Frances Roth
Frances Levenstein Roth (April 1896 – June 20, 1971) was an American lawyer and founding director of the Culinary Institute of America.
[2] During her time as assistant prosecutor, which was a part-time post, she worked in the domestic relations department, dealing with "abused or abandoned wives, delinquent husbands, wayward girls, and troublesome sons".
The Hartford Courant described her in 1934 as having "a rich good humor, a becoming frankness, natural sincerity and spontaneous wit ... a sturdy physique and an abundance of energy.
She gave a lecture to the American Bar Association's criminal law section in October 1932 about the value of psychiatrists in examining offenders in courts.
Though she desired the post, Governor Hurley did not appoint Roth to one of the three juvenile court judge positions created by the law.
She identified places where troops should not go and wrote a paper titled "Drunkenness in Wartime Connecticut" on the increasing alcoholism due to the war; she suggested a commission to find solutions for the issue.
[3][7] To address juvenile delinquency, with issues of girls "following soldiers to camp; runaways who got picked up-often in trucks-and transient wayward minors who were hardest to control", she started an association of policewoman.
[3][10] The executive secretary of the New Haven Restaurant Association, Charles Rovetti, asked Roth to direct a new culinary school.
[9][10] Roth contacted the Connecticut commissioner of education Alonzo Grace to get the school accredited and thus qualify for payments under the GI Bill.
[12] The school opened on May 22, 1946, with sixteen students, a budget of $12,700, and a ten-week course that included instructions on how to make foods like beef stew and apple pie.
"[9] In December 1950, she testified to the House Select Committee investigating the education programs under the GI Bill; the Veterans Administration (VA) managing the GI Bill payments had deemed the institute that year as massively overcharging the VA. She described to the committee the founding, running, and finances of the institute and the issues with the VA the school had.
The committee members, persuaded that the institute was not engaging in malpractice, asked her for advice on bettering the teaching of veterans in trade schools.
Remember I had never been in a commercial kitchen in my life - I knew good food - my mother was an expert in house cooking - and of course I had travelled the world and eaten in fine establishments - this was all I knew about the prep of food but many years of teaching and working with educators had given me a valuable background in the principles of good education - expert and dedicated faculty - respect for the manual worker - the right tools and facilities to work with - supervision by qualified personnel and depts of City and State.In 1960, Craig Claiborne, writing in The New York Times, said of her that: "All of the world's great chefs have been men, but the one individual who has probably done more than any other to give fine cuisine a foothold in the United States is a woman.
[12] She consulted for the Office of Economic Opportunity and became the first woman inductee of the society Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs towards the end of her life.
She supported Alf Landon's election in 1936 while she was chair of the New Haven Republican Women's Club and was against the enactment of Social Security.
