After her husband’s death, Bertha Dobie gave Bill Wittliff a keystone, carved with a large star, that J. Frank Dobie saved from one of the arches of the old Bee County courthouse and kept at his Paisano ranch for many years. When Bill and Sally Wittliff founded the Southwestern Writers Collection in 1986, the new Alkek Library was still on the drawing boards, and Bill was able to collaborate on the design of its Special Collections rooms. The Dobie papers the Wittliffs purchased in 1985 were the genesis and heart of the collection, and Bill asked that Dobie’s keystone be set into the stucco over the fireplace. Its rustic beauty and metaphoric significance as the central stone that ensures the stability of the arch itself make it a natural choice as the symbol for the Wittliff Collections.