Mary Jane Roach Masters Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

University of Illinois at Springfield
Norris L Brookens Library
Archives/Special Collections
Mary Jane Roach Masters Memoir
M393.1. Masters, Mary Jane Roach #1 (1909-2002)
Interview and memoir
1 tape, 79 mins., 26 pp.
ADLAI E. STEVENSON II
Masters discusses Adlai Stevenson II: his problems and achievements, the 1952 and 1956
campaigns, and social and political life at the Governor's Mansion. Also discusses her
interest and involvement in the League of Women Voters and Democratic affairs.
Interview by Stephen Bean, 1975
OPEN
See collateral file: interviewer's notes, photographs, and articles about Stevenson
volunteers, governor's mansion, and his presidential campaign.
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
One University Plaza, MS BRK 140
Springfield IL 62703-5407
© 1975, University of Illinois Board of Trustees

THE MEMOIRS OF
MARY JANE ROACH MASTERS
Wife of Dr. Thomas Davis Masters
COPYRIGHT O 1995
SIU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE PEARSON MUSEUM
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT SPRINGFIELD
All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the SIU School of Medicine Pearson Museum or the Universtiy of Illinois at Springfield, Illinois 62708.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Assignment of Rights
............................................... i
Photograph from BIBLIOPHILES newspaper clipping Sunday, October 1, 1995. . ii
Journal-Register. Springfield, Illinoi
Curriculum Vitae of Mary Jane Roach Master. ........................... iv
Newspaper clipping from "Dr. Masters' Life and Work". .................. .vii
Preface .........................................................
Catalogueindex .................................................. ix
Memoir ......................................................pp
s1-52
...
vl11

Mary Jane Roach Masters
Born: May 13, 1909 to Leonard V. and Ruth Hunter Roach in St. Louis, Missouri.
1926: Graduated from Mary Institute Preparatory Day School, St. Louis, Missouri.
1930: A.B. in Literature from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
1931: M.A. in English and French from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Prize in Drama.
1931-1938: Taught English at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
1938-40: Fashion Business, New York City.
1940: Married Dr. Thomas D. Masters 11 of Springfield, Illinois. Moved to Springfield.
1941: Worked in BUNDLES FOR BRITAIN with Mrs. Frank Evans.
1941- 1943: President, Springfield League of Women Voters.
1943: Chairman, March of Dimes in Springfield. (Infantile Paralysis)
1943-1950: Leader of Great Books group at Lincoln Library.
1945-1946: President, Springfield Art Association.
1947-1948: Board of Child and Family Services.
1948-1950: Board of Lincoln Library.
1948-1985: Member of Progress Circle of King's Daughters
1948- 1950: Co-Founder of Springfield Municipal Opera
1948: Worked for Election of Adlai E. Stevenson as Governor of Illinois.
1952: Co-Chair of Springfield Volunteers for Stevenson for President.
1956: Downstate Co-Chair of lllinois Volunteers for Stevenson for President.
1957: Co-Founder of Town Hall Lecture Series.
1960: Board of Salvation Army.

1962-1970: Taught English at Springfield College in Illinois.
1967-1973: Appointed by Governor Otto Kerner to newly-founded Board of Regents.
1968: Co-Founder of Sangamon State University via Board of Regents.
1978: B.A. in Creative Arts at Sangamon State University.
1978-1985: Sangamon State Foundation. President, 1978-1981.

VITA for Mary Jane Roach Masters
1909 - Born in St. Louis.
Daughter of Leonard V. Roach and Ruth Hunter Roach
1926 - Graduate of MARY INSTITUTE in S. Louis.
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY in St. Louis, Missouri.
1930 - B.A.
1931 - M.A. Major in English, minor in French
Prize for Drama ( Little Theatre work in 30's)
1931 - 1938 Taught W.W. in Department of English. (P.G. work)
1934 - 1938 Conducted summer tours in Europe for AMERICAN EXPRESS Co.
1938 - 1940 Worked in Fashion Business in New York City.
1940 - Mamed Dr. Thomas D. Masters IT of Springfield, Illinois.
1941 - Began painting regularly at the Springfield Art Association.
1942 - Wrote syndicated medical column for NEA with T. D. Masters. (Still do)
1942 - 1944 President of Springfield League of Women Voters.
Served on Board of LWV.
1948 - 1955 Leader, GREAT BOOKS GROUP at Lincoln Library.
President, Friends of Library
Member, Board of Lincoln Library
1949 - One of 5 founders of Springfield Municipal Opera. ( Still on Controlling Board)
ADLAI E. STEVENSON:
1948 - Campaigned to elect Stevenson for Governor.
1952 - Chairman of VOLUNTERS FOR STEVENSON in Springfield.
1953 - 1958 54th Precinct Committeeman - Democratic.
1956 - State Co-Chairman with Dr. Karl Meyers of Volunteers for Stevenson.
1957 - One of 3 Founders of TOWN HALL Lecture Series. ( ran for 15 years)
1962 - 1970 Taught English at Springfield College in Illinois. (Rhetoric and Literature)
1967 - 1973 Member of original BOARD OF REGENTS of the STATE OF ILLINOIS.
1969 - Founding of the SANGAMON STATE UNIVERSITY.
As a student here, I have taken 3 literature courses from:
Dr. Norman Hinton : Viking Literature, Chaucer, Linguistics.
3 History of Art courses from:
Nina Kasanof : 20th Century Art.
Two PAC: Political Satire and the Cartoon & 19th Century Art and Society.
1 History course from:
Chris Breiseth: Contemporary History. (Now)

PREFACE
This manuscript is the product of tape-recorded interviews with Mary Jane Masters conducted by
Eugenia Eberle for the archives of the SIU School of Medicine Pearson Museum and the
University of Illinois at Springfield.
Mary Jane Roach Masters was born May 13, 1909 in St. Louis, Missouri. She graduated from
Mary's Institute where she was editor of her school magazine, The Chronical. She won a writing
competition and was awarded the Melville Wilkinson Scholarship to four years at Washington
University where she received her B.A. and M.A. in English and French. A Drama student, she
was active in Little Theater until her late twenties. For five years she took summer tours to France
for the American Express Co. and taught English at Washington University for seven years after a
brief stint in NYC with the fashion industry. She elaborates on her many civic, political, and
literary activities in Springfield. She taught English at Springfield College for seven years in the
'60's. In 1967 she was appointed by Governor Otto Kerner to the initial Board of Regents and has
been credited for giving the University the name "Sangamon". She received a second B.A. in
Creative Arts at Sangamon State University. A local artist, she is best known for her watercolors
and collages.
Mrs. Masters was the wife of the late Dr. Thomas Masters, Internist, specializing in Diabetes with
the SIU School of Medicine. This memoir will be added.to her husbands "Collection and
Memorabilia" which she presented to the Pearson Museum in the Spring of 1995.
Eugenia Eberle was raised in Haverford, Pennsylvania and matriculated with an athletic
scholarship at the Women's College of the University of Virginia. She earned her BA degree in
History and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Public History with emphasis on Oral
History at UIS. This activity has earned her two awards from the Illinois State Historical Society.
She gained experience as a journalist writing for the Arab News and gathered Folk and Fairy
Tales for translations into English while living for six years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with her
husband, Professor of Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery at SIU School of Medicine. She has been
active in a broad range of civic activities both in San Francisco and Albuqureque, where she
served on museum boards, fund raising, and in the development of the Audubon Canyon Ranch,
an environmental enclave in Marin County. She is married and the mother of four children.
Readers of this oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a transcript of the spoken word
and that the interviewer, narrator, and editor sought to preserve the informal conversational style
that is inherent in such historical sources. The Pearson Museum and the University of Illinois,
Springfield are not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for views expressed
therein; these are for the reader to judge.
The manuscript may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be reproduced in whole or in
part by any means, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the archives of the
The SIU School of Medicine Pearson Museum or The University of Illinois at Springfield.

CATALOGUE
Masters, Mary Jane Roach ( 1909- 1
Born and raised in St. Louis. Graduated from Mary's Institute and Washington University where
she recieved a B.A. and M.A. in English and French. Mrs. Masters taught English at Washington
University. She married internist, Dr. Thomas Davis Masters in 1940 and moved to Springfield.
She has been an active participant and leader in a variety of civic, political, and educational affairs
during the past fifty years in Springfield. She was appointed by Governor Otto Kerner to the
initial Board of Regents for the Sangamon State University. She received a second B.A. in
Creative Arts at Sangamon State University. She is a local artist best known for her watercolors
and collages.
Project: Mary Jane Masters Memoir
Interviewed by Eugenia Eberle
Open: Open
September 7, October 20, 1995
Length: 1 112 hours
52 pages

September 7, October 20, 1995. Interview with Mary Jane Masters, wife of Dr. Thomas Davis
Masters, Jr., in her home at 12 Washington Place, Springfield, Illinois, 97904.
Interviewer: Eugenia Eberle
Q. Mary Jane, where were you born?
A. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
Q. When were you born?
A. 1909, May the 13th.
Q. What was your full name?
A. Mary Jane Roach.
Q. Were you named after any one?
A. My mother named me Jane. My father's sister who was a Roman Catholic immediately sent
me a Christening present named Mary Jane. My mother who was an out state Missouri Southern
Presbyterian said, "That's a charming old southern name. Mary Jane it is." That was easy.
Q. Did you have any siblings?
A. Yes. I had a younger brother five years younger than I, and I lost him in '85. He was an
Obstetrician1 Gynecologist in Asheville, North Carolina.
Q. One of the most beautiful towns in the United States.
A. Absolutely lovely.
Q. What did your father do?
A. My father was in business. I think he was essentially an accountant. I lost him when I was
seventeen and he was with a number of businesses in St. Louis, largely in the shoe business and
ready-to-wear whole sale.
Q. Were you close to your father?
A. Very. My favorite parent, naturally.
Q. So what was the impact on your father's death at that young age?

A. Well it was very shocking emotionally and financially because I had just started Washington
University on a scholarship so that I had no real financial backing and he died in December.of my
freshman year so that it was a personal loss and such a financial loss that when I was a student at
Washington University I was always busy doing outside jobs. Tutoring and that sort of thing. My
first two years after shifting from a girls preparatory school to a big city university were fairly. . . I
think as I look back, fairly troubled, but I survived them and my academic output was not as good
as it was in the last two years, but I got everything in hand then and I could become a really good
student.
Q. What was your background as a student? Where did you go to school?
A. Washington University in St. Louis, and I went to Mary Institute which is a fine day school
founded when Washington University was by William Greenleaf Eliot, T. S. Eliot's grandfather.
It's a very old school and a very fine one. A day school. Non sectarian.
Q. But you continued through that for your preparatory?
A. I prepared four years, my high school years there and then I went as a freshman to
Washington University, and I had won a competitive scholarship given by Scruggs-Vandenvoort-
Barney so that I had a four year scholarship to the University and it was really a bonanza because
it paid my lab fees and my gym fees as well.
Q. What was the scholarship exactly?
A. The Melville Wilkinson Scholarship it was called.
Q. Which was?
A. For four years at Washington University.
Q. Through what competition?
A. The competition was to write an article combining the history of Scruggs-Vandervoort-
Barney, a seventy five year old department store in 1925, with the history of St. Louis which was
the topic of my essay, and apparently everyone was interested.
Q. Now this was when you were in preparatory school?
A. A junior in high school.
Q. That was lots of insight for one seventeen, eighteen years old?
A. Well it was a good project. I was interested in writing when I was at Mary Institute, drama,

dramatics and writing, and I was editor of the school magazine, The Chronicle, in my senior year
there.
Q. What is your nationality exactly?
A. My mother was pure Scotch and Scotch-fish, a little English, but we don't talk much about
that. My father was straight south of Ireland. Roach, MacGillicudy, Joyce, Sullivan. You can
get hardly more Irish than that.
Q. From Killarney?
A. Yes, from Killarney.
Q. And what was the religion. Catholic?
A. He was a Roman Catholic. My mother was a Presbyterian.
Q. So how did you handle that?
A. Well, I asked my mother many years later how she handled that and she said it was none of
my business.
Q. Did you go to both?
A. I went to both till when I was in eighth grade. I had long curls and I went to Presbyterian
Sunday school class with girls who were wearing lipstick and I was probably miffed by this
because I said to my Sunday school teacher, "How do you know there's a God." She was
paralyzed. She took me to the minister, who later became moderator of the Presbyterian Church
in the United States. She told him this thing and he humiliated me. I came home and told my
parents about this and they hit the ceiling and decided to send me to the Unitarian Church which. .
.the first Unitarian Church, whose minister, Dr. Roland T. Dodson had a very fine class for
adolescents. It was an excellent religious and social experience for me and later Dr. Dodson
became, at Washington University, my professor of Greek Thought. So it was a good
connection.
Q. Then you carried on as a Presbyterian or you lost interest? What happen then?
A. No, I was never very fond of church going. This happens, I understand, to children of mixed
religious marriages. They just lose interest. My brother ultimately, I suspect for social reasons,
joined the Episcopal Church, but I could never have done that to my father, so I've never joined
any church but I have more sympathy, I think, for the Unitarian outlook, but I miss the theater in
the Catholic Church. I miss the ceremony.

Q. What were your childhood surroundings like?
A. Oh, I was an apartment child. (Chuckle) Very happy. I'm sorry to say I have no tragedies to
recall in my childhood.( Chuckle)
Q. Do you have fond memories of anything in particular? Chicago in the fifth grade?
A. (Chuckle) Yes, that was fun. That was lots of fun. We moved to Chicago for a year and a
half when I was ten and I loved it because I was old enough to have a certain amount of freedom.
I was having my teeth straightened and I had to go down into 'the Loop' alone, and my mother
permitted me to go on the elevated alone. She must have died a thousand deaths but I was never
disturbed or worried at all about it. Anyway, we didn't know many people so we drove around a
great deal, and to this day I know my way around Chicago better than I know my way around St.
Louis which, of course, is an 18th Century city whereas Chicago is a 20th century city built on the
grid.
Q. Tell us something about St. Louis a little bit. Through this paper you wrote. .
A. Well, of course, it has a very long and interesting history because it really coincides with the
Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, and its been under several countries' control;
the Spaniards and the French, the English and the Americans. Four flags, I believe, have gone up
over St. Louis, but it finally became an American city in the 18th Century and in the 19th Century
it was very interesting in that it had a tremendous immigration, not only from the Irish but also the
Germans, and it became a really quite Teutonic city and later they were very active in the
Unitarian Church also so that it was a combination with the Bostonian thing; the Unitarian is the
Eliot family, for example plus the wonderful South St. Louis Germans who supported
Washington University and the Unitarian Church. Of course, there was also St. Louis University
in the city with which I never had any connection until years later when I was working with the
Humanities at the SIU Medical School and took a Literature and Medicine course from a very
bright professor, a night school thing at St. Louis University. It was my discovery of St. Louis
University which is the oldest Catholic University west of the Mississippi. But these were
separate worlds.
Q. I'm surprised you didn't become a historian rather than an English major.
A. Well you learn a great deal about history through literature and it's always been a part of my
interests in life. And I took languages as well.
Q. Were you a reader and inquisitive?
A. Yes, a voracious reader. My father was always very pleased about this but said, "Don't be a
bookworm, go out and exercise." (Chuckle)

Q. Was your mother a reader?
A. Yes, but not to the degree my father was.
Q. And what kind of a person was your mother?
A. My mother was very attractive. Very skilled. A very pretty woman with a healthy ego, and
after my father's death, I think she had been through enough with a sick man who had been sick
for a decade before he died and she was no longer interested in marriage but she was interested in
her children, getting them through school. She also became interested in St. Louis silver. When
she was eighty, she published the definitive book on St. Louis silver which now is a thing of the
past.
Q. Sterling silver?
A. Coin silver, primarily. Coin silver. Her name was Ruth Hunter Roach. She was from out
state Fulton, Missouri, which she considered the Athens of the Middle West. My father, who was
from Illinois, took me aside and said, "That's not true. Jacksonville, Illinois is the Athens of the
Middle West." (Chuckle)
Q. So you liked Mary Institute?
A. Oh, I loved it and to this day I'm more sentimental about it than any other academic
connection I have. It is a wonderful school. It gave me such strong discipline. I was really very
well trained in the humanities. Very well trained. Latin and French and English and I had the
usual math and chemistry but my interests were literature and history, primarily, and drama.
Q. You began art lessons at Washington University when you were a child?
A. Yes I did. I had them when I was a child in Chicago but I just fooled around at W.U. I didn't
do much, I just played. I was about twelve or thirteen and ran into some congenial friends and
just fooled around in the building which was the old art school in Washington University, in those
days it was in the British Colonial building from the Worlds Fair of 1903 and the walls were
hollow and we could run from one room to the next without being caught so we ran back and
forth. Silly little kids, but I did learn something about drawing.
Q. Isn't that where you met the Pulitzers?
A. No that came later. It was at the University. I was between my junior and senior year at the
university when I went as a companion and tutor to Kate Davis Pulitzer. She was thirteen and her
brother, Joe, was sixteen and her little sister, Eleanor, was four. They had lost their mother in an
automobile accident the year before and they already had a step-mother who, at that time, was
pregnant. I did not know that until after the job was over. This was a very difficult year for them

all, and it was quite an experience for me because this was 1929, the summer of '29 when people
on Mt. Desert Island lived in a style that was baronial and, as you know, in early October the
crash came and all that ended. I had a chance a couple of years ago to have a great visit with Joe
Pulitzer ID, the publisher, before he died.
Q. So you kept in contact with them over the years?
A. Not really. Not really. We'd run into each other in the St. Louis City Art Museum, but not
really. But through his second wife and the Democratic Women's Club in St. Louis where I went
to hear a lecture, I ran into Emily and told her about the memoir I had done on my summer with
the Pulitzer because mother kept all my letters. ( She was the historian.) She kept all my letters
and Emily said, "Oh, send this to me. I want to know about it." That got us together again. And
she is a good friend today, I'm glad to say.
Q. Well now did you know them when you were stage struck and going to New York?
A. No, no. That was much later. Twenty years later. But I was stage struck from the time I left
Mary Institute until suddenly it passed like a bad dream when I was about twenty eight.(Chuckle)
I decided I was not a night person, I was not a theater person at heart. It was not my proper
world and it was at that time that I cut my ties with Washington University and the English
Department and went to New York. It was an interesting time to be there. I didn't have any
great jobs. I was in the fashion business more or less for a year and a half and then I married Tom
and came to Springfield.
Q. Well, before we get to that, tell me about the political, dress, arts and architecture of the times
as you were going to college in St. Louis?
A. I wasn't a political animal at all until I was out of graduate school. Then I became aware of
politics through circumstance, I think. My father's family were very much interested in politics.
My uncle was Secretary of State in Missouri for a number of administrations and there was a lot
of political thought throughout the Roaches.
Q. What was his name?
A. Cornelius McGillicuddy Roach.
Q. Do you have any dates for that?
A. He was "Uncle Neal", my father's eldest brother, and this had to be in the late teens and early
twenties.
Q. Can you describe the dress, manner of the times. Can you think back with fondness, that era?

A. I'm not sure what you mean by this era?
Q. The aura of life was so entirely different.
A. When I was at Washington University, we were in the era when people wore very short skirts
and then a 'new look7 came in the '30's. Instantly, when the crash came, they dropped the hemlines
and we had the clothes of the '30's.
Q. They're still doing that, of course.
A. Yes, they've gone back to it and also back to the '50's when we had the new look after World
War II, which was, of course, when we had bouffant skirts with nipped in waist. Katherine
Hepburn in ' Summertime'.
Q. Is there any particular style you preferred?
A. I liked the clothes of the '50's as much as any other time, and the '60's. No, the '50's. We'll
settle for the '50's.
Q. Well, you lived during the Depression and as you said on Mt. Desert Island you really saw a
ying and yang. . .
A. That had been just before in 1930. This of course made an impression on me. It made an
impression on me in every way.
Q. But, you knew how to live frugally so it was easier for you than for many.
A. Oh, yes. In fact I was not aware of money. My parents had none and were very careful to tell
me that money wasn't everything. Accomplishment was more important, among other things, so
simplicity pleased me. Yes, I was content with simplicity. Oh, I had the normal female yearnings
for more.
Q. When you were working with fashion?
A. That was right at the end of the depression. That was in 1938, '39 just before the war and we
were coming out of the depression and clothes were fine at that point.
Q. Yes, and you could spend a little bit of money about that time?
A. Well, I was working in the shop and I could get things "wholesale".
Q. Was that in New York City, and how long were you there?

A. Almost two years.
Q. What made you leave?
A. I felt I was getting nowhere. I was really being exploited earlier by Washington University
because I was a woman. I was not getting anywhere. I was not being even encouraged to go on
beyond my Masters degree.
Q. Now wait. How did you get to New York in the first place?
A. Got on the train and went.
Q. You were through with school?
A. It was August. Late August. I always had moonlighting jobs in the summer. Taught summer
school a couple of times and then I got jobs with the American Express Co. and took groups
abroad in the '30's.
Q. When did you begin to paint?
A. After I came to Springfield. I never had time before that. I was completely wrapped up in
teaching and in the theater and having fun and I began to paint when I came to Springfield. Went
out to the Springfield Art Association and worked with Lillian Scalzo who was a very special
person.
Q. How old were you?
A. I was thirty-one.
Q. When did you realize you had some talent?
A. Oh, I knew I had some talent. When I was in Chicago, I won a Tribune city-wide contest for
a poster and the topic was the High Cost of Living. (Chuckle) And I remember I did a sunrise of
some sort but in any event I had a wonderful History and Art Teacher who had a water color class
in the summer which I joined, and I loved it. This was an occasion of a funny experience I had at
Washington University many years later when I went back to a reunion. I went up to the new
Dean of the Medical School and I said, "Hello Oliver Lowry, you and I were in fifth grade
together in Rogers Park in Chicago. Do you remember Miss Devine?" And he said, "Yes, a
History and Art teacher," and I said, "Well I remember it very well because I was the sort of child
who always had her hand up to answer the questions and she finally said, "Mary Jane, let's hear
what OLIVER has to say." I was rebuked. And he said, "Do you know why she did that? My
father was Superintendent of Schools." (Chuckle) It was a funny encounter and very pleasant.

Q. How did you happen to major in English and French?
A. They were my natural proclivities. They were what I was good at.
Q. Have you a Masters in both?
A. Yes. I had wonderful training at Mary Institute. I was bilingual. When I went to Washington
University, I was bilingual. I had a wonderful French teacher. It was my minor in college.
Q. When did you realize you wanted to teach?
A. I didn't. I had no job and the head of my department said, "Mary Jane, I think you should
teach." And I had no idea what I wanted to do except maybe I wanted to be an actress.
(Chuckle) I was really very immature in some ways.
Q. But in those days women were not really thinking about a profession?
A. Well, my parents encouraged me to. My father would have loved it if I had gone on to Law. I
would have been a terrible lawyer. I mean, I couldn't go for the jugular. I'm an accommodator,
(chuckle) I don't look for controversy.
Q. Once you were there, did you enjoy teaching?
A. Yes, and I became quite good at it. I got tired of always having to teach freshman English.
When I taught many years later at Springfield College, I could teach sophomore English
Literature and that was fun. It was a broader spectrum.
Q. How long did you teach?
A. I taught seven to eight years at each place. Full time at Washington University and then in the
'60's in Springfield, I taught half-time at Springfield College.
Q. Did you write poetry and prose yourself? Did you have a preference?
A. No. I wrote a good critical essay, but I did not do creative work in poetry and fiction.
Q. How did you happen to specialize in T.S. Eliot?
A. I really didn't. I was just thrown at him. T. S. Eliot came to Washington University in '34 on
his Tour. By all means see the film "Tom and Viv".
Q. I have.

A. . . .because it's an excellent picture. Do you remember in '34 when he made the tour, what
he was like? Well the head of my department said to me, "Mary Jane, will you look after this
fellow? Everybody in the department is teaching and caught up in classes and somebody has to
look after him" So I went over and spent two or three hours with T. S. Eliot, and I was young
and full of myself and was dying to make an impression, but he just sat and looked at me and now
I realize very well that he was very depressed. He was exhausted. He was worn out by the Tour,
having no money, worried about Viv, his wife, and he just sat and looked at me and when I saw
this movie it was exactly the T. S. Eliot that I'd spent three hours with.
Q. They did a good job with it.
A. Excellent job.
Q. I was surprised that he lived a really very lonely life.
A. A very lonely life and terribly moribund, and terribly ambitious and terribly anglophile. He
was dying to go back to his English roots, to break with his family, break with the Harvard
tradition, Washington University, all of that. He wanted to go back to be Upper Class English.
And I loved that line in the movie when Vivian takes him and shows him her estate and he says,
"It's like St. Louis. It's like Forest Park in St. Louis." It really touched me, and you know the
love song about Alfred J. Prufrock. Everyone who studied this and the symbolism involved in
Prufrock. Well I said, "That was the name of. . . I remember very well it was the name of a
furniture store that I used to see on the Olive Street car. Prufrock-Lytton. And like any artist he
picked it because the name intrigued him and he used it exactly as he wanted to use it. It was
quite an excellent example of how a creative artist uses what he knows.
Q. Well, he was very loyal to his wife.
A. They loved each other deeply.
Q. He never married again did he?
A. Oh, yes. Years later he married his secretary and was very happy.
Q. That's not in the movie at all.
A. Oh no. This is Tom and Viv. Many years passed before he married again.
Q. Have you "measured out your life in coffee spoons"?
A. Well, I'm beginning to do that. One of the advantages of memory, I guess.
Q. What brought you to Springfield?

A. My husband.
Q. How did you meet?
A. I met him through Dr. Emmett Pearson who was an old friend of mine, friend of my mother's
and mine in St. Louis, and when he moved to Springfield he brought Tom down to a Clinical
Pathological Conference at Barnes Hospital. Tom had never been to St. Louis. The Masters all
went to Chicago but we met in St. Louis in 1935. We were married in '40. We'd seen each other
about six times during that time and I was engaged to somebody else but ended up marrying Tom.
Q. How did you do that?
A. Well, I don't know, but it was just right. The Lord had his hand on our shoulders! Guess we
made the right decision. I guess we were ready for marriage. He was 35 and I was 31 and we
were right for each other.
Q. And you were mature. You knew what you wanted. Was Emmett Pearson. . .
A. He was practicing in Springfield, yes.
Q. You knew him in St. Louis?
A. We knew him in St. Louis.
Q. Was he from St. Louis?
A. No. He was originally from Memphis, Tennessee, and he went to "01 Miss" and Washington
University. Emmett's story is an interesting one in itself, as I'm sure you know. Much more
interesting than his book because when you interview him you get another side.
Q. Sometime.
A. Mrnm.
Q. So you were both in your 30's and did you marry in St. Louis?
A. We married in New York City. We married at the First Presbyterian Church at the base of 5th
Avenue and we went to Dexter Masters', his brother's, to have a little celebration afterwards.
Q. Was it easier to do that than to go to St. Louis?
A. Oh much. And then we had our honeymoon in the East and then came back.

Q. Where was it in the east?
A. We went to Virginia Beach and Williarnsburg.
Q. Well what a wonderful place to go.
A. It was. It was perfectly lovely. In the latter part of May.
Q. Latter part of May. Perfectly Beautiful. Tell me something about Tom's background. His
parents and siblings.
A. That's a story in itself.
Q. Here we go.
A. His father was a hot shot work-a-holic lawyer, very much like his own mother, who was a
New Englander. A Methodist. The daughter of a Methodist minister. Very hard driving, very
smart, very energetic. I think she brought the drive and probably the brains into the Masters'
family. Edgar Lee Masters, the poet, showed the conflict between her and her husband who was
a charming, laid-back southerner. Very attractive fellow. A lawyer in Petersburg, Lewiston, and
politician and he was an old-fashioned Populist. Uncle Lee was always a populist but Tom's
father rebelled against all this and was a rabid Republican and he. . .
Q. Was Tom a Republican?
-
Q. And you went over to attend. . .
A. NO! Tom and Dexter were New Deal democrats. Indeed not. Tom always knew he wanted
to be a doctor. There was never any question. He was the first person in the family who wanted
to be a doctor. I knew his mother well, and I felt his mother brought a great deal into the
Masters' family. She brought a certain stability and certain talents. I think his interest in science
came from her family primarily rather than from the Masters, but Dexter, his younger brother,
was a real Master and, of course, became an editor and a novelist and his second wife, his
widow, Joan Brady Masters, won the Whitbread prize in England in 1994 for her book of fiction,
A. No, no. She came over here. Dexter was not living at that time. He died in 1988.
Q. Who was the author of Spoon
A. Edgar Lee Masters, the Uncle. Tom's Uncle.
Q. You know I have a son who attended the Neighborhood Playhouse and they used that book

for practice sessions.
A. Wonderful monologues. He could never write a play. He could not do dialogue but did
marvelous monologues and it's quite dramatic stuff.
Q. What else about his family?
A. They were extremely charming and very good looking and his sister, Madeline, I mean Tom's
Aunt Madeline, Edgar Lee Masters' and Tom's father's sister Madeline was extremely beautiful.
Married into a prominent Chicago wealthy family and that was another one of the reasons the
Masters' went to Chicago because when there were big family get-togethers, they met in Chicago.
It was the logical place for the families to get together and Tom's grandfather had a farm in
Douglas, Michigan, where they used to go which is just across the lake from Chicago. Although
the Masters were basically southerners, southerners and Democrats, not Toms grandmother but
his grandfather's family, the Masters, were southerners. They were old fashioned populists. They
were Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Douglas, William Jennings Bryant populists. Edgar Lee Masters
never changed on that. He remained a Democrat but never liked FDR. ( HE was an eastern
dude.) (Chuckle)
Q. Was Tom anything like your father?
A. Very much. Many of the personal characteristics. . .and I knew it at the time.
Q. You felt comfortable right away?
A. I felt comfortable right away. He had a certain equanimity that my father had.
Q. What was his training?
A. Tom went to Knox College for two years. He went to various Prep schools.
Q. Where did he go?
A. Oh, very unfortunate prep schools as far as he was concerned. He went to St. Johns Military
Academy( which he hated,) then he came back to high school under Elizabeth Graham for awhile
and then he went to Tome in Fort Deposit, Maryland because some of his childhood friends had
gone there. He was thrown with the rich and came home extremely fancy and his father, who
couldn't drive but had bought a Stuts Bearcat, a red Stuts Bearkat, (chuckle) and Tom and
Dexter drove around in the Bearcat and his father thought them impossible. He said, "I can't
stand you. You're going to have to go to Knox College." So he sent Tom to Knox College and
Tom slummed the first semester and then suddenly realized he was having a wonderful time. He
loved it (chuckle) and he had a very fine teacher in biology and a fine teacher in drama who went
on to become head of programming for NBC. A very able man.

Q. So you were both interested in drama?
A. Yes, he was very active in drama when he was at Knox College, in fact he stayed on between
his freshman and sophomore year. . .they had a little repertory group and he stayed on and did
this. In fact, he grew up there. Then he went to the University of Chicago and he got his B.S.
there and he got his M.D. from Rush Medical College, in fact, his was the last class at Rush
before it closed for thirty years, sat on it's "bucks" then re-opened with great panache, I guess, in
the seventies.
Q. Was he loyal to these schools? Rush? When it closed and reopened again. Was he part of
the opening?
A. Part of the opening later because they were also part of the establishment of the medical
school here. They were in on that. That was all done from above. Tom couldn't believe we were
to have it but we did.
Q. Well now, he had a particular interest in medicine. He had a sub-specialty?
A. Yes. It was diabetes. He was very fortunate. He was just right for diabetes. He came out in
1930 from Medical School and his clinical professor at Rush was Dr. Ronald Turner Woodyatt
who, along with Joslin, was the leading specialist of diabetes at that time. Joslin and Boston and
Woodyatt in Chicago. Woodyatt also was the nephew of Daniel Burnham, the architect who built
the Lakeside part of Chicago and Woodyatt inspired Tom and so when Tom came down to
practice with Dr. Charles Patton and his group Tom was the only person in Central Tllinois who
had been well trained in diabetes and it became his life-time specialty.
Q. And so he carried that on?
A. That was his thing. It was his life.
Q. But he didn't have diabetes?
A. No. And, fortunately, I didn't either. (Chuckle) Not an interesting case at home.
Q. Did he have any hobbies?
A. Yes. He had two distinct hobbies. Gardening, which he adored, and Doctor Johnson and
Boswell. They were his particular interests and we have an excellent library on Johnson and
Boswell. He became interested in Johnson while he was at the University of Chicago and then
when the Boswell papers came out in the late '40's of course he was ripe for them.
Q. And what did he do with them? Did he give lectures or talk about them or just delight in
keeping up with them?

A. No. We used to go. . .Ned Rosenheim, of the University of Chicago, got us into the 'Central
Johnson Society' and we used to take little vacations in the spring and go to the Central Johnson
Society meeting which we adored because we saw people totally unrelated to medicine. The
meetings were always close, the universities hard-by. We could drive over, spend the weekend,
come back and they were just a source of great pleasure to us. The 18th Century wasn't my thing
at all. The 18th Century was Tom's. I was Shakespeare and the 20th Century in my training.
Q. To step back just a moment. When you did some acting, did you do Shakespeare?
A. No, I never did any Shakespeare. I was very active with the Little Theater in St Louis and
was very active in dramatics at Washington University. In fact the year I got my Masters degree I
was given the Prize for Drama at Washington University.
Q. What had you done to deserve that?
A. Acting. Acting. I was very. . .in those days, anything in dramatics was outside the regular
curriculum. You did not get credit. I spent hours and hours and immense energy doing drama and
got no credit for it. My credit all had to be in the academics. We never even recognized the 20th
Century in English Literature. We never went beyond Thomas Hardy. (Chuckle) I might add that
in my office Frank Webster, who taught American Lit, received Tennessee Williams and all kinds
of people later. Josephine Johnson who wrote 'Now In November' and won the Pulitzer prize for
it in 1934. They all came in and out of my office which I shared with him but this was, you know,
too contemporary to be taken seriously.
Q. Who are some of your favorite authors?
A. I love fiction and I adore Robertson Davies and I've been catching up, since my sister-in-law
won the Whitbread Prize in Engand for "Theory of War" in 1994 with prize winners before her.
Q. Who was that?
A. Joan Brady Masters. Joan Brady. Dexter's second wife and widow. I've been doing some
reading. . .I've just finished this novel that has come out by the Whitbread winner of 1992, Jane
Gardarn, I think, and the title of the novel is "Queen of the Tambourines" and it is a fascinating
story. You get in side the mind of a schizophrenic who recovers and it's very well done. Now
this has just been published in the U.S.A.
Q. Tell me about "Thr;ory of Wa"?
A. It had to do with a post Civil War white child orphan who was sold as a slave and had a
horrible childhood and it was based on her grandfather.
Q. True story?

A. Not quite. She turned into fiction but it was based on his.
Q. Back to Tom. Who were his favorite authors?
A. We read a lot together. A lot together.
Q. Yes, but being both interested in the theater. . .
A. He was crazy about Dreiser because Dreiser was a great fiiend of his uncle's and they had
quite a correspondence.
Q. So you really liked different types of literature?
A. Yes, and some of the same.
Q. A little more "dryer".
A. Dreiser. . .
Q. I don't mean by Dreiser but dryer. A little more technical.
A. Yes. Yes. When he read the New Yorker he read every page and every word. When I read it,
I skimmed it. ( chuckle)
Q. What did he think about the changes in medicine during his career?
A. He was excited about them. He was disappointed that the Medical School here didn't do
more with clinical medicine. He had long talks with Sergio Rabinovich about that who was also
regretful but there simply wasn't time. The increase in knowledge of chemistry took over so
much of the Medical School. They really had very little clinical training. For example, they made
an effort to send people in to see what Tom was doing in diabetes. He was an Honorary Clinical
Professor and they would come in and were astonished to see that one man had so much practice
in diabetes, but they didn't have time to follow any cases through. They didn't see what his
teaching had done for his patients. This was disappointing and Sergio agreed that this was just
too bad.
Q. Did he ever make a comment that the teaching approach was changing?
A. Very much so. He loved the clinical practice teaching that he had at Rush and here he
naturally thought this would obtain her. The CHANGE was here, and of course everything was
so experimental in the medical field when this medical school was formed. We always overdo
everything in this country don't we? And we overdid that.

Q. What were his thoughts about SIU School of Medicine?
A. Oh, he was delighted to have it here: Thought it was wonderful and also, at the same time,
Sangamon State University was established, of which I was a part. These could change this
community tremendously and much for the better. The tight social circle that I moved into when I
married Tom was all broken up and it should have been. The Universities brought many more
interesting people. I think in my time here that began when Adlai Stevenson came. He began
bringing interesting people. Now Henry Horner also brought very interesting people but he died
shortly after I came here. He was a remarkable Governor from Chicago. I would say that the
Greens and the Strattons didn't bring particularly interesting people here, but Stevenson brought
very interesting people here. People of all kinds.
Q. Did you know Adlai Stevenson?
A. Oh yes. Yes.
Q. I know the Pattons talk about him. He was a very special fellow wasn't he?
A. Yes he was a delightful man.
Q. Was one of our true orators?
A. Extremely eloquent. He spoke for his times better than Eisenhower. I think that Eisenhower
made a better President than he would have made ( with hindsight)!
Q. During the "times". He was a "times" President?
A. In his way. Eisenhower was a skilled administrator. He also knew a great deal about
Washington. . .
Q. And because he was a General, we needed that element.
A. And a great hero. He was a figure for every alternative. Some people didn't think so but I
did. And as I look back I think we were fortunate, though I suffered over Adlai's defeat. As I
look back I think it was just the way it had to be.
Q. Would Adlai's wife gone along with that?
A. She was nutty as a fruitcake. It was very sad.
Q. So it wouldn't have been easy?
A. It was a very painful marriage and . . .

Q. Another Tom and Viv.
A. Yes, in a sense and very much so. Very hard on the boys, and Adlai brought his sister here.
Ellen wouldn't come down here and do any of the duties as a hostess so he brought his sister who
was a very colorful character. Lots of fun but difficult.
Q. Who was his sister?
A. Mrs. Ernest Ives. Elizabeth 'Buffie' Ives. She died a couple of years ago. Anyway, she was
quite a character and he never really gave her authority. He wanted her to do a lot of things but
she didn't have the authority. She had a difficult time trying to help him in the mansion. She
loved it and it was home to her because her father had been down here and she had been his
hostess when she was a teenager and she had a husband in the diplomatic service so she thought
she knew how to do those things, but her position. . .and she was a volatile person. I became
very fond of her but she was sure difficult during his administration.
Q. She mellowed.
A. Yes, she mellowed. (Chuckle) But still the same old Buffie. She was fun, more fun that Adlai.
She was a failed actress and was very entertaining.
Q. Another failed actress. No not failed. Another "want to be" actress?
A. Yes, another wannabe.
Q. Were you involved in your husband's work?
A. Not really. We had separate worlds and he was very supportive of mine. Very.
Q. So you each supported each other?
A. A real partnership.
Q. What do you think of the pressure on women today?
A. I think it's tremendous. They do want to have it all and it just can't be done.
Q. Have we brought it on ourselves?
A. We needed to. We were exploited, we really were. This is a very natural revulsion. I'm not
sure we're getting far. I worry about what's going on in Peiping; after all, will they blow it? The
Chinese are making it very difficult with what must be accomplished? But my heart is with many
of them.

Q. How do you feel about what's happening in Washington, D.C.?
A. Well, I think the change-over in the parties is inevitable. The Democrats
END SIDE ONE; TAPE ONE
are my favorite people but I think what disturbs me is the mean spiritedness and that makes me
think about this violent hatred that people have for Hillary Clinton. I think that it is a great pity
that the American people are being deprived of her remarkable talent. It's a pity. I think she's
too much for them. She overwhelms them and this is too bad. And when she brought out that
medical plan I never thought of it as anything but a good term paper. It never occurred to me that
people were going to be upset by it. I thought it was just a trial-run thing but of course it wasn't
to the Congress at all.
Q. Why are you a Democrat?
A. Well, I'm temperamentally a Democrat. I was born a Democrat. I didn't know that until the
'30's, but I think I'm more interested in the problems of the poor than I am in the successes of the
rich.
Q. Why is it that educators tend to be Democrats?
A. I don't how. Perhaps they have a certain perspective. I really don't how.
Q. Maybe they feel the way you do?
A. Maybe they feel the way I do.
Q. Now, you're an educator at heart?
A. I think so. I think that has been my basic interest. The thread of my activity.
Q. What political figures come to mind that you've always appreciated?
A. Of course we were all tremendously impressed by the Roosevelts. Both Eleanor and Franklin.
I think about the difference between Hillary and Eleanor Roosevelt. All 'First Ladies' get their
power from their husbands. Franklin Roosevelt was an enormously popular President. It was
very helpful to her in her work that he was. Hillary Clinton is caught on the fact that Bill Clinton
is not. Did not get a mandate and is not an enormously popular President and this has made her
contribution more difficult to give because she was anxious. . .

Q. Because of the competition, the fear that the competition may be a basic bottom line there?
A. Well Eleanor and Franklin had plenty of competition but they made it.
Q. No, Hillary is smarter than Bill?
A. I agree. Also you feel you know her core better. It's clear where she stands. She's a good
Methodist girl.
Q. Do you think she'd make a good President?
A. She's a little self righteous. I really don't know but I think we know where she stands.
Q. Well now, to document the times, Harry Wu's safety here from China had an agenda. Do you
think he's been successful with this?
A. I think he's a martyr by choice.
Q. And how do you think about Hillary, back to Hillary, going to China at this time? Going to
the Convention?
A. I think it was inevitable that she should go, for better or worse, and I think that what she has
said is what she believes.
Q. You call her a lighting rod?
A. That's right. I call her a lightning rod.
Q. And do you think she'll be successful with all the complexities over there at the moment?
A. I have no idea how much they'll accomplish or what they can accomplish. It may be all
rhetoric. Who knows?
Q. You and Tom had no children but you made up for that with your extroardinary energy in
volunteerism. From 1941 to 1943 you were President of the League of Women Voters. What
were the issues at that time?
A. Mostly local. This was during the war. We couldn't do much with foreign affairs. We did
things, oh, related to the Milk Ordinance and that sort of thing. It was not exciting, it was kind of
drudgery, but worthy.
Q. What were your responsibilities?

A. Well I was in charge of the local League of Women Voters. We met, we had programs.
Q. What kind of programs?
A. I can't remember. That's a long time ago.
Q. That's a long time ago. That's not fair. Right. What did you find most interesting as
President?
A. I went to the State Capitol and it was very interesting to me to become acquainted with the
environment into which I had moved. I found that very interesting, and the League here was very
young and tentatively established because it was assumed that no League in a State Capitol could
be impartial but we did very well with that and since then, many Leagues have been established in
the States and Capitols and have been successful.
Q. And has it helped the State Capitol to have a League for learning experience and. . .
A. Right. And the League has grown tremendously and has very effective lobbyists in the State
House.
Q. Did you have any complications to iron out?
A. Can't remember if I did. Too long ago. It was also so absorbed in the progress of the war at
that time.
Q. Well, that must have been a particularly interesting time to be a part of the League.
A. It was very hard time, very tense, and everybody was somehow involved.
Q. Were there always sides. Were there conflicts between members?
A. I don't recall any. My husband was 4F because of an ulcer history so he stayed and practiced
during the war. My brother who was a Navy doctor attatched to the Marines had a terrific
service in the Pacific. Really had a whale of a time, a terrible time, and this was very much on our
minds.
Q. Because Springfield has it's own political arena, were there a number of visiting dignitaries at
that time or did things kind of quiet down in that time?
A. Things quieted down. They were more concerned with the national agenda because of the
war but afterwards there was a good deal of excitement. The Green Administration came in on
the heels of Henry Horner, who had died in office and was a very popular democratic Governor
and then there was the Adlai Stevenson stuff that came in '48 and Adlai Stevenson was elected

Governor and that was very interesting.
Q. We'll get to that. About the same time, you were working with the Bundles For Britain with
Mrs. Frank Evans. Were you Co-Chairman with her?
A. No, no. I was simply a worker "in the vinyard". (chuckle)
Q. In the Vinyard?
A. (Chuckle). Yes. (Chuckle) I'm using that metaphorically. I was just a toiler.
Q. How many worked with you?
A. It was a rather short-lived operation because we got into the war so soon after that ourselves,
but she was English born and very much concerned about her relatives and what was going on.
Q. So what exactly did it entail? Was it clothing?
A. Yes, it was largely clothing that was sent to them.
Q. I remember that. Weren't you also writing a syndicated medical column for NEA with your
husband Tom?
A. That was amazing. This fell in our laps through his brother who was Editor of Consumer
Reports, and a founder of the Consumer Union and someone said his secretary, Moms Fishbein is
retiring from that great column that he wrote for many years for Newspapers Enterprises
Association, and they wanted someone who was practicing in an active community to write.
Whom could we get. Dexter said, "Well, I'll ask my brother." So in the midst of everything else,
Tom and I did this column and managed to stand it for about eight months and then the weight of
Tom's practice was such that we simply had to give it up. It was very funny, though, because I
was supposed to be the writer and he was supposed to supply me with the scientific information
and when I would return my copy to him, he would go into peals of merriment. It didn't sound at
all scientific to him.
Q. Did anything take over?
A. No. I made enough money to get a fur coat and since I had no car, it was great. I had to go
on busses in the cold winters and was very grateful for the fur coat.
Q. Then, they don't feel it's necessary any longer?
A. Oh, yes. Dr. Lamb does it now.

Q. Dr. Lam. You mean the cardiologist?
A. No. The Doctor Lamb. The nationally syndicated columnist.
Q. Oh, THAT Dr. Lamb. Oh, I see. Well, for heavens sake. Did we begin that syndicated
column here?
A. We did it here. We wrote it here, but we were simply filling in until they could get, I think, a
more permanent writer who could devote his life to it, and Tom was in practice.
Q. I had no idea. Well, in 1943 when you were Chairman of the March of Dimes in Springfield,
was there a particular emphasis on anything other than Polio.
A. No, and we had a terrific time fighting the national organization because we thought we were
taking too much money out of our community and not getting it back. We "ate crow" on that
later because we had a tremendous epidemic and Bill Horsly and I did this together and we both
thought we had misjudged the organizations motives and the sources.
Q. So there were motives.
A. Oh, sure.
Q. How did it get started?
A. The March of Dimes?
Q. Yes.
A. Well the law partner of FDR, Basil O'Connor, is the one who started it and that's why it got
off to such a great start.
Q. Who were the organizers exactly?
A. O'Connor was a well known man. His nephew married a local Springfield girl, later divorced.
Q. We'll try to get that later.
A. Yes, please do.
Q. How did this effect the war effort? In any way?
A. No. It was strictly a national project.

Q. You don't know who got the money from the campaigns?
A. We sent it to the March of Dimes. We sent it to the National Organization.
Q. Was that money used for research or sewage management, education?
A. Yes, and when we had the epidemic here, they poured in money to help. This was in the rnid-
'40's.
Q. They were supportive.
A. Very supportive.
Q. Who determined who got the money?
A. The March of Dimes.
Q. But who were working with the March of Dimes.
A. We were locally. It was a committee working for the March of Dimes. It was a chapter.
Q. So it was a local decision?
A. Yes.
Q. What was their major rallying cry?
A. Polio.
Q. Totally? Because there were some other diseases and problems later on . . .
A. Later. They came later. Polio was the great issue and, of course, when Salk's vaccine came
through that changed the picture.
Q. Did the March of Dimes carry that? Were they behind that?
A. I'm surprised you didn't know that.
Q. Yes, well I did but for the sake of information I thought it could be documented here. Was
there great support from volunteers?
A. Yes.

Q. And what were the Administrative costs compared to the money spent on actual services?
A. That's what we objected to. We thought there was a disparity but in the end, they put in far
more money than we ever sent them.
Q. Interesting. You see, you never know.
A. Oh, we "ate crow" on that one.
Q. Well, also in 1943, I understand you acted as a leader of a Great Books Group at the Lincoln
Library. You were involved in this for how many years?
A. Oh, a number of years and enjoyed it thoroughly. We had dual leadership. We always had
two leaders and we read and we had a very interesting group who came and discussed the basic
ideas of the Great Books.
Q. What was the age group you were working with? All adults?
A. Adults.
Q. What literary works did you cover?
A. Oh, all of the Great Books of Mortimer Adler that we could get to.
Q. Were there any favorites?
A. The one I remember best because it was applicable to our thinking at the time was Thucydides
and General Marshall had said that his entire strategy in Europe was based on Thucydides so we
read and discussed Thucydides and really understood all that he was saying.
Q. And it was all in the same time-frame so it really was very meaningful.
A. It was very meaningful. Tom and I also read War And Peace at that time and it was a
marvelous introduction to what was happening in Eastern Europe.
Q. Was it a good feeling to be back on the old turf again? Did the teaching come naturally to
you?
A. I enjoyed it very much.
Q. And it was you field, really?
A. It was my field.

Q. Or a combination of your field with English and History.
A. That's right.
Q. A fulfilling experience. A good break from the attention on the war too.
A. It was a lot of fun. We pursued it vigorously.
Q. Why did you stop?
A. Other things took over.
Q. Well, you were doing so much in those years. Is there a Great Books Group here in
Springfield now?
A. They've come and gone, I think. This was project at the Lincoln Library. I served on the
Board too which also quickened my interest in the program.
Q. In this time-frame, you became President of the Springfield Art Association.
A. Yes. That by default. Katie Mezet was elected President and she agreed to be President and
suddenly her husband came home from the Pacific and she dropped everything and rushed out to
California and I was left holding the bag. It was quite an interesting experience. I'd never had
that kind of administrative job before and fortunately I had tremendous help from Jenny Staley
and Henrietta Herndon who guided me through jumping the budget a hundred percent and helped
me work through the year. During the war years, thanks to the help of Converse Staley, Jennie's
ex-husband, we had gotten a grant from the city from the Mayor's office to keep it going, but
after the war was over we were on our own. We reinstated the Ball as a money-making device
and got into full gear. Hired a new director.
Q. Who was on your Board? Do you remember?
A. The people already mentioned were. Katherine Kunz, who followed me, was. Sue Barthols
was. A number of people who were interested in the Art Association, and we were the only art
game in town at that time and we had a lot of art organizations to serve on that.
Q. For how long had the Beaux Arts Ball been dropped?
A. Just during the war years because it started in 1928 or 9 but it had to stop during the war
years for obvious reasons.
Q. Wasn't 1943 a little early?

A. Was it in '43? I must have been President in '43 but it was at the end of my Presidency in
1945. I had a two-year Presidency.
Q. What special events did you sponsor during your leadership? Very much the same as it is
today?
A. Very much the same program. We had a teaching program in school that was important and
then we had exhibitions.
Q. Do you remember when the building was added on to the Edwards House?
A. Oh, yes. In '38 the gallery was built. My husband's mother, Mrs. Thomas D. Masters SR.
was very active in that and then, in the late '401s, '48, '49 under Florence Berchtold's leadership,
that building, the studio building was built. And she deserves tremendous credit.
Q. Who designed that addition?
A. I think Phil Trutter.
Q. Who was the Queen of the Beaux Arts Ball your year?
A. I think it was, now wait a minute.. Henrietta Herndon was scheduled to be Queen and at the
last moment her grandfather died and she co.uld not be, and. . .yes, Clarice Campbell was the
Queen. (An emergency operation!)
Q. Now in 1947, while still involved with the Great Books, you came on to the Board of the
Child and Family Services.
A. Yes, I did my stint in Welfare. I did not feel that. . .I made a great decision as a result of my
service on that board. I felt it was not an area in which I had a great deal to contribute. Many
other people were doing this and doing it well and I decided then that my interests were clearly
education, not social work, so that I never afterwards participated seriously in a social welfare
project. I'm not against them, I think they're fine but my particular equipment, I felt, was needed
elsewhere.
Q. It was not your niche?
A. It was not my niche.
Q. What do you think of the recent scandal with DCFS? (Department of Children and Family
Services)
A. I'm not involved in that. I have no real opinions on that.

Q. So you've really kind of closed the door on that.
A. Closed the door on that. I'm just a biystander on that.
Q. I'd like to ask you where they're going to find families to take these children, things of that
sort, but I guess you're really the wrong person to ask.
A. That's right. I wasn't trained for it. My orientation was toward other contributions, cultural
contributions.
Q. But being politically involved, have you taken any interest in the Judicial system might do to
stop women from having children who are repeated failures as parents?
A. No, I have not gotten into that. I feel strongly about it but I have not gotten into it as an
active participant apart from supporting Planned Parenthood.
Q. Again, the niche. In 1948, were you appointed or elected onto the Board of the Lincoln
Library?
A. Appointed by Nelson Howarth who was the Mayor at that time the Board it was headed by
Gib Bunn, President of the Marine Bank, who was a remarkable man, and in a quiet firm way, a
total dictator. I found that we had set up a committee to determine the site for the new branch.
We went through all the shenannigans and we listened to the report from the architects who were
told by Mr. Bunn: "That this is already settled, that he'd picked the site and bought it and that was
it." All of a sudden I realized that I was in a situation where I was not involved in program which
I was deeply interested in but I was involved in where 'a roof was needed for our new building',
and this was certainly not within my realm of expertise. Oh, I admired him very much, I just
thought I was not able to make any contribution.
Q. Did you bow out or did you stay?
A. I was a political casualty. I would have bowed out, but I was a political casualty because I did
not support the man who ran against Howarth and won, so I was off, and it didn't break my heart.
Q. How is it run? I'm a member of Friends. How is it run?
A. The Friends of the Library? Grace Gilman, the librarian, started that and it was great. It was
a very active organization. She put it together with Gib Bunn's help, I might add, and it was very
effective.
Q. In what way?
A. Well, it got people active, being involved in the Library which, apart from Springfield College,

was our only institute of learning above the high school level at that time.
Q. Did it have functions that stimulated books again? Did it bring the Great Books together and
support that, and. . . ?
A. Yes. Indeed it did. Brought speakers from time to time.
Q. Don't you wonder why the Great Books have faltered?
A. Noyo. These things come and go.
Q. They're trends?
A. They come and go, right.
Q. At this time, you became a member of the Kings Daughters Progress Circle.
A. (Chuckle) Yes. It was something my mother-in-law wanted to happen to me. It was not
really my (chuckle) bag, but I was glad to please her. My husband felt strongly about it because he
thought it was a group that really made an effort to take care of women who might otherwise in
their old age not get proper care and lodging.
Q. Did you ever meet Marjorie Merriweather Post?
A. No, she never came during the time I was here.
Q. How did she happen to have a house here in Springfield?
A. She grew up here. Her parents grew up here. Sure, she was born here. Mrs. Georgie
Gardiner was her cousin who was very active in Progress Circle. Mrs. Merriweather Post went
on to be a financial success and was generous.
Q. A real philanthropist.
A. Yes.
Q. Was it a consuming experience or were you on the fringe?
A. Oh, it was something you did because it was something your friends were involved in. It was
tit for tat; if they supported my cause, I supported their cause. This is just ordinary group
behavior.
Q. Well now how did you happen to be a founder of the Springfield Municipal Opera?

A. That came through Lacey Catron and Carl Lundgren who really just commandeered Florence
Berchtold and me into that. Florence Berchtold remained a patron and wasvery active in it until
the day of her death. She was a real spirit in the Municipal Opera, but for me it was a passing
phase, but I'm happy to have been part of it.
Q. Had you been interested in Opera before that?
A. No, but I'd done a lot of Little Theater as I grew up in St. Louis. I thought it was a great idea
for the community to have an outdoor opera theater, and it was interesting. It was a stimulating
and exciting experience and I would say that Carl Lundgren and Lacey were interesting to work
with. Bright men.
Q. Who was in the Founding Group?
A. I'll try to remember. A man in charge of the radio station before Ollie Keller bought it. I
cannot remember his name. They called him Doc something. I remember the people I've just
mentioned. Mr. Dellert of the paint company was active in it.
Q. What was your first opera?
A. I don't remember. Oh, The Merry Widow. "The Merry Widow". There was this young
woman who was a secretary in a legal office here who had a spirit, a good voice and a certain
joyful spirit who sang it very well. A good starter. Pleasing to everybody. Everybody enjoys The
Merry Widow.
Q. Where was it held?
A. At the site. I think at the Municipal Opera site. We built that with great crates and boxes but
we managed it.
Q. Is it still going on.?
A. Oh, yes. There was a hiatus for a number of years when it did not function and then it was
really re-organized and it has been very successful. I'm very proud of it.
Q. Do they bring in stars or is it local?
A. No, no. It's strictly local.
Q. Well, there are some good voices here in town.
A. Some very good voices. People trained in the arts over and above the number of people when
I first came here who have greatly enriched the cultural life of the community.

Q. Did you have support from other areas or was it self supportive?
A. It seems to me we were strictly on our own.
Q. When Adlai Stevenson ran for Governor of Illinois, you worked to elect him? Would you
describe your experience with this election?
A. Well, it was very scattered. This, of course, was a Republican community and not many of us
were available to work on it. After he was elected then along came the National Campaign in '52
and that was very exciting. '52 was very interesting.
Q. What did you learn from this?
A. Well, I learned something about the practical workings of the political system. Also, I had an
opportunity to travel all around the state and as an outsider, someone from another state, I had an
excellent opportunity to learn something about the state of Illinois because in '55 ('56) I was
down-state Co-Chairman for Volunteers for Stevenson and it was very interesting.
Q. No, but the hype and the experience. Did you get terribly excited with the protocol and
procedure?
A. Oh, yes. Oh, very excited. This was the only time I've ever been passionate about a political
candidate and then IT passed. I'll never (chuckle) get into that again, but it was all important
experience in citizenship, I think.
Q. And you say the turn-out was. . .
A. Well, Adlai Stevenson's social friends here were all Republican and this made it difficult and
he brought terribly interesting people such as Scotty Reston and various correspondents who
were very interesting and it was very hard to introduce them around because the Republicans
stood on one foot and then the other.
Q. Interesting that he would have Republican friends in Springfield.
A. Oh no, not at all. His father, you see, had been here. Let's see, his father was Lt. Governor
and he came here and bought his daughter to be his social secretary so to speak and Adlai knew
these Republicans. They were his teen-age companions. He knew them from his teen-age days.
Q. Well, as you said before, his sister came then and later.
A. She came earlier in his Governership when his wife did not come after he was elected. At his
request his sister came and took over the social duties in the mansion.

Q. Did you know Adlai Jr.?
A. Yes. He was just a kid at that time. He was about sixteen, I guess. I knew him too and I
knew Nancy as well later.
Q. He decided not to go into politics?
A. He did go into politics. He was an elected Senator. We had Senator Adlai Stevenson
remember? The son was elected. He had one term. He resigned. He was not interested.
Neither he nor Nancy found it their thing at all. They did nothing about it and they did not enjoy
it.
Q. What is their thing? Is it farming?
A. His is farming. He does a great deal of consultation work now as an attorney and she, of
course, is very active in aid to children. She has a career of her own going in that. She's a lovely
woman. Very nice. And Adlai's a very nice guy, but he thought he was interested in politics and
he wanted to carry the mantle, but when he got into it. . .he liked being Treasurer. He made an
excellent Treasurer and learned a great deal about state government. He would have liked to
have been Governor and Adlai, the senior, would have liked to have been Senator, you see? They
just had the wrong positions. The timing was wrong.
Q. Then you became, in 1952, Co-Chairman for Springfield Volunteers for Stevenson for
President. Who was your Co-Chair?
A. Dr. Meyers of Chicago, Cook County Hospital. Carl Meyers.
Q. What was the difference between Stevenson's running for Governor and his running for
President?
A. Well, it was on a tremendous scale, running for President. It was on a much more modest
scale running for Governor, and the fact that he chose to run for President from Springfield
instead of from some other place made Springfield a very interesting place for a time.
Q. Had your involvement with the Governor's election given you any grounding, for want of a
better word, with your job organizing volunteers etc.?
A. I had to learn it as I went along. I had plenty of help. I had Don Forsythe and John Rorke,
people like that who were very helpful and they educated me. I had to hold them in occasionally
too, but it was a very interesting experience. And Edie Graham was wonderful and was help to
me. It was very interesting. Very interesting.
Q. What was the feeling. . .Can you recall the feeling when he was defeated?

A. Oh, yes the "noce triste". That was very sad that night. We were invited to the mansion
along with many others of his family and other connections. It was extremely sad. I remember
that Bogart and Baby were here and Tom was called to the mansion because Bogy was very sick
and he said the rumor was that he was drunk but he wasn't. He was very sick. He had a virus,
and the next day Tom took me to the mansion so that I could meet Bogy and Baby. Bogy was
kind of limp but recovering, and Baby was SO pretty. She was SO fresh and SO young, and SO
attractive.
Q. An extraordinary look.
A. An extraordinary look and so FlIESH. Very fresh. She's quite a girl.
Q. Quite a girl. One of my. . .I think I hold a torch for her. Now, with the enormous build-up in
such a time in one's life would you explain your feelings and your feelings around you when he
lost as a part of the. . .Was he a good sport?
A. Oh, very. He was a great gentleman of courage.
Q. There was no inkling that he was going to lose?
A. Oh, sure.
Q. O.K. So it wasn't a total. . .
A. I remember a Post Dispatch reporter following him who was one of my classmates at
Washington University and he came up to me and he said, "Mary Jane, you know this guys going
to lose don't you?" I said, "Well, I suppose so, and I'm still supportive of him." But it was
obvious that Eisenhower was going to win so I gritted my teeth and went on.
Q. As you said the timing was bad for both of them. How did the Town Hall Lecture Series
begin in 1957?
A. That came into being when Frannie Gillespie and mother felt that her daughter needed a
project so she said, "You know, when I lived in Michigan for a time, there was a wonderful
lecture series called Town Hall and celebrities were brought and you and Mary Jane should start
it." So we did and Calista Herndon joined us and the three of us had a great time. I stood it for
about five years and then I went back into teaching and Jo Saner took my place. It was a very
interesting series. It was stopped for two reasons. When the University came here, we thought
they would take over that kind of function. They did not, but we thought they would and also the
cost of bringing these celebrities to Springfield and the difficulties of getting them there by plane
in bad weather became so great that it was burdensome. But we had wonderful people.
Q. Who were some of these speakers? Can you remember?

A. Well, we had Ralph Bunche of the U.N.. We had Vincent Price. He was my favorite because
he gave us two talks. He really gave us two programs.(chuckle) He gave us a theatrical program
in the morning and then at the luncheon afterwards we got him started on art and he gave us
another lecture on collecting. He was really delightful. I understand he went back to his circuit
and had ulcers and had to quit, but he was a delightful man. I knew him as a teenager in St. Louis
because he was a couple of years behind me. I was at Mary Institute, he was at Country Day.
They now are together as one school, but he was a couple of years behind me, and he always
looked like that. He started out at fifteen looking big and handsome and sweet and NICE. He
was just a NICE person. Even in his last movie, he still looked like Vincent Price. It was the same
person.
Q. So he's very much himself on the screen as he is in person.
A. Yes, yes. And he spoke such beautiful trans-Atlantic American English. It was a joy to hear
him.
Q. Where was Town Hall held?
A. It was held at a number of places. We began. . . it ended up at the Roxy Theater and then we
went out to the Fox Theater. It had to be a place where we could go to lunch nearby and
afterwards, and this was always a problem, but it meant a great deal. We had an instant response
all around Springfield. We had an excellent response to Town Hall. Especially older women who
felt the need for outside stimulation and who also wanted a good meal at the middle of the day.
Q. Did you pay these speakers?
A. Oh yes, we certainly did. The fees got to be very high, and that was another problem.
Q. And as you said, the airplane flights became formidable.
A. They were all very difficult. Barbara Walters was really tough with us. The Governors wife,
Mrs. Ogilvie, very much wanted to have a picture taken at the newly restored Old State Capitol
and Walters just wouldn't do it. And she was VERY tough. She knew exactly how to handle it.
She would not do it at all. She had to get back. She had to be some place else. She was a tough
girl, but she had to be. She was also very attractive.
Q. Was there an annual membership fee?
A. Yes. You bought a ticket for the year. There were half a dozen lectures and you bought a
season ticket.
Q. What a good idea.

A. It was a wonderful idea.
Q. Who would put them up when they were here? Bring them in the home as they did with the
symphony guests?
A. Oh, in a hotel. Oh certainly. No, no, this was a formal business arrangement, but they needed
that. They needed peace and quiet when they're on a circuit of that kind, but they were very nice.
We had Pearl Buck, I remember her. She came by car and with a secretary.. We had really an
amazing collection and it's all documented down in the Sangamon Valley Collection. We turned
over all our scrapbooks and what-not to them, so that it's on record. It was an interesting
venture. It had a history.
Q. And you put it in the right place.
A. We put it in the right place. Oh, yes. Ed Russo's wonderful.
Q. Yes. Very cooperative. As a Board member of the Salvation Army, what were some of the
issues in the 19601s?
A. I can't remember anything about it. I think it was a proforma thing. Can't remember any
activity at all. It was, again, not my thing. I just block it out of my memory.
Q. Well, you had enough to think about.
A. That's right. There were other things that interested me more.
Q. And in 1962 you returned to teaching English at Springfield College. How did this happen?
A. Well, they needed teachers. They had a tremendous influx of students, they needed part-time
teachers and I was dying to get back to it, and it was wonderful. Teaching half-time is just
delightful. Teaching full time is awfully hard work.
Q. What is half time?
A. Three days a week. I taught three days a week and I taught a couple of classes each time, and
I didn't have to earn my living by it which made a great deal of difference.
Q. But you had a little something coming in. Bought another fur coat? (Chuckle)
A. (Chuckle) I had a little something. Became a part of the commercial society. I had (chuckle)
some WORK. That's very true, you know. It amused my husband. He said, "well, it keeps you
out of the bars." (Chuckle)

Q. Did you gather up your old format or begin again with a fresh approach with so many years
away from teaching?
A. Both. Both new and old. I taught rhetoric at Washington University and I continued to do
that, but I also had a chance to teach literature at Springfield College to Sophomores, and that
was great fun. That was wonderful.
Q. Did you hone in on T.S.Eliot again?
A. Well, he was part of what we learned. We did poetry, we did fiction, we did some drama. It
was a General Lit. course, not the intensive History of English Lit. Course that I had as a college
student. We branched into Contemporary Literature. I shocked the nuns, I remember, when I
assigned Saul Bellow's Advemres of Aucie March, but they chuckled.
Q. Well of course he's one of the great, winning the Pulitzer Prize.
A. Yes he is. He hadn't won the Nobel Prize yet but he was on the way.
Q. Well he did win the Pulitzer Prize for Humbolts Gift.
A. Yes, but the Nobel Prize thing was so much more important. A very talented writer.
Q. Well I can't help but ask you if you ever wanted to write a book?
A. Mm. Not enough to do it. That's the only answer I can give.
Q. No passion for it?
A. I guess I was too scattered to settle down.
Q. And as you said before, poetry was not your thing.
A. Expository essay is what I do best.
Q. Journalism was also something that you were good at.
A. Yes, but Washington University had no journalism.
Q. Yes, but when you wrote for the paper and the column and that kind of writing.
A. I didn't do any kind of writing for the paper at Washington University. I did in my high
school years. Editor of The Chronicle at Mary Institute, but I didn't do any journalistic writing at
all at the University.

Q. Are you sorry you didn't have a little more journalism?
A. No.
Q. Governor Otto Kerner appointed you to the newly founded Board of Regents in 1967.
A. That is true.
Q. Out of this came the new University. You have been credited for giving this University it's
name of Sangamon State. . .
A. Now defunct. (chuckle) Right. And Carol Lohman is involved in that name.
Q. How did that happen?
A. Well, we were at a cocktail party and we were trying to figure out what to call it and we were
playing around with names and she said, "What about Sangamon?" and I said, "Sangamon is
wonderful." So when we met with Ray Page was our honorary member of the Board of Regents
and Superintendent of Schools in Illinois, an elected officer, we met with a group from the
Legislature and one of them said, "What would you want to name it?" Ray Page said to us, "Mrs.
Masters should name it. This is her town and she should be able to name it." So I said,
"Sangamon State." And one of the committee said, "How are we going to sell that to Chicago?
How are they going to know the name?" I said in my best school-teacher voice, (chuckle) "Let
them learn." So we did. It was Sangamon State. It was the most, THE most outstanding thing
that the Board of Regents did was to establish that new university and now that the Board of
Regents is being liquidated. Franklin Matzler who was the director has gotten reports from
members of the initial Board of Regents and they say, they always say, that the big thing we
accomplished was to establish the new upper level university in Springfield. It was very exciting.
Q. And now it's. . .
A. Now it's part of the University of Illinois, and I think it was always slated for this. Southern
Illinois University and the University of Illinois really competed for it and the Board of Regents
was a political decision to keep from getting into that battle, but ultimately one of the universities
or the other would have probably absorbed us. The University of Illinois is the logical, more in
line of the two. Also the University of IUinois is interested in keeping an eye on the Legislature!
There are a number of State Capitols in the United States which have combined; as you know, the
Capitol and the State University, but our founding fathers in Illinois made the mistake of choosing
the State Fair instead of the University. That's why the University is in Champaign-Urbana, not in
Springfield. So our community is less interesting for that reason. Now we have a branch of that
great university here, and our University's efforts have been in the direction of Public Affairs.

END TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO
Q. Where was the catalyst?
A. Really, as far as I was concerned, it started in Committee N which was headed by James
Worthy and the plans were made by Lyman Glenny from Berkeley who took the Berkeley Plan
and pushed it in Illinois. Committee N has a very interesting and exciting background which was
before my time, but Jim Worthy is publishing a memoir within the next year or so which covers all
of that, but it was in the works above us and there was also a committee that had been working
long and hard in Springfield for such a University. George Hoffman, George Hatmaker, Lohman,
a number of people had been working hard to get a University here, so that it was a ground swell
from below and a plan from above that really bred Sangamon State University.
Q. Mary Jane, who were the Board of Regents? How many were there on the Board and who
were they?
A. I think there were ten including Ray Page. They were. . .the first group. Dr. Norris Brookens
from Champain who was a Physiologist and Internist and a man of learning and great character
was made chairman by the Governor, and the members included Morton Hollingsworth who was
a big man in Higher Ed. and the Republican Party, and Guy Cornwell who had been very active in
Higher Education and was a Democrat. . .it was split. There were five Democrats and four
Republicans. ( Democrats were in greater supply in those days than they are now.) (Chuckle)
Gordon Millar, who was Vice President of John Deere, an engineer and I think the most powerful
intellect in the crowd, and above all, the man who had the most extraordinary qualifications, Dr.
Percy Julian, the black physician who had his own biological set-up in Chicago, who did a lot of
scientific research along with his business, and he was very. . . he was a stunning man. He was
very handsome, very charming, very urbane, and he was really high man on the totem pole. A
delightful man, whose name escapes me at the moment, who was from Dodd Meade, the
publisher. My mind runs blank on this (we can enter this later)
Q. It's interesting that they have maintained the name Sagamon for the auditorium.
A. Yes. I really think it should be named after Bob Spencer, the fxst President but they have
called it Sangamon. It was in honor of the community so it was easy to do that.
Q. I thought the name caught on very well and you should be proud that the name you gave it
has been able to linger into posterity.
A. I do too. To me San,pam, of course as a member of the Masters family, I'm conscious of
The m. It is a large area. It is not just Springfield. It's the surrounding area also.
Q. Yes, it covers quite a large territory.

A. It has a political overtone because of the Sangamon literature.
Q. The valley.
A. The valley. Right.
Q. You received another B.A. in 1978. How did you happen to go back to school?
A. I'ed been interested in painting. Ever since I came to Springfield I painted regularly at the Art
Association and decided to take a fine arts degree, and I wanted to have the fun of going back to
school. I guess I'm a perpetual pupil. Anyway, I enjoyed it very much.
Q. Did you get this degree in Creative Arts?
A. Yes. Creative Arts, not Management but Creative Arts, and SSU did not give a Masters'
then. Some of the work I'd done at Washington University including the work I'd done in
dramatics counted toward this degree, which was interesting. The greatest departure from my
field, I think, was a course I took from Jerry Troxell in music which was Music By Doing, a
wonderful course because we started right out using sound ourselves to make some sort of
composition and, by the end of the course, we had composed the basic motif of a symphony
which also gave Jerry a chance to teach us how to listen to contemporary music, and I'm most
grateful to him. Music By Doing I think was the name of the course and they decided that I
should take that rather than the more academic course that was given by another professor
because they felt this fitted into my particular pattern. I'd grown up with symphonies. I'd had a
background in listening from childhood on.
Q. Are you involved in the University at all right now?
A. No.
Q. Made a clean break?
A. Yes. A clean break from twenty five years of devotion. No regrets. Proud of it and moving
on to other things.
Q. How do you feel about the change?
A. I don't see any alternative. I think it was probably the inevitable thing to do. I accept it.
Q. Well, it's the only rational way to go, and I think that Naomi Lynn has been a good President
at this time.
A. Well she came here with that in mind. Was perfectly frank about it. She had no hidden

agenda. She was politically adept. Excellent in P.R. and she has steered us into that. Sanpamoq
Skt~ into the University of Illinois OPENLY. Nothing sneaky about it.
Q. She immediately got us the local Foundation under her control didn't she?
A. Immediately, and she has been primarily a P.R. person and a fund raiser. That has been her
focus. The people under her have provided the Administrative focus, but this is called leadership.
So.. .
Q. Enrollment is up.
A. Oh, Sure, but it is, of course, in many places. I hope this continues. The thing about
Sangamon State that I'm proudest of was elucidated by a black man named Hanis at the time of
the great celebration of the transfer to the University of Illinois. He said, "This University has
given a great many people who would never otherwise have had an opportunity to learn
something on a higher level," and I'm very proud of that.
Q. Perhaps you can explain why we have a Lincoln Land Community College right next door and
that they haven't joined.
A. It's another circuit entirely. This also must have been a political decision because we were
instructed not to poach. We were not to try to absorb them and become a four year university by
absorbing Lincoln Land. This was just simply another circuit.
Q. Are they under completely different auspices?
A. A Completely different system. We were in a Higher Ed. System and they were in, what used
to be called, a Junior College, a Community College System, and the man who came here,
Poorman, did an excellent job with Lincoln Land.
Q. And they're stronger and stronger as well all the time.
A. They had a consistent leadership whereas there were troubles at Sangamon State with
leadership for several decades. I'm exaggerating, for after all it's only twenty five years old, but
for a good many years. . .
Q. You know, with the Auditorium, they've been struggling with raising moneys for that alone
for the past two years.
A. This is the only real community involvement here. The University of Illinois people were not
interested in us at all and we had trouble raising money. I was President of the Foundation and I
speak from experience on that. The community loved having a place where they could put on
symphony and big shows and so forth and it has always been interested in that, and I think

uildings require an awful lot of upkeep. Universities have to raise tuition because of building
expenses rather than teaching expenses.
Q. Who was the architect for Sangamon State University?
A. The master plan was devised by Joe Murphy of Murphy & Mackey of St. Louis. He had been
head of the Department of Architecture and Engineering at Washington University and he also, at
Washington University, did their Library, and so he did the Library here.
Q. Why didn't they choose a local firm?
A. For buildings, since, they have. I wanted this man, and I was the one who chose Joe Murphy
(Chuckle)
Q. I have wondered about that. Do you like the design?
A. I think it's an excellent general plan. Everyone admits that the master plan is a good one. Of
course nobody could anticipate the number of automobiles involved in today's life, and also
Universities are built for younger people. We assumed that the people who would be coming to
college would be young people but, of course, they weren't. They turned out to be people in their
late 20's, returning. The average age was twenty eight when the University opened so the long
distances on campus are not as easily encompassed by older people. (Chuckle)
Q. Was the auditorium an afterthought? I've heard that it had. . .
A. It's all part of the general plan. Didn't Ferry & Henderson do that building? I think so.
Q. But they put it right in the middle of it, so. . .
A. When the master plan was decided, then local architects participated.
Q. Then how did they insert that building, the auditorium, into the plan?
A. It was part of the master plan. It was to have been there.
Q. I see. Then they did anticipate the need for entertainment.
A. Oh, certainly as they did for a big library. The Brookens Library.
Q. Who was Brookens?
A. He was a physiologist and internist from Urbana who was the first President of the Board of
Regents. The one appointed by Kerner. I told you earlier. He died all too soon. After we had

founded Sangamon State, he died, and then I think Gordon Millar took over and then Bob Ban.
We had an excellent competition for the Master Plan. We had Hellmuth. Obata and Kassabaum,
(HOK) and we had the Gropius Group from Boston. We had an excellent competition. Joe
Murphy had done his homework best. He really did present the best plan.
Q. Was it to be constructed the way it is today?
A. Pretty much. Pretty much.
Q. Over the years you've watched teachers come and go, whom do you remember best for their
excellence at Sangamon State?
A. The people from whom I got a great deal I think were particularly Judy Everson who is a
superb pedagogue, a really wonderful teacher and from her I got a good deal of contemporary
American literature and Norman Hinton from whom I took Viking Literature and Linguistics. I
found him very interesting and also there was a guy named David something or other who taught
Japanese art which was very tough and very challenging to me. It was tough because I had no
framework to build it on. The history of the Orient was not at my fingertips. If it was anything
connected to Europe, I could put it into place, but I had to memorize the Shogunites and it was
hard-going. (chuckle)
Q. You also took Chaucer.
Q. I did. I took Chaucer from Norman Hinton and loved it.
A. How did you happen to have taken it so late?
Q. I regretted not taking it at Washington University. I took Anglo-Saxon instead but one of my
classmates, one of my fellow students, took Chaucer from Philip Jelliner who was excellent and
I'm sorry I didn't take it from him but I was really filling up an omission when I took it from
Norman Hinton and of all the characters in history that I would like to have gone back and been,
Chaucer comes first. He led the ideal life.
Q. The ideal life?
A. Mm. Everything went just right for him. (Chuckle)
Q. What about linguistics?
A. Oh I loved that. To this day I'm fascinated by linguistics. That was kind of a difficult class
for Norman Hinton to teach because we had a lot of Vietnamese veterans who were doing the
best they could with their opportunity to go back to college, and some of them had no
background whatever in linguistics. I remember, Norman and I entered into some discussion

about the word GERUND and I had taken a lot of Latin in high school and "Gerund" was a
familiar word to me and afterwards one of these veteransstopped me and said, "I have a question
to ask you, what is a gerund?" And I found myself teaching some of the basics of grammar to
people who had never been exposed to grammar at all. It shocked me but I was glad to be able to
explain some of the parts of speech.
Q. When you took Political Satire and the Cartoon, did you use your art with that?
A. No, it was an academic History of Art course.
Q. Did you appreciate cartoon art more through your eye?
A. And also history. It was an excellent History of Art Course.
Q. Did you touch on Honore Daumier and Goya?
A. Yes.
Q. Did they bring you up to date or take you back through history?
A. No, it was pretty much up to date.
Q. They don't give that course now.
A. After the instructor left, no one else ever gave it, but it was fun.
Q. Tell me about Chris Breiseth.
A. He was teacher of History. Superb. He's now a President of a college in Pennsylvania. He
and his wife were great assets to the faculty and we hated to see them go. I would say that he and
Chuck Strozier, Mike Lennon were stars and we've lost them all, but they went on to better
things so that was good.
Q. You continued to take art classes at the Art Association over the years. Did you have any
particular favorite teachers there?
A. Oh, I worked with all of them and got something from all of them. At the moment I'm
working with Jean Kirschner in an Open Studio. She gives an excellent critique and we all do
whatever we want to do, so that I have no other place to paint. ( I have no place in my home.)
THAT I appreciate very much, being able to paint there and I appreciate her critique.
Q. You leave your work over there?

A. No, you can't leave anything over there. They have no facilities to keep it there. You lug it in
every time. (Chuckle) Fairly exhausting, but they're very helpful to me.
Q. Was there anyone who triggered a new light in art for you?
A. Oh, yes, there were. Lillian Scalzo was a remarkable person. She was the directorlteacher
when I first came and stayed on as a guiding spirit. She was a very important person in my life.
She was a genuine artist. Her work, I would say, was uneven. Sometimes superb and sometimes
scattered and as life went on she became severely crippled with arthritis, but she turned to
stitchery and she was terribly good at that. She was a very creative spirit.
Q. What has been your favorite or most rewarding style?
A. I had the most fun with watercolor prints because I could work very fast and I am an
instinctive painter rather than a calculating painter, but I've disciplined myself now that I'm doing
pastel. I learned that from Sherri Rarnsey. I improved my drawing no end.
Q. Have you locked in to a certain medium?
A. I'm doing pastel now because I can manage it myself. The watercolor prints demanded for me
some help with the big press out at Lincoln Land which they were very nice to let us use, but it is
a big heavy operation and I needed help. Nancy Gillespie gave me a great deal of help with my
first couple of shows and Glenda Warren helped me out for my third show, but those women are
so busy that I could not count on them to help me indefinitely so I decided to go into a medium
which I could handle myself. I went once to Sherri Ramsey to learn something of her fine
technique. I got a lot of technical training also from Betty Madden Work in watercolor. She
knows an awful lot about watercolor.
Q. And she's still there?
A. Comes and goes. She's very much here now. She and her husband left Florida.
Q. As you look back, has your art kept you in a balance?
A. What do you mean by that? I think that hand work keeps you sane, yes.
Q. Yes. It's the creativity that brings one out.
A. It's the creativity. It takes me completely out of myself. Something passes through me which
I love.
Q. Now you've had three art shows. Where and what were they?

A. Three, yes. I had one at the Medical School, the Springfield Art Association, and one in
Jacksonville, and these are HARD work, physical work. I don't welcome shows because they
take so much out of me physically. You have no idea, until you've done one, how much physical
work is involved in them. They're also very expensive.
Q. Well, you have to package them all and. . .
A. You package them, frame them. I never got paid for my work. I've really sold quite a
number of paintings but they simply paid solely for the framing.
Q. Yes, it's very expensive. Glass alone and the frame.
A. This is not a high-price market.
Q. It is not at all? Like all the arts. It's one in a million isn't it?
A. Yes. That's right.
Q. The Sangamon State Foundation elected you President in 1978. What did that entail?
A. Fund Raising. Fund Raising to help with special needs that the President may have primarily.
It was not an easy job. It was very difficult.
Q. What exactly did it entail? Did you have a committee.
A. Oh sure. Bob Saner was a tremendous help with that. He was my savior on that. He was
excellent. . .he had the proper commercial contacts to begin with as President of the Marine Bank.
Q. You worked in the Humanities Department at the School of Medicine.
A. Yes. That was great fun. The Dean, who came from the University of Chicago, Dean Moy,
was determined that this group that came up from Southern Illinois to do it's last two years of
Medical School, should have something in the Humanities, so under Glenn Davidson and Phil
Davis, I did a course with Phil in Literature in Medicine and we had a very interesting response. I
just adored it. I'm sorry they're not doing it any more. When you have a four year medical
school rather than a three year medical school that was ruled out and now they only teach Ethics
and Law.
Q. Yes. That's too bad. I'd think that would be a real asset to bring it back.
A. Occasionally we have a group that comes along and Phil will teach some writing to those who
want to learn it, who wanted to have this. A couple of years ago, we had a wonderful group who
asked us to do it, and this was great fun.

Q. Now was this all the medical community or were there outside people corning. . .?
A. All senior medical students.
Q. And very few doctors really can write. I guess you found that out.
A. Very few. Very few, and these bright people were shochngly illiterate. Shocking. They
could hardly write a simple declarative sentence, but we made them write and they resented this at
the start, but their writing improved in the short time that we had them.
Q. Why do you suppose they threw that out?
A. I think time. Just as they threw out clinical training. There wasn't time. There's so much
chemistry for these people.
Q. Maybe they need another year. Of course that would be an added financial burden there.
A. That's what interns used to do. They had a clinical year of training.
Q. For how long and what exactly were you hired to do?
A. I was hired to help develop the Department of the Humanities, and then. . .I was never hired,
I was never paid. (Chuckle) This was all unpaid work and fun and Phil Davis is a delight to work
with.
Q. And a very fine writer.
A. He's just a peach. He's an awfully nice guy.
Q. You were awarded a degree in Doctor of Humane Letters from SSU in the late '80's. Would
you explain that?
A. SSU has given a few doctoral degrees of that sort to people who, I think, display largely
dogged devotion. I know that George Hoffman was given one and Dr. Ed Lee was given one and
that's what it amounted to.
Q. You are a recognized Bibliophile now. Several years ago you had cataract surgery on both
eyes. You must have been going through a period of frustration not being able to read.
A. Yes, it was difficult. Nothing like my husband's when he had a stroke and could not read
print. I could read, but it was an effort and I looked a great deal at videos with him and had to
neglect my reading, so that when I had the successful cataract operations it was simply wonderful
to be able to go back and read again.

Q. Did you, at that time, listen to tapes?
A. No. Tom did, but I did not. And Tom got awfully tired of it too. He said he got tired of
those voices. We're, I think, more visual people than A-U-R-A-L, aural. (Chuckle)
Q. Have you done a lot of traveling?
A. We've done enough. We've done a great deal of European traveling.
Q. I'd like to step back to find out. . .I did not go into the time when you were young and in
Europe taking travel tours.
A. When I taught at Washington University, I had summers free, and I needed to moonlight and
earn money so I took groups to Europe for the American Express Tours, and I did that for, oh,
five years, I guess, in the '30's and it was very exhausting. I was always pooped (chuckle) in the
beginning of the school year after the Grand Tours!
Q. Did you use your French at that time?
A. Yes, I used it a lot, and it was a wonderful opportunity although it was awfully fast travel. I
yearned to be able to go back and spend a semester, perhaps, studying someplace, but that was
not to be. Then, after I married Tom, we had two very nice trips to Europe, a particularly
wonderful one in '62 when we went to the Greek Isles and then another one in '67 when we went
to Ireland and the Scandinavian Countries with friends for a meeting, a medical meeting, and
we've had vacations in the Bahamas and Mexico.. We never got to the Orient, but we did quite a
bit of Europe and to my sorrow we stopped short of Israel. We got as far as Athens. Breaks my
heart that I never got there, nor have I been able to see the Valley of the Roses, you know, the
Valley of Persepolis and all the great roses. I would have loved to have seen more of Asia Minor,
particularly, and I would love to have gone to Japan.
Q. Never to China?
A. I'm overwhelmed by China. My Southern Auntie went and said, (animated with a Southern
drawl) "Jane, it is a very uncomfortable country." (Chuckle)
Q. Still is. Maybe even more so, (chuckle) and what will it be like in 1997? Where would you
like to go back to? Any favorite places?
A. I haven't seen enough of Paris. Tom did not speak French and when we went he said, "I want
to go where they can speak English." So we did. We went to England, we went to meetings in
Sweden and Denmark where he had traveled. He spoke the best Central Illinois English, but had
no gift for languages whatsoever, and when we traveled on the continent, I carried us with my
French and my imitation Italian got me by. (Chuckle)

Q. You complimented each other quite well. Very compatible?
A. Very well. Very well, but I've never had a chance to use my French. . . we did have a lovely
week in Paris in '62, and we both had cousins there. He had a cousin who was living there, the
Countess Dedanne. I had a cousin who was with NATO with the Department of State, and that
was a very interesting connection. We had a wonderful time in '62 but he would never go back to
Paris. WE drove. Ye Gods! Tom drove in Paris and when I think about it now, we drove
through Italy, and when we got to Perugia, I turned my wheel over to Tom. It was just too much
for me. (chuckle) But I could always communicate with the Italians because Italians can always
talk to women, and I knew enough Latin and enough French that I could put words together and
somehow we made it. You either have a gift for a language or you don't. We were in Greece
maybe ten days, and by the time we were leaving I was beginning to read the alphabet. I was
beginning to pick it up, you know, if you have to, you do, but Tom was. . .
Q. If you have a talent for it, it helps!
A. It helps.
Q. Were you musical?
A. No. I had an excellent musical education and my mother, my parents were determined to
make me. . .I was to become an "accomplished lady." I took piano from Leo Miller in St. Louis
who was very good but my interests were in drama. They turned from music to drama.
Q. So you didn't sing. You were in drama completely?
A. They told me I was quite good in music but my heart was not in it, but I've always gone to
symphonies all my life. I've been an appreciator.
Q. Have you any other favorite places beside Paris?
A. Of course Florence. Oh, I adore Florence, and I would like to go to Hungary. I'd like to go
there because I saw it in 1930 and thought Budapest was a most glamorous place and then so
much has happened since and I'd like to see what's happened.
Q. You'd like the exotic life of the Middle East.
A. I'd love the Middle East, you are right.
Q. You'd love the food,
A. I do anyway. (chuckle) The best Mediterranean food comes fiom the Middle East.

Q. Absolutely. Absolutely. Whom have you admired over the years? Do you relate to anyone
in particular?
A. Well, I adored the head of my department, Dr. William Roy MacKenzie, from whom I took
Shakespeare and Anglo Saxon and wrote my master's theses and then taught in his department,
and he really was a surrogate father in a way. He was a very interesting and attractive man. He
was. ..his most distinguished work is "Ballads and Sea Son~s from Nova Scotia" He was a
Canadian. He was Haligonian. When we were visiting Dexter once in Totness, England, Joanie
had a friend who was a folk singer and we were making conversation with these people and I said,
"The man under whom I'd studied and took some graduate work was interested in ballads and sea
songs. This folk singer said, "Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia by W. Roy MacKenzie"
(chuckle) Came right out of him, and I had a copy, an extra copy of that, autographed, and so I
sent it to him because it was so wonderful to have my professor known in a far out-post.
Q. Do you relate to any of these people we have talked about?
A. I was tremendously impressed with Eleanor Roosevelt. She left a tremendous impression on
me and on the women of my generation and of course she was such a lightning rod. People either
loved her or hated her and I loved her and I spent a day with her in Chicago when Stevenson was
running and I was Down State Co-Chairman for the Volunteers for Stevenson, I was assigned to
take her around one day when she was attending a rally we had and it was a wonderful
experience. I just adored her. She was so simple, and so warm, absolutely no side and so
genuinely involved.
Q. And on the other hand, there was Mrs. Harriman?
A. Oh, I've never met her. Never. She's an interesting character. Perfectly lovely except for
those dollar signs in her eyes.
Q. If you were marooned somewhere what three people would you like most to be with?
A. First my husband, and I think Dr. MacKenzie and then Eleanor Roosevelt. That's a good,
well-balanced combination.
Q. My, you'd have things going.
A. Yes.
Q. In what surroundings are you most comfortable? Literary, art, politics, people with ideas?
A. With ideas, I think. I enjoy those very much.
Q. Where do you feel most at peace?

A. I like my own company. I like people who are interesting, but I like my own company too.
Q. And your painting is probably helpful?
A. Yes. And I think I have a religion of sorts. I'm probably a deist, I don't know. In any event,
both my husband and I thought that man has nothing to believe in but God and I'm not willing to
give him up. There is SOMETHNG.
Q. I've been listening to 'Common Sense' lately, and these are all deists we're listening to here.
It's very important I think. It keeps us intact.
A. What can you do without God? What can you substitute?
Q. You have your own religion and that's maybe most sensible for you.
A. Yes, I guess, and I was brought up in the Christian faith, Tom was not. His parents were
vigorous atheists. They were rebelling against Tom's mother.
Q. Was Tom an atheist?
A. No, the seniors. Tom's mother and father, but the children simply had no exposure. Joanie,
plus two who are not church-goers or anything of that sort. Joanie doesn't even consider herself
a Christian. But we feel that Tom and Dexter were both culturally deprived because they knew.
nothing of the Old Testament, they knew nothing of the New Testament. Good Heavens, when I
taught at Springfield College and we did some T.S. Eliot, my students could clue me in on the
symbolism that was beyond me and I was so glad that they could provide some basis to which I
could relate it.
Q. And Shakespeare?
A. And Shakespeare, of course.
Q. What is your greatest achievement?
A. I think with the help of various people that I've known, to live fiom day to day.
Q. What about Tom?
A. I always felt that. . .I couldn't imagine anyone in the world who would be as easy to live with
on a day-to-day basis. Who could STAND me that much, I don't know? (Chuckle) It was a very
comfortable relationship.
Q. What about Tom? What do you think was his greatest achievement?

A. I think he loved his patients. I think he cared about his patients. I think Barbara Mason got it
just right: "He cared about his patients."
Q. Have you any regrets?
A. Oh lots of them. Everybody does. I can't think off hand.
Q. When did Doctor Masters pass away?
A. August the 29,1993.
Q. It wasn't from complications of diabetes, I know, but what was it?
A. He had three time-bombs going. He had a carotid artery. Dr. Surnner had operated on one
but there was always the other possibility. He had a bad heart and he had an aneurism in his belly
and he decided he would never have the aneurism operated on, after seeing his brother go through
that, (that was the Masters' genetics,) but what finally got him was his heart.
Q. You have just donated your husbands' papers to the Pearson Museum which is a very nice
exhibit. I saw it last week. Was it his idea or your idea?
A. Mine. He would have never thought in those terms. I was also able, with the help of the
Archivist at Knox College where both he and Uncle Lee had gone, to separate and to give them
Edgar Lee Masters' stuff, because both Tom and I had letters from Edgar Lee Masters and
Tom's mother, Gertrude Masters, had a lot and was able to give all those, and I was so glad to do
it because Knox College makes a thing of Edgar Lee Masters. Austin, Texas, where Hilary's
mother has given her stuff. . . there's a big university there and it takes them two or three years to
put the stuff away, they're so crowded in the library, whereas Knox College makes a big thing of
this and when Marcia Masters died, the year after Tom, I got her children to give the bust she had
of Edgar Lee Masters to Knox College. She gave some stuff to Northwestern U. Too.
Q. I know the museum is. . .
A. Also I liked the Masters. They had been a troubled family with lots of divorces and I came
from a family that had no divorces, and Tom and I and his parents were the only Masters who had
not had divorces, but we were the stabilizers. We were able to pull things together. To this day, I
have very lovely relationships. I even have a delightful relationship now with Hilary who was
Uncle Lee's youngest son who wrote Last Stands which is marvelous. He's a very talented
writer. He's Writer in Residence at Carnegie-Mellon now. His mother hated the Masters. They
didn't like her. It was very difficult. She was, and he thinks so too. She was very difficult and
she's still Living and she was very bright. SHE had a great deal on the ball. She trained Hilary
beautifully. He's an excellent writer.

Q. How old a man is he?
A. Let's see. Hilary was thirteen fifty-three years ago. He getting toward sixty-six. He was
thirteen in 1940, do your arithmetic. I wrote him a fan letter. Nobody can resist a fan letter, and
from then on I've heard from him. We've kept in touch, and Tom had a very nice relationship
with his mother but she cut us all off, would have nothing to do with us, kept Hillary from us.
Now that he's on his own, he's become a dear &end.
Q. Quite a family?
A. Terribly interesting family.
Q. Well I know the Pearson Museum is delighted with your gift and I plan to give this memoir to
that collection to help to complete it as you know. . .
A. . . .Well I hope so. . .
Q. . . .And I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, Mary Jane, for your inspiration for me
and. . .
A. . . .Well thank you for letting me to talk about myself. . .
Q.. . . and encouragement with some of my projects. I know that people in town have been so
fond of you over the years. Thank you very much.
A. Thank you, you're very gracious.