Margaret Jayne Huntley Main, the oldest living Rose Queen in Tournament of Roses history, has died at the age of 102.
Main, the 1940 Rose Queen, passed away on Nov. 24 in Auburn, Calif., the Tournament of Roses announced on Tuesday, Nov. 28.
Born on June 1, 1921, in Hollywood, Calif., then Margaret Huntley, seemed destined for a role in the parade. She began to watch the Rose Parade at the age of 5, mesmerized by 1926 Rose Queen Fay Lanphier, then a future Miss America.
“I saw my first tournament exactly when I was 5 and a half,” she said during an interview with CBS Los Angeles on June 2, 2021. “I remember watching the queen go down the street, and my daddy took my face and said, ‘Margaret Jane, there’s more to the parade than the queen’. But he was wrong.”
By 1926, her family had moved from L.A. to Pasadena, propelled by her father Almore Huntley’s work in real estate in the growing region.
With the $25,000 commission he made on the sale of a property at the corner of what became Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, the family moved to Pasadena, settling in a small home on Villa Street amid losses during the Great Depression.
She was a student at Pasadena City College when Rose royalty beckoned in 1939. In what has become a long-lasting tradition, she would be chosen as the parade’s top ambassador in 1940. That year, grand marshals were Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and Tournament of Roses President was J.W. McCall, Jr.
It would not be long before Hollywood came knocking.
Howard Hughes visited then Margaret Huntley at her parents’ home to sign her to a movie contract, according to the Tournament of Roses. But she declined, opting instead to marry Robert Main later that summer after her Rose Queen reign.
Actress Jane Russell was ultimately cast in “The Outlaw,” which Hughes had envisioned Huntley for as leading lady.
She would go on, however, to live a robust life, with a longlasting devotion to the Rose Parade.
She rode in…
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