Vera L Roberts, PhD

Obituary: Vera Mowry Roberts / Nationally known professor of theater history Saturday, February 06, 2010 By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When Vera Mowry Roberts was in the WAVES during World War II, she ended up working as a procurement officer for the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs.

She did such a good job coordinating the manufacture of special parts that her supervisor asked her to re-enlist. But manufacturing wasn't her passion -- working in theater was.

Ms. Roberts returned to the University of Pittsburgh to get her doctorate in theater history, and went on to become a nationally renowned professor of theater history at Hunter College, City University of New York, continuing to teach until she was 92.

She died of a heart attack on Jan. 31 at the age of 96, while visiting relatives in Mansfield, Texas.

Vera Mowry grew up in Mount Oliver, one of three sisters whose father, a house painter, always told them "that they could grow up to do whatever they wanted to do," said her nephew-in-law, Mark James, of Mansfield, Texas.

After graduating from Pitt, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she helped to establish the theater group that would become the Arena Stage, one of America's first regional theaters.

That is where she met and married a young actor, Pernell Roberts, who also died last month and is best remembered for his role as Adam Cartwright on "Bonanza."

They moved to New York in 1956 to help advance Mr. Roberts' theater career, Mr. James said, but were divorced a year later. They had one son, Jonathan Christopher, who died of leukemia several years ago.

In New York, she was recruited to help start the theater department at Hunter College and ended up staying there the rest of her career.

When she was forced to retire from full-time work by university rules in 1972, she persuaded the college to let her teach one graduate course per year, which she continued to do until she was 92.

A student who attended her history theater class when Ms. Roberts was 91 recalled in an anonymous blog that "when she came to class, she sidled over to her end of the room, sat down, and the table came up so high on her diminutive [4-foot-11] figure that I swear she resembled a talking head.

"And what a brilliant talking head it was. Opening a folder, she delivered a two-hour lecture without ceremony. She was the repository of knowledge, we were there to hear it, consider it and absorb it, and thus it was delivered."

She also acted in a play by one of her former students at a dinner theater in North Carolina when she was 89, playing a witch who tries to get the Biblical prophet Daniel killed off.

Ms. Roberts and her sisters were told by their father that if they ever made a mistake, they could come to him, "and they would discuss what they did and how they did it and what they could have done differently," Mr. James said.

"And that basically guided her through her entire life -- to analyze what all your possibilities were and choose the one that would be most likely to succeed."

That philosophy guided her well when she became the first female moderator of the Presbytery of New York, a regional governing body for the Presbyterian Church.

As moderator, she would preside over presbytery meetings for a year. When she was interviewed by an all-male panel for the position, one man asked, "Do you think you can do this job?"

"She looked him square in the eye and said, 'If I didn't think I could do the job, I wouldn't have applied for it,' " Mr. James said.

When her son died, she used the proceeds from his life insurance to set up a homeless shelter in his name at her church, the Rutgers Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

She also wrote the church's history, along with several theater history textbooks and numerous other professional articles.

When she turned 90, Hunter College threw a birthday bash for her. "For a number of years, " she said, "I said to myself 'If Socrates could live to be 90 in the fifth century B.C., I ought to be able to do that in the twenty-first century A.D'." I thank all of you, students and colleagues, for keeping me forever young."

She then presented the college with enough money to endow a professorship in American Theatre in her name.

Visitation for Ms. Roberts will be held today for one hour before 1 p.m. services at Jefferson Memorial Funeral Home, 301 Curry Hollow Road, Pleasant Hills.