42 alumni news
Reminiscing with Lucile Mason TKS ’43 and Janet Mason TKS ’48 Sisters and Kimberley alums, Lucile and Janet Mason are powerful exemplars of the benefits of a great education, achieving remarkable prominence in two of the most competitive and male-dominated fields of their time. Review Editor Debbie Kozak was fortunate to spend time with them and gain some insights into their success. After graduating from Smith College where she majored in Theatre, Lucile started work as a script editor at ABC’s first TV station in New York. Four years later, she began work at Compton Advertising as Assistant Casting Director, and was soon promoted to Director of Casting and Department Head, casting three radio serials and three TV serials and, with her staff, casting 40 million dollars worth of TV commercials annually. She also directed the jingles and background music tracks for commercials for fourteen years. In 1965, Lucile changed career paths, entering the field of social welfare where she met with equal success, becoming National Executive Director of the Association of Junior Leagues of America, Director of Public Affairs for Girl Scouts of the USA and Director of Public Relations for the YWCA of the City of New York. A subsequent career in fund raising (she started her own firm in 1980) eventually led her back to Montclair when Richard Day, Principal of the newly formed Montclair Kimberley Academy invited her to serve as the first Director of Development for the merged school.
review spring 2010
Janet’s career was equally illustrious. After also graduating from Smith College, she received a master’s degree in Theatre Arts from Stanford University and interned at KPIX, the CBS station in San Francisco. Janet returned to New York to work for the Ford Foundation’s TV-Radio Workshop, working on OMNIBUS with Alistair Cooke. After a stint at LIFE Magazine, she moved back to San Francisco to work as a Producer/Director for KQED before being invited back to LIFE as a reporter, where she remained for thirty-five years. Janet specialized in reporting and producing lengthy photo-eSsays with LIFE photographers about real people in life-changing situations, including two on Jill Kinmont, a top US Olympic Ski Team hopeful who fell on the slopes and became a quadriplegic, and whose story, based on Janet’s reporting, was turned first into a book and later into a movie. Janet became an Editor of the weekly LIFE Magazine, and after its demise as a weekly, remained on staff producing two issues a year for five years until LIFE became a monthly magazine. She also worked with some of the world’s most famous architects on an annual series of LIFE
