Oldest Living Rose Queen, at 98, Will Attend Newest Queen’s Coronation on Tuesday

When Mary Rutte Wallace was crowned Rose Queen just before New Year’s Day 1945, World War II was raging, and there was no Rose Parade for her to ride in. On Tuesday, the 98-year-old will be at Tournament House in Pasadena when the Tournament of Roses crowns its 108th Rose Queen.

Wallace’s reign came in one of three World War II years when the Tournament canceled the parade. Her year as queen instead included christening a Navy attack transport, a radio appearance and greeting the Tennessee football team, she said, a schedule unlike the one awaiting the seven high school seniors on the 2027 Rose Court.

The Tournament confirmed Wallaced is the oldest living Rose Queen.

“I am the oldest,” Wallace said. “I’m 98 and I’ll be 99 in March.”

Selection worked differently then.

“Well, that year, the seven young ladies were only chosen from that one school, Pasadena Junior College, which we all attended,” Wallace said. Candidates were given numbers in their gym class, she said, and she thought about 30 or 50 were then called to the Civic Auditorium to go through “a little short routine” before interviews narrowed the field to seven.

She was 16 when she was crowned at a pageant in the Civic Auditorium in December, and she turned 17 that March, she said. After the pageant, she invited the guests to a larger hall for a dance.

“And then the crown wasn’t mine,” she said. It is still at Tournament House, she said.

The court’s activities reflected the war. “One of them, I christened a ship. It was an attack transport called the USS Fillmore, and we were all there for the christening,” Wallace said. Navy records show the Fillmore was launched Jan. 4, 1945, by Consolidated Steel Corp. in Wilmington, sponsored by Miss Mary L. Rutte. It was commissioned Feb. 25, 1945, landed troops at Leyte that August and spent most of 1946 in the Operation Crossroads atomic weapons tests in the Marshall Islands.

The court also appeared on Rudy Vallee’s radio show, went to a USO dance on San Clemente Island, attended the Kiwanis Club’s breakfast for the queen and court and greeted the Tennessee team when it arrived for the Rose Bowl Game, Wallace said. Herbert Hoover was grand marshal that year, and Max Turner was Tournament president.

“Of course, there was no parade. And we rode into the Rose Bowl in a car and were greeted,” she said.

She got her float ride a year later. On Jan. 1, 1946, at the first Rose Parade after the war, she rode on an ice cream company’s float, she said. “It was all white flowers, so I wore my ball gown,” she said, adding that the float won the grand prize.

Wallace left Pasadena in 1946 for Stanford’s nursing school, then located in San Francisco, and after three years had her college degree and her RN, she said. She then traveled with her mother to Japan to see her father, who was on General MacArthur’s occupation staff; the family had been separated for three and a half years during the war. In Japan she met her future husband on a blind date. “He was in the military, so I became a military wife,” she said.

After assignments that included one in Germany, and three children, two girls and a boy, the couple settled in Texas, his home state, she said. Her husband died in 2002. “And my friends back in Austin want me to bring pictures back from the crowning this year, so I will do that,” Wallace said.

She returned for the 100th Tournament of Roses in 1989, when Eastman Kodak invited former Rose Queens to ride on its float, and “they were very surprised when 42 of us applied,” she said.

Her yearly returns began in 2019 at the urging of 1940 Rose Queen Margaret Huntley Main, who told Wallace she was retiring and that Wallace should continue to come, Wallace said. Main, a Pasadena Junior College student when she was chosen, founded the queens’ alumni association and met every Rose Queen from 1905 to 2020, according to the Tournament. She died in November 2023 at 102. “So I have come every year since 2019,” Wallace said.

This year the Tournament invited her to the Rose Queens’ Luncheon, held for former queens at Tournament House before the coronation, she said. On average about 25 former queens attend, along with the new court, she said.

“Well, the young women have to apply, but they get many benefits,” Wallace said, citing a college scholarship, a complete wardrobe and speech and etiquette training. “We never received any kind of training. We were all good students, but we were all young and didn’t have all those skills that would’ve been nice to enjoy.” Each member of the 2027 court receives a $7,500 academic scholarship, according to the Tournament.

Three of this year’s seven court members attend Pasadena schools: Evita Cielo Bridge of Mayfield Senior School, Maria Teresa Monserrat McDonald of Thurgood Marshall Secondary School and Elizabeth Tabaro Kengaju Rweyemamu of Polytechnic School. Tournament President Terry Madigan is scheduled to announce the new queen and crown her with a Mikimoto crown valued at $400,000, according to a Mikimoto spokesperson. The queen and court will ride on a float down Colorado Boulevard in the 138th Rose Parade on Friday, Jan. 1, 2027.

The Announcement and Coronation of the 108th Rose Queen and presentation of the 2027 Rose Court takes place Tuesday, Oct. 27, from 2 to 2:30 p.m. at Tournament House, 391 S. Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena. The public is welcome to attend. For information, call the Tournament of Roses at (626) 449-4100 or visit tournamentofroses.com.

Wallace said the Tournament has always been a volunteer organization, and that its queens can take that with them.

“Everybody is a volunteer, and I think we can carry that forward in our lives to be volunteers wherever we go,” she said.