14 Mighty Women Whose Bold Lives Will Inspire You
by
by
2 min readThe basketball player who led the U.S. to victory over the Soviet Union. The top-secret flight engineer who helped write NASA's Planetary Flight Handbook. The journalist who shone a spotlight on President Nixon's corruption during the Watergate hearings. These women may not have marble monuments marking their accomplishments, but wow: They got stuff done.
In honor of Women's History Month this March, let's take a minute and get to know 14 mighty women whose names ought to be more famous than they currently are.
Mary G. Ross (1908–2008)
Indian Country Media Network
After growing up Cherokee in Oklahoma and spending her young adulthood as a teacher, Mary G. Ross went to work during WWII as a mathematician for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation — then proceeded to become its first Native American engineer as well as its first woman engineer. As one of the founding members of Lockheed's top-secret "Skunk Works" think tank, which eventually became the Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., Ross worked on design concepts for interplanetary space travel, manned and unmanned earth-orbiting flights, and the earliest studies of orbiting satellites for both defense and civilian purposes.
"We were taking the theoretical and making it real." — Mary G. Ross
Mary McGrory (1918–2004)
Getty Images / The LIFE Picture Collection / Gjon Mili
Washington D.C. journalist Mary McGrory embodied a journalist's potential to shape public opinion by offering bold perspectives on the day's news. McGrory covered political happenings in the nation's capital for five decades, from the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s through the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The highlight of her career came in the 1970s, when her Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary on the Watergate scandal helped push President Richard Nixon — who had put her on his personal enemies list — to resign in disgrace.
TAGS
