Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2020

WilliamCarson “Nemo” Herrera (1900–1984) Class of 1922 William Carson “Nemo” Herrera was a dedicated athlete and remarkable coach who received numerous accolades for his 43 years of work coaching high-school, semiprofessional, and Minor League teams. His long sports career began at age 12 while playing as a shortstop for the Newsboys team. In 1918, he was recruited by famous coach Peter Willis Cawthon to play both basketball and baseball at Southwestern University, where Herrera was also a private in the Student Army Training Corps and a member of Phi Delta Theta. From 1923 to 1970, Herrera coached baseball, basketball, and football at schools around the state, leading his teams to multiple district and state championships. His career garnered him induction into the Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor (1967), the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame (1969), the El Paso Baseball Hall of Fame (1988), the Southwestern University Athletic Hall of Fame (1995), the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame (1997), the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame (1999), and the San Antonio ISD Athletics Hall of Fame (2016). The gymnasium at Lanier High School, the baseball stadium at Bowie High School, the youth center at Kelly Air Force Base, an elementary school in El Paso, and several scholarship funds in both San Antonio and El Paso are all named in his honor. Abbie Graham (1889–1972) Class of 1910 Abbie Graham was a successful American nonfiction author whose works detailed topics of spirituality, race relations, girls’ camps, travel, and women’s suffrage. She was also the secretary for the Young Women’s Christian Association’s (YWCA) southwestern field, which covered Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Graham graduated from Southwestern University in 1910 with a bachelor of arts in English. She was the president of SU’s student association. In 1921, she moved to New York and began directing YWCA camps across the greater New York state area. Eleven of Graham’s books were published from 1923 to 1942 by the Women’s Press, in New York. Graham’s books provided unique information regarding the struggles of women in America and those who struggled to redefine their rights. Currently, several of her books are held by the Library of Congress of the United States. J. Frank Dobie (1888–1964) Class of 1910 James Frank Dobie, a celebrated American folklorist and professor, found his lifelong love for literature at Southwestern University. After graduation, he briefly became a journalist writing for San Antonio and Galveston newspapers before beginning a lifelong teaching career that would eventually include faculty positions at Southwestern, the University of Texas at Austin, and Oklahoma A&M, where he was not only chair of the English department but was the first faculty member to be promoted to full professor without a doctoral degree. Dobie managed his uncle’s ranch in South Texas, Rancho de los Olmos. There, he fell in love with the richness of life on the range and the essence of the Texan traditions that would become the core of his writing. Dobie’s career would also take him abroad, to Cambridge, where he taught American literature for a year during World War II. After the war, he taught in Austria and Germany as well, later documenting his experiences in his book A Texan in England . Teaching abroad broadened Dobie’s perspective of the world and made him a strong advocate against political, social, and religious restrictions on the freedom of individuals. On September 14, 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Photographs and artifacts provided by Southwestern Special Collections. 31 SOUTHWESTERN