Who was J. Frank Dobie?

Repeatedly compared to Robert Frost, native South Texan J. Frank Dobie was a teacher, storyteller, folklorist, historian, author, and champion of free-thinking.  Born September 26, 1888, in southern Live Oak County, southwest of the Nueces River on the family ranch of about 7,000 acres, James Frank Dobie was the oldest of six children born to Richard J. and Ella Byler Dobie.

 Dobie’s formal education began at the one-room Lagarto School.  Because his parents insisted that a college education lay in their son’s future, they sent him to Alice at age 16 to live with his maternal grandmother and her husband so he could attend high school.  After graduating high school, Dobie attended Southwestern University, where he graduated in 1910 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Literature.  In 1914, he earned his Master of Arts in literature from Columbia University.

Dobie started his career as an English teacher.  His first job was in Alpine, where he also served as principal.  After one year in the Big Bend, he returned to Southwestern to teach English and serve as secretary to that university’s president.  Then, Dobie made the move to Austin and took a position at the University of Texas, but he resigned in the spring of 1920 to manage his Uncle Jim Dobie’s ranch in LaSalle County.  He returned to UT in 1921 and at the end of two years, moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to teach for two years at then Oklahoma A&M.  Dobie couldn’t stay away long from his native state.  In 1925, he became an adjunct professor at UT, where he taught for many years.  The course at UT for which Dobie is most famous for developing is “Life and Literature of the Southwest,” a course which continues to be taught at that school.  During World War II, he even taught American history at Cambridge University in England.

During his adult years, Dobie collected books and art.  The Harry Ransom Center in Austin is home to close to 15,000 books from J. Frank Dobie’s personal library, along with his art collection.  Dobie, himself, donated them, and they are housed in the J. Frank Dobie Room at the Center.  The Schreiner University Library in Kerrville also boasts a JFD collection, containing books, periodicals, photos, audiocassettes, drawings, and more, along with volumes 1-59 of the Texas Folklore Society publications.  The Center for American History at UT contains Dobie papers dating from 1923-67, primarily documenting his activities with the Advisory Board of Texas Historians, including notes, correspondence, and other documents.  In 1988, photographer and filmmaker Bill Wittliff and wife Sally donated to then Southwest Texas State University a collection of Dobie personal items, photos of family and friends, clippings, correspondence, and other items that they had bought at an estate sale in 1985.  The Wittliffs’ donation prompted the Southwest Writers Collection at that university.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Dobie the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Because he was not well enough to travel to Washington to receive the award, his wife Bertha accepted in his honor.  Four days later, Dobie suffered a heart attack and died in his home while napping on an iron cot in an upstairs alcove adjacent to his library.  His funeral service was held in the Hogg Auditorium on the UT campus.  He is buried in the State Cemetery close to long-time friend historian Walter Prescott Webb and Big Foot Wallace, about whom he had written.  His epitaph reads, “Storyteller of the Southwest.”  Among many posthumous honors, sculptor Glenna Goodacre designed and created a bronze statue of Dobie, Webb, and naturalist Roy Bedichek, three friends who were known for their lively discussions while sitting on the same rock at Austin’s Barton Springs.

While managing the Dobie ranch near Cotulla, J. Frank Dobie became acquainted with one of the ranch hands, Santos Cortez.  Time spent listening to Cortez telling stories in the evenings awakened Dobie’s awareness of the wealth of lore in his native South Texas and the need to preserve it.  In 1921, Dobie joined the Texas Folklore Society (TFS) and began collecting and writing down legends and tales of Texas.  Upon his return from Oklahoma, Dobie took an active role in TFS, serving as its secretary-editor for twenty years.  In his position with that Society, Dobie edited an impressive collection of Texas and Mexican border lore in sixteen volumes.  Since Dobie’s tenure, the TFS has continued the annual collections of Texas folklore.

In 1929, Dobie’s own first book, A Vaquero of the Brush Country, was published, followed by Coronado’s Children in 1930.  The Literary Guild chose Dobie’s second book as its 1931 selection, a move that made Dobie a national figure.  Throughout his writing career, Dobie wrote articles, essays, and reviews, in addition to books.  He also mentored many up-and-coming writers.  His autobiography, Some Part of Myself, describes his formative years on the Live Oak County ranch, his high school years in Alice, and his adult years as a scholar, teacher, and writer.  Reading Dobie’s work, whether it is his autobiography or a book of collected tales, connects readers to the history and heritage of South Texas and the Southwest.

The July 24, 1964, double-length special issue of The Texas Observer was dedicated in its entirety to articles about J. Frank Dobie.  In his article, Lon Tinkle said, “Dobie has made literature.  His main themes are the staples of Western writing:  the enlargement of individual freedom, the celebration of life and its tragedies, the love of nature, the courage to endure, the compulsion to discover the nature of reality and report it with fidelity….  It isn’t a literature made out of other literature, but out of authentic experience.”  Dobie, himself, once said, “Great literature transcends its native land but none that I know of ignores its own soil.”  Through his storytelling, teaching, and writing, Dobie brought South Texas and the Southwest to the rest of the world while awakening in its natives an appreciation and admiration for their own heritage and lore.  On March 25, 2005, the 79th Texas Legislature honored Dobie with resolutions in both the House and Senate for “his remarkable contributions to Texas letters” and for “the legacy of [his] life and achievements,” respectively.  Indeed, Live Oak County has something to brag about in J. Frank Dobie.