Marjorie Roehl, 78, Author, Award-Winning N.O. Reporter Submitted by N.O.V.A. July 2005 Times Picayune 11-4-1997 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Marjorie Roehl Schoenberger, an award-winning journalist who wrote about such diverse topics as crime, haunted houses and Mother Teresa for newspapers in New Orleans and New Jersey, died Sunday of pneumonia at Memorial Medical Center. She was 78. Miss Roehl, who wrote under her maiden name, retired in 1990. She was an armchair expert on murders, which she chronicled with enthusiasm, and she won the Alex Waller Memorial Award, the Press Club of New Orleans' highest award, for a 1981 series she and reporter Alan Citron wrote on Charity Hospital for The Times- Picayune. "She covered a range of assignments and did her job very competently," said Walter Cowan, a colleague, boss and longtime friend. "She became quite a star." She often told stories on herself, generally those that stressed her sheltered upbringing and education in convent schools. Early in her career, she said, she was sent on a police raid of a French Quarter house of dubious reputation. When she returned to the office, she told colleagues she was amazed that, in the early afternoon, the women in the house "were all wearing kimonos and they all had red hair." "It was a brothel, Marjorie," someone said. "What's that?" she replied. "She was a very naive young lady, I know that," Cowan said. "She was the pet of the staff, being so young and impressionable." Miss Roehl was born in New Orleans and graduated from Holy Name of Jesus School and Ursuline College. As she grew up, she nursed one ambition. "She wanted to be a reporter from the time she was 10," said her daughter Beth Millbank. She fulfilled that dream by working part time for a newspaper while in college. Within weeks of graduation, she joined the staff of The New Orleans Tribune, moving over to The New Orleans Item when it bought The Tribune. During the next decade, she wrote tirelessly about crime and interviewed many celebrities who came through New Orleans. Walt Disney talked with her while wearing a bathrobe, but an uncooperative Katharine Hepburn shut the door in her face. Theater luminaries Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were extremely gracious, she said, as were Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, and she treasured this letter from Kirk Douglas: "Dear Marjorie: Thanks for the wonderful weekend." The weekend in question, she added, was when Douglas was married in the New Orleans studio of sculptor Angela Gregory, a close friend of hers and the actor's. In the late 1940s, Miss Roehl married Karl Kaschewski and moved to New York City, where she became a technical writer for General Electric and Bell Laboratories. One of her assignments at Bell was to write about development of the Minuteman missile, but because of the tight security surrounding the project, she never was told what the overall program was. She also did long free-lance stories about murders for The New York Daily News. Despite her sheltered upbringing and innate kindness and gentility, she couldn't get enough of crime. "We were raised on murders," Millbank said. "Mom loved murder." In 1963, Miss Roehl joined the staff of The Daily Record of Morristown, N.J., where she and her family had moved in 1955. She started as a columnist, writing a weekly feature called "The Woman's Angle." "We always had to be very careful about what we did because if we didn't, we'd wind up in the next week's 'Woman's Angle,' " Millbank said. The Record published two of Miss Roehl's books: "Hosts of Ghosts," about haunted houses in the area, and "The Quiet Millionaires," about the many rich people who had lived in Morristown at the turn of the century. After her marriage ended in divorce, she returned to New Orleans in 1975 and joined The States-Item, continuing on The Times-Picayune after the papers merged in 1980. She married Sidney Schoenberger, a friend since her youth, in 1978. He died in 1980. During her second phase as a New Orleans journalist, Miss Roehl wrote long series for The States-Item about Esplanade Avenue and the Garden District, drawing on historical materials and the memories of people who had lived in the districts' grand houses in an era when women didn't aspire to have careers and horse-drawn carriages still rattled along the streets. One of her most prized assignments was an interview with Mother Teresa when the nun visited New Orleans in 1976. After their conversation, Miss Roehl said, she felt the same way she did after interviewing Helen Keller: that she had been in the presence of a saint. Besides Millbank, survivors include another daughter, Gay LeBlanc; a son, John Kaschewski; and three grandchildren. A Rosary will be said Wednesday at 9 a.m. at Bultman Funeral Home, 3338 St. Charles Ave., followed by a Mass at 10 a.m. at Mater Dolorosa Church, South Carrollton Avenue and Plum Street. Visitation will be today from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the funeral home. Burial will be in Lake Lawn Park Mausoleum.