And the first time I went into one, a fellow asked a question and he said: ‘Katherine is here, ask her. And when someone noted that women didn’t attend those meetings, she followed up with: “Is there a law that says I can’t go?”Īnd her boss said, ” ‘Let her go,’ ” Johnson said. She said she “wanted to know what they talk about.” So she asked. Usually only the men wrote papers, and they would all gather in a room to discuss the findings. Johnson said she was one of the first women to attend an editorial meeting at the agency. “They never asked me to go back over because when I did it, I had done my best, and it was right,” she said. You were only as good as your last answer. “He asked me to do it, and I did it.”Īt the end of the day, “color didn’t matter” at NASA, she said. Johnson shrugged and said, “He knew I had done before for him, and they trusted my work,” she said. How, she was asked, did she know Glenn was referring to her? “Get that girl,” she remembered Glenn saying. And while Johnson doesn’t remember seeing every single shot or scene in the film, her memories of her work are sharp.Ĭlad in a pink turtleneck and a snow white shawl, with her silver hair styled gently atop her head, Johnson recalled how John Glenn, the astronaut and longtime senator who died last month, insisted on her calculations for Friendship 7, the first mission to orbit Earth. Her daughters, Joylette Goble Hylick and Katherine Goble Moore, said she’s seen “Hidden Figures” three times. Johnson speaks these days with a slight rasp in her voice but carries the same confidence that prompted NASA engineers to turn to her for help in planning the Mercury and Apollo space missions by, among other things, calculating the distance between Earth and the moon. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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