Mary Jane Roach Masters Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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?