Hop to It!

Hop to It!

Easter 38

 

We tend to think of retiring military officers as being in their late forties or early fifties.  Some retire even earlier, having entered military service at the age of eighteen or twenty-one and then serving twenty years before retiring.  The US Navy, though, actually had four officers who served into their eighties and two served on active duty for life due to their promotions as fleet admirals.

 

During World War II, women had the opportunity to enlist and many did, forgoing their jobs in order to do so.  My own mother was one such patriot who gave up a teaching career to enlist in the US Army.  One particular young woman also enlisted.  She had first been denied and then later accepted to her first choice for college at Vassar.  She later earned a masters and doctorate at Yale University and returned to Vassar to teach mathematics.  She took a leave of absence from Vassar in 1943 and, after obtaining an exemption for being too thin, she enlisted in the US Navy’s women’s corps known as the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service).  After several tours and retirements, she would retire as the oldest active-duty commissioned officers in the United States Navy at the age of seventy-nine years, eight months, and five days.

 

Grace Murray Hopper was a most curious child.  Her mother restricted her at the age of seven to dismantling only one alarm clock at a time.  Grace, you see, had actually torn apart seven in order to determine how they worked before her mother realized her actions.  This curiosity would serve her well during World War II.

 

Grace was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University.  She coauthored a series of papers regarding the Mark I computer programming.  She would go on to invent computer programming language that we all know as COBOL and FORTRAN.  IN the 1970’s Grace Hopper advised the Department of Defense they needed to downsize their massive mainframe computers.  She foresaw replacing the large centralized systems with networks of smaller computers.  These small computers would have easily accessible databases that users could utilize from their own workstations.  This also necessitated the standardization of programming language among major computer vendors.

 

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is the largest gathering of women in technology in the world.  She epitomizes the potential of each woman today and is the reason we should encourage young girls to participate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as well as the arts.

 

“The most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ I say, “Try it.” And I back ’em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir ’em up at intervals so they don’t forget to take chances.”

 

Grace Murray Hopper is a role model for us all regardless of whether we are in computers or technology or simply sitting at home reading a blog post.  We need to remind ourselves that we can do this thing called life.

 

The Places You’ll Go

The Places You’ll Go

Easter 35

 

We have all seen and most likely heard them – those strong-willed, independent thinkers in small packages.  Yep, I’m talking about children who have no understanding of the phrase “Children should be seen and not heard.”  Moreover, they seem to think – that’s it, think, as in for themselves.  These are the children that make a teacher want to change professions.  These are the children no one really wants to sit next to on an airplane.  We’ve all seen them and most probably, tried to avoid them.  More often than not, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, such children were usually males, boy with way too much energy to properly behave. 

 

For centuries, little girls were told to sit and be seen, not heard.   They were expected to dress in layers of frills and lace and suppress any inkling they might have had of exploring nature.  As women began to speak out and seek independence and recognition for being human beings capable of more than simply breeding, young girls joined the ranks of those horrid little boys who were considered problem children.  Soon even little girls began to be a part of the group of children everyone wanted to avoid.  And yet, these are the very children who grow up to become something no one ever imagined.

 

Bette Nesmith was a strong-willed child, a little girl who was not going to win the Best Citizenship Award in her school.  A disciplinary problem for most of her public school career, Bette dropped out of school at age seventeen.  She applied for a job as a secretary even though she couldn’t type.  Her employers liked her spirit and spunk and hired her.  They sent her to secretarial school to learn how to type and at night she earned her high school diploma.  At age eighteen Bette married her high school sweetheart and gave birth soon after to a son named Michael.  (Michael would grow up tall and lanky with a musical talent that led him to become part of the 60’s pop music phenomenon called “The Monkees”.)

 

Her marriage to her high school sweetheart only lasted three years but Bette remained a secretary and worked her way up to becoming an executive secretary at a large bank in Dallas, TX.  Several years later the bank ordered new typewriters, electric ones with a new type of ribbon.  Bette’s typing skills had not improved greatly over the years, however, and trying to correct a mistake with the new ribbons proved almost impossible. 

 

Texans are not known for simply laying down and letting life roll over them.  True to her home state, Bette used her brains to figure out an answer to her problem.  In 1956 she created a substance that she could “paint” over the incorrectly typed letter, providing a new blank space upon which to type the correct letter.  She called the liquid “Mistake Out” and soon other secretaries began asking for some.  Bette had mixed white paint with water but consulted a chemistry teacher to improve on her original recipe, changing the name to Liquid Paper.  She set up a mini factory in her garage for this part-time business with her son helping her.  She was fired from her job at the bank when she mistakenly typed the name Liquid paper on a letter instead of the bank’s name. 

 

The company that began because of her poor typing ability now became her sole paycheck.  The company was not an instant hit but slowly it did gain popularity and the income increased.  In 1964, Bette’s recipe for erasing typing mistakes was being produced in over five thousand bottle per week.  Four years later they moved to an actual factory, sold more than one million bottles and made over one million dollars in profits.

 

By this time Bette had remarried and in 1975, the company built a headquarters office in Dallas.  The little garage business that once produced five hundred bottles a week was now producing five hundred bottles per minute.  In 1979 Bette Nesmith Graham sold her Liquid Paper company to the larger GIlette Corporation for forty-eight million dollars.

 

The strong-willful child who could never sit still or quietly in class used the royalties from her business to establish the Betty Claire McMurray Foundation and the Gihon Foundation.  Both foundations support women’s welfare and women’s efforts in both business and the arts.  Betty Claire McMurray was Bette Nesmith Graham’s maiden name.  The Gihon Foundation has a think tank called the Council on Ideas in Santa Fe, New Mexico which is devoted to helping solve world problems.

 

Bette never apologized for being a free spirit or independent thinker nor was she limited by her gender.  She firmly believed that women had a place in business and could offer a nurturing quality to the male-dominated business community.  Her company headquarters featured a greenbelt as well as a fish pond, employee library, and child care center, something very rare in the early 1970’s.

 

We need to encourage thinking like Betty Claire McMurray Nesmith Graham.  There is much to be said for good manners and as a former teacher, I fully understand the need for a classroom without disruption.  We can, though, develop both the mind and environment in such a way that it encourages children instead of suppressing them.  The willful artistic little girl who was not perfect embraced her imperfection as well as her brain and helped millions learn to type – myself included.  Hopefully, we all will do embrace our imperfections and rise above them today and for all the tomorrows to come.

Lady Edison

Lady Edison

Easter 16

 

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”  While most people remember Thomas Edison as a most prolific inventor whose devices ushered in the modern world, he was also a speaker of truth.

 

Few people would have looked at Beulah Louise Henry and compared her to Thomas Alva Edison.  Most would have seen just a pretty face but she quickly changed that perception.  Born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in North Carolina, Beulah was educated at Elizabeth College.  At the age of twenty-five she received her first patent for a vacuum Ice Cream Freezer.  In 1932 she received a patent for a typewriter that could produce four copies of a page.

 

Beulah Henry explored her “girly” side as well.  Among her 49 patents and one hundred and ten inventions is the umbrella with a removable cover that could be changed so as to coordinate with one’s outfit.  She also invented soap-filled sponges for children known as Dolly Dips, a bobbin-less sewing machine, and linked envelopes for greater ease in mass mailings.

 

Some of Beulah Henry’s inventions were for industry.  Her Henry valve for inflatable devices is still being sold today.  Other inventions were of a more whimsical nature like movable eyes for dolls.  Thomas Edison once said “There is no substitution for hard work” and Beulah Henry lived that maxim.  She started two companies after she moved to New York in the mid 1920’s.  She later worked for a large company but never did she give up.

 

Thomas Edison never spoke until his was four years old.  It is said that as a child he had a most intimidating stare and often spoke only one word … “Why?”  His teacher evicted him from his one-room schoolhouse when he was twelve and he spent his later school years being homeschooled by his mother.  We know very little of Beulah Louise Henry’s early life but as an adult she defied convention and lived mostly in hotels.

 

Both of these two examples give credence to our discussion yesterday regarding perception.  Edison was considered unteachable and his active mind if present today in a child would have most likely been labeled ADHD and medicated.  Henry was self-taught when it came to engineering and mechanical apparatus.  The world would be a much different place if not for the inventions of these two people, people who varied from the expected.

 

When we try to label a person or pigeon-hole their potential because we perceive them to be different, we limit the world’s potential and our own.  Before her death in 1973, Beulah Henry became a consultant for many companies, helping to develop products for both industry and households.  Unlike many female inventors, she lived on the income from her inventions and was often given credit for them.  Beulah Henry never married, remaining self-sufficient and active not only with her inventions but with interests in fine arts and charities, especially those working with animals. 

 

“If we did all the things were we capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”  Edison’s words ring very true in regards to this series’ emphasis on uselessness of gender bias.  Beulah Louis Henry is just one example of how perceptions should not inhibit another person’s potential and efforts to succeed.

Thinking Differently

Thinking Differently

Easter 2

 

Two days ago Newsweek reported a change in a centuries old custom of Kenya’s Maasai tribe.  Like many cultures, the tribe had a coming-of-age ceremony for both men and women.  Unfortunately, for the past centuries, the ceremony included genital mutilation for the females of the tribe. 

 

Throughout their history, the traditions of the tribe have influenced every aspect of their living.  Now, traditional African communities like this one are accepting alternative ceremonies.  The result is that fewer girls are entering into marriage without their personal consent at the age of eleven or twelve and are allowed to remain in school.  As one young girl remarked:  “I am very happy because I will not be married off at this age.  I will now go to school and achieve my dream of becoming a doctor.”

 

Temple Grandin did not grow up in Africa but graduated from Arizona State University in the United States of America.  She escaped a different type of cultural enslavement, however, that of being labeled “different”.  Dr. Grandin achieved her dream of earning her doctorate in animal science.  Although she did not speak until age four, she is now a world-renowned teacher and speaker, having invented several animal-=handling devices that reduce stress and improve overall health of cattle in the world.

 

I will pause here to admit that for the vegans in my readership, Dr. Grandin may seem like an unusual subject to begin our series on women inventors.  However, the eating of meat provides life for many people, a large number of whom cannot obtain or perhaps eat enough vegetarian meals to substitute the nutrients obtained by eating cattle.  Yes there is methane gas produced by beef cattle but it is less than half that produced by dairy cattle.  Cattle are ruminants and their practice of grazing actually improves the world’s food availability.  While we need to improve our care of the environment and our living practices that affect it, let us save that discussion for later.

 

Let’s turn our focus back to the females who have changed our world and Dr. Temple Grandin, an accomplished female inventor who lives with autism.  Dr. Grandin credits her interest and belief that animals should not be mistreated or placed in situations that result in a lower quality of life to living with the stigma of a diagnosis such as autism.  She has designed a number of inventions that use behavioral principles instead of excessive force to help control animals. 

 

“Dr. Grandin’s restraint systems keep animals calm and prevent them from getting hurt and her center-track restraint system is currently used to handle nearly half of all the cattle in North America. She also has designed livestock handling facilities in the United States, Canada, Europe, and New Zealand.” This description is from the website women-inventors.com

 

She is also a prolific author on the subject of autism.  Dr. Grandin is currently a professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University.  Her achievements dispel the myth that people who think differently cannot contribute to the world, lead “normal lives” or have anything to offer.   Like all of our women inventors in this series, she overcame gender bias as well as other false assumptions to survive and thrive.

 

We all encounter people who have low expectations for us.  Perhaps it is because of our skin color, the shape of our eyes or the size of our nose.  What we cannot do is adopt those low expectations or stop trying to accomplish our dreams.  It is only by thinking differently that the world moves forward and new inventions arise. 

 

I will close with a favorite quote of mine which comes from a 1980’s era television commercial campaign for Apple computers.  Alas it was not written by a woman but by Rob Siltanen; no matter, it is perfect for our discussion about Dr. Temple Grandin.  I hope it inspires you to think a little differently today and to give thanks that we are all not carbon copies but unique individuals.

 

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”