MARY GOLDA ROSS

MARY GOLDA ROSS was the first woman engineer at Lockheed’s Missiles Systems Division (1952), and the first known Native American woman engineer. At Lockheed, Ross designed missiles and rockets, and developed systems for human space flight and interplanetary missions to Mars and Venus.

After retiring, she began a second career as an advocate for women and Native Americans in engineering and mathematics.

When she was 96 years old, Mary Golda Ross asked her niece to make her something very special: the first traditional Cherokee dress that Ross, the great-great-granddaughter of renowned Chief John Ross, would ever own.  Ross wanted to wear her ancestral dress to the opening of the Smithsonian's new National Museum of the American Indian. Wearing that dress of green calico, Ross joined in the procession of 25,000 Native peoples that opened the museum.  

QUIZ: Who invented the Barbie doll?

 

ANSWER:  RUTH HANDLER

 

Source: www.NWHP.org