Gloria Root

Petite, slim, with brown hair and brown eyes, Gloria Root was an American Playboy Playmate. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and began her higher education at the University of Illinois before transferring to Northwestern University to major in political science. She later graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with degrees in fine arts and architecture, then earned a Master's Degree in City Planning and a Master's of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

Root combined her modeling career with a long professional life in urban planning. In 1980, she opened her own planning firm, Planning Analysis and Development, in San Francisco, and headed it until 1998. She then relocated to New York, where she led the strategic planning services division of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Returning to San Francisco in 2002, she worked as a project manager for Auberge Resorts and later took a senior position with RBF Consulting. From 1990 to 1998, she served on the board of San Francisco Urban Planning + Research Association, a public-policy think tank.

Her life also included a stint in the limelight. She was named Playboy's Playmate of the Month for December 1969. In 1970, she was arrested in Greece and convicted of smuggling 38 pounds of hashish across the border from Turkey, receiving a ten-month prison sentence. She married Richard Dodson in 1984; they were divorced at the time of her death in 2006. She was 57.