Maurice Leland Rose

Farming and duty chart a life of adventure & ingenuity.

Maurice Leland Rose, 96, a longtime Montgomery resident and publisher, died peacefully Jan. 14, 2022 at his home in Magnolia Springs Loveland.

Farming the rich, black soil in southeastern Iowa, then traversing Europe at the tail-end of war, Maury developed a lifetime passion for ingenuity and adventure. His older sisters Marie, Gladys and Yula claimed he was carried on a pillow as the first son, born June 2, 1925, of Alice and Wilbert Rose. A younger brother, Marshal, followed. Maury disputes that his early life on the Crawfordsville, Iowa, family farm was cushy. He steered tractors and cars at a young age, tended the hogs and blew up the garage while experimenting.

Maury attended Gem City Business College in Quincy, IL, waiting to enlist in WWII to help his ailing father tend the crops and animals. Wilbert recovered and Maury joined the 70th Infantry Division, traveling to Europe, as a replacement gunnery on the last day of battle. I was only on the front one day. The enemy was pulling out with an army behind them; they were trapped. His business skills landed him a transfer to clerk for a colonel. We traveled interviewing GIs I typed the notes and stayed in little hotels with good German food and wine in the heart of the best wine country on the French-German border.

My war experience was like R&R. As an army ping-pong competitor, Maury was escorted in a Jeep by a sergeant, who wasnt very happy chauffeuring a corporal. When educational opportunities opened, I signed up for courses at Oxford, England, studying economics, business and English lit. I joined a couple of guys with similar interests and wed go into London on weekends for plays and concerts.

In Bremen, Germany, Maury boarded a ship for home with 84 Lippizaner stallions of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna saved by General Patton and the subject of the book Perfect Horse. Maury read the book for inaccuracies and shared this experience with groups and for the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress. There was a terrible storm crossing the English Channel when the horses didnt eat or drink because we were too sick to feed them. We rode out the storm, but turned back to locate an abandoned Victory ship loaded with Packard cars and wheat. The Brits treated us like the enemy, accusing us of stealing the ship. Finally on his way, Maury landed in Newport News, Va., 22 days later. We never lost a horse.

When he returned, Maury completed his bachelors of commerce in 1949 at the University of Iowa, where he joined Theta Xi fraternity. He accepted a job in the International Harvester warehouse, advancing to the sales and promotion of freezers and refrigerators. He met his wife, Mary Lou, a co-worker on a double date for Sunday dinner because Mary Lou said she wouldnt go unless her boss went.

Shortly after meeting, Maury moved to Chicago, swapping a job with Successful Farming at Meredith Corp. for Midwest Farm Papers. Mary Lou soon followed and they married back home in Iowa in 1956. They took full advantage of living in the city eating a $5 steak and hearing the best jazz there was at the London House.

The couple traded in a European vacation for twin daughters, Catherine Ann and Carolyn Jane in 1959, eventually hopping across the pond nine times after retirement. The family relocated to a 1920s Dutch Colonial in Glen Ellyn, a western Chicago suburb, where Maury walked to the train, commuting downtown to the Blue Stamp sales program. A third daughter, Elizabeth Ellen, arrived in 1965. Three years later, the family headed east when Maury took a new job with the Farm Quarterly magazine in Cincinnati.

When the publication folded, Maury sold advertising for Magazine Networks, Inc. and national periodicals such as Sports Illustrated and Better Homes and Gardens. He spied an opportunity to reshape the struggling local newspaper where Mary Lou freelanced. As publisher and Mary Lou as editor of the Sycamore Messenger/News, the couple transformed the sleepy paper into a bustling business serving the affluent northeast Cincinnati suburbs, including their home in Montgomery. They received the Ohio Newspaper Associations highest awards for coverage of an FBI plane crash and embezzlement by the school superintendent. The pair was instrumental in forming the Northeast Branch of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and the Northeast Arts Council. They sold the paper, retiring to travel and become grandparents, in 1989. We turned that paper around, but we were paid far more than we ever anticipated.

Maury dabbled in real estate, purchasing two chalets in the mountains above Gatlinburg, where the family gathered on Thanksgiving. When those were sold, he moved his holdings closer to home, managing until he was 95.

After more than 30 years, the couple swapped their comfortable Montgomery ranch for a condo on a wooded hillside in Milford, OH, near their youngest grandchildren and a reminder of their chalets. They continued to be involved in the Blue Ash Presbyterian Church.

In later years as Mary Lous health declined, Maury became her loyal caregiver until her death in 2018. In 2019, he moved into a beautiful apartment in assisted living close to his daughters.

Maury is survived by his: daughters, Cathy Barney, Carolyn Moore and Elizabeth OHanlon; sons-in-law Tad Barney and Charlie OHanlon; his grandchildren Amanda Kuznicki, Sarah (Colin) Conway, Devin OHanlon, Autumn Barney, Lily Barney and great grandson, Nicholas Kuznicki; nephews and nieces. He was preceded in death by his son-in-law Andrew Moore and wife Mary Lou. Burial is in Hopewell Cemetery in Montgomery. The family plans a spring memorial celebration at his church, Blue Ash Presbyterian, 4309 Cooper Rd., Blue Ash, OH 45242-5612, where memorial contributions may be sent. Or to the University of Iowa, givetoiowa.org