With each passing year, it seemed that the work Mary loved and the community service that gave her life meaning were becoming one and the same. She earned her engineering title through hard work, talent, and drive, but the opportunity to fight for it was made possible by the work of the people who had come before her. Dorothy Vaughan had had a positive impact on her career and on the phenomenon-in-waiting that was Katherine Johnson. Dorothy Hoover had shown that a black woman was capable of the highest level of theoretical aeronautical research. Pearl Young, Virginia Tucker, Kitty Joyner—Mary
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