zigler, director of the Office of Child Development, and Elliot Richardson, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, organized a major effort to standardize and disseminate appropriate diagnostic procedures for classifying and categorizing children with special needs.
[8] The Nicholas Hobbs Society at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center raises money for research into developmental disabilities.