Reply #33: wow ... kudos to your mom ...

[Lisa]

I wouldn't be surprised if she were one of the few people on the street, who could explain how that TV worked!

My ex's mother worked at an aircraft plant during WWII, doing elaborate technical drawings of aircraft parts. (Sad that it took the war to make it possible for her to get a job that utilized her talents so perfectly.) She did really well, got promoted -- needless to say, that all ended after 1945. Despite the fact that her supervisors didn't want her to go, the management decided ... it wouldn't be "right" to have a woman designing aircraft, when there were so many unemployed men out there.

She was never the same afterwards. I don't believe she even picked up a drafting pen after she was sacked. She became depressed, and her health was affected. She'd be a star engineer today, if only she'd been born a few decades later!

Her son inherited some of her engineering ability, and went on to help design the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.


p.s. the McCarthyism virus spread outside of the US ... in Canada, some of my parents' friends were implicated. One in particular, who was the Canadian Ambassador to Egypt, was hounded to the point where he killed himself (under rather suspicious circumstances). It really did ruin people's lives.