Mary Rotolo

Mary Teresa Pezzati Rotolo Bowes (January 28, 1910 – September 27, 1990) was an American writer and political activist. Her daughters were Carla and Suze Rotolo. Suze Rotolo was one of Bob Dylan's early girlfriends in New York City.

Mary was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on January 28, 1910, the daughter of Italian immigrants Sisto Pezzati and his wife Cesarina née Opizzi. Her older brother was Pietro Pezzati, who was a noted American portrait painter.

While in Boston, Rotolo dated B. F. Skinner and was acquainted with Conlon Nancarrow, who later renounced his American citizenship because of his membership in the Communist Party. In the 1930s, she traveled to Spain supposedly to report on the Spanish Civil War but she was, in fact, working for the communists as a courier between Spain and Italy supplying American passports for Italian communists so they could leave Italy and join the International Brigades fighting in Spain. On her return, she went to New York City, where she wrote for various liberal newspapers.

Mary was married three times. She first married Dominic Testa in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1933. On July 1, 1933 while taking a sailboat trip along the Eastern United States coast her husband fell overboard and drowned. His body was never recovered.

In March 1940, she married Joachim Rotolo in New York and they had two daughters, Carla and Susan (Suze). Mary and her husband were also friends with American writer Charles Flato who, it was discovered only in the 1990s, was a Soviet spy.

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