CHAPTER 1

THIS IS A STORY

This is a story about a mother who never talked to her children. Thisis a story about a wife who rarely talked to her husband, thoughthey were married for fifty-three years. This is a story of a woman whodesperately wanted happiness but could never summon the strength toreach for it. This is a story of a woman who had a family that loved her,but who struggled to love them in return. This is a story about a womanwhom people admired but could never get close to. This is a story of awoman who harbored many secrets and lived in daily fear that thosesecrets would one day be revealed. This is the story of a woman whotook those secrets to her grave. This is a story about America's firstfemale rocket scientist.

This is a story about my mother.

Mary Sherman was born on November 4, 1921, on a small farm ina remote corner of North Dakota. There is no record of who was presentthat day, as the Shermans were never great record keepers. On August4, 2004—eighty-two years later—Mary was admitted to the emergencyroom of West Hills Hospital in West Hills, California, with chest pains.Her husband (my father), G. Richard Morgan, was by her side. An hourlater, Mary was dead. There is no record of who else except my fatherwas present, as the Morgans have never been great record keepers.They wheeled her body out of the room, and a nurse collected the possessionsshe left behind: a handful of home-sewn clothing, fifty feet ofclear plastic oxygen tubing, and a plastic bag overflowing with exoticmedications.

That afternoon, my father began calling his children, whichincluded my brother, Stephen (a long-haul trucker), my sister Monica(a draftsman living in Oregon), and my sister Karen (a governmenthealth worker in nearby Orange County). He called me last and askedthat I write Mary's obituary for the Los Angeles Times. I told him Iwould be honored.

I did not expect any challenges writing her obit. Even though mymother always refused to discuss her 1950s top secret Cold War workwith any of her four children, we had learned quite a few things fromeavesdropping on little snippets of conversation between our parentsand their friends. We knew, for instance, that our mother had been arocket scientist, that her work included designing new and exotic rocketpropellants, and that she had made several historical achievements thathelped usher in the Space Age. Taking this obituary assignment mostseriously, I interviewed my father, found out a number of things I neverknew about my mother, wrote the obit, and submitted it to the Times.

I assumed that getting her obituary published would be a slamdunk, given that my mother was the inventor of hydyne—the rocketpropellant that boosted America's first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit.Her invention had helped rescue America's tarnished reputation in thewake of Russia's launch of Sputnik 1 and 2. It was a significant milestonein the history of America's space program, especially since shehad been the only woman out of nine hundred engineers, and she didn'teven have a college degree.

To my surprise, however, the Times refused to print the obit. Thereason, they said, was that my mother's life "could not be independentlyverified." They said that they had checked the claims in my obitarticle and could not verify any of them.

They could not verify any of them!

That was when I realized my mother's numerous accomplishmentsin the fields of rocketry and aerospace were already turning to dust andwere in danger of being lost to history forever. Apparently no one atNorth American Aviation had been very good at keeping records either,because two years later a former NAA engineer, Robert S. Kraemer,would write a book about the company. He would do it because noone else could. And the reason no one else could write it? According toKraemer, "The professional historians said there was not enough preserveddocumentation for them to write a proper history."

After seven years of working on this project, I can tell you this:Robert Kraemer and those "professional historians" were...