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Mary Rutte Wallace, crowned Rose Queen just before New Year\u2019s Day 1945. [Courtesy photo]When Mary Rutte Wallace was crowned Rose Queen just before New Year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Wallace\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Tournament confirmed Wallaced is the oldest living Rose Queen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the oldest,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cI\u2019m 98 and I\u2019ll be 99 in March.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selection worked differently then.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, that year, the seven young ladies were only chosen from that one school, Pasadena Junior College, which we all attended,\u201d 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 \u201ca little short routine\u201d before interviews narrowed the field to seven.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image_0-2026-10-26T053338.351.jpeg\")
Rose Queen Mary Rutte Wallace surrounded by Rose Princesses including Jeanne Bartlett, Mary Alice Keene and Betty Osmond, seen in December, 1944. [Courtesy photo]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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then the crown wasn\u2019t\u00a0mine,\u201d she said. It is still at Tournament House, she said.<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s activities reflected the war. \u201cOne of them, I christened a ship. It was an attack transport called the USS Fillmore, and we were all there for the christening,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The court also appeared on Rudy Vallee\u2019s radio show, went to a USO dance on San Clemente Island, attended the Kiwanis Club\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, there was no parade. And we rode into the Rose Bowl in a car and were greeted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s float, she said. \u201cIt was all white flowers, so I wore my ball gown,\u201d she said, adding that the float won the grand prize.<\/p>\n
Wallace left Pasadena in 1946 for Stanford\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. \u201cHe was in the military, so I became a military wife,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cAnd my friends back in Austin want me to bring pictures back from the crowning this year, so I will do that,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n
She returned for the 100th Tournament of Roses in 1989, when Eastman Kodak invited former Rose Queens to ride on its float, and \u201cthey were very surprised when 42 of us applied,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 alumni association and met every Rose Queen from 1905 to 2020, according to the Tournament. She died in November 2023 at 102. \u201cSo I have come every year since 2019,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n
This year the Tournament invited her to the Rose Queens\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, the young women have to apply, but they get many benefits,\u201d Wallace said, citing a college scholarship, a complete wardrobe and speech and etiquette training. \u201cWe never received any kind of training. We were all good students, but we were all young and didn\u2019t have all those skills that would\u2019ve been nice to enjoy.\u201d Each member of the 2027 court receives a $7,500 academic scholarship, according to the Tournament.<\/p>\n
Three of this year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>. The public is welcome to attend. For information, call the Tournament of Roses at (626) 449-4100<\/a> or visit tournamentofroses.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wallace said the Tournament has always been a volunteer organization, and that its queens can take that with them.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody is a volunteer, and I think we can carry that forward in our lives to be volunteers wherever we go,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Get all the latest Pasadena news, more than 10 fresh stories daily, 7 days a week at 7 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mary Rutte Wallace, crowned Rose Queen just before New Year\u2019s Day 1945. [Courtesy photo]When Mary Rutte Wallace was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4022,13868,2025,8894,2497,10164,267,13863,9,24,13869,63,13874,13875,13855,13871,13866,13864,13873,13867,13870,13872,122,124,123,13865],"class_list":["post-383575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-breaking-news","tag-calendar","tag-community-news","tag-food-and-drink","tag-latest-news","tag-lifestyles","tag-local-news","tag-los-angeles-county-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nonprofit-news","tag-nyc","tag-official-events-calendar","tag-old-town-pasadena-news","tag-pasadena","tag-pasadena-arts-and-culture","tag-pasadena-city-guide","tag-pasadena-events","tag-pasadena-living","tag-pasadena-restaurants","tag-pasadena-shopping-news","tag-popular-things-to-do-in-pasadena","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-things-to-do-in-pasadena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/mail-icon.png\n\"\/){kind=icon}
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