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Oral History Interview with Lucile Quarry Mann
June 9, 1977
at her home at 3001 Veazey Terrace, N.W., Washington, D.C.
by Pamela M. Henson Interviewer for the Smithsonian Institution Archives

HENSON: We're going to begin with your biographical background. Maybe we can start with where and when you were born.

MANN: I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1897. I was the oldest of five children and grew up in Ann Arbor. Instead of going to High School there, I went to a convent school for five years in Grosse Pointe Farms, outside of Detroit. Then I went to the University of Michigan, and graduated in 1919: [[underlined]] summa cum laude [[/underlined]] and Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1918, of course, the war was on. I did have a job in Detroit briefly; but I had a friend in Washington in military intelligence, and the man that she was working for, Captain Hilt, his name was, wanted somebody who knew Italian. I had taken a course in Italian--two years in college, one year just grammar and whatnot--and then I had read all of Dante in the original. So I got a job in Washington, military intelligence, translating Italian newspapers and military dispatches, and Dante was not much help.