This Week in Texas Methodist History  February 19

Southwestern Advocate Embraces Southwestern University's Most Famous Alum, J. Frank Dobie,  February 1941

Most Texans in the 2020s have little appreciation for the esteem in which J. Frank Dobie was held in the 1930s and 1940s.   Today he may be casually dismissed by historians as a folklorist rather than an historian.  It is true that he was a stalwart of the Texas Folklore Society and contributed hundreds of articles relating to that field.  His work is also dismissed for relying too much on telling a good story rather than examining his sources rigorously.  On the other hand, he lived in the golden era of magazines and not only that it was also the golden era of regionalism.  The general public didn't care for scholarly quibbles about his work.  They devoured his every word, and those words helped shape general opinion about the Texas past, even if that view was highly mythologized.  

Less well known was Dobie's Methodist connection.   He was an alum of Southwestern University and so was Mrs. Dobie, the former Bertha McKee.    In February 1941 his blockbuster, The Longhorns, was released.  The Southwestern Christian Advocate ran a full-page ad from the Methodist Publishing House in Dallas offering the book for sale for $3.50.  In addition to Methodist publications, the Dallas office acted as a general bookstore.  Postage was included in the price.   If you have a 1941 first edition, don't get excited.  It is not a rare book.   On the other hand, if you have the 1941 slipcase edition with illustrations by Tom Lea, that's another matter.  I saw one on ABE books for $5800.00.    Lea was on the verge of even greater fame in 1941 for his paintings of soldiers in World War II.  

Because both Mr. and Mrs. Dobie were SU alums, Methodists had a special connection with them.  Today J. Frank Dobie's papers are housed at UT where he taught his famous Life and Literature of the Southwest.   Bertha's papers, though, are in the Special Collections at Southwestern University.  

I had a small contribution to that collection.  They did not marry immediately after SU.  Bertha taught English at Alexander Collegiate Institute.  One of her students was Dorcas Riddlesperger, my maternal grandmother.  During the summer vacation Dorcas and Bertha corresponded.  Those letters eventually came to me.  I donated them to SU Special Collections.  They are the earliest documents in the collection and show a caring teacher.   My paternal grandmother Ida Wilson was a classmate of Bertha and J. Frank and told me stories about knowing both of them in Georgetown.