Amazing Grace Hopper |
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Amazing Grace Hopper
Editors: Bette Brengle-Pool and Frances Epler-Brengle.
These Newsletters were distributed quarterly from 1983 until 1991.
Worthington Descendants Newsletter - Vol 1, No. 4, Page 3:
"A Living Lady Worthington Descendants Subscriber"
Capt. Grace Hopper, is the Navy's oldest active officer. She is 76 and says she is something of a character, and has spent years getting to be one. She was on "60 Minutes" and said, "Why would I want to be an admiral?" I'd have to be dignified and that wouldn't be any fun. She now has a public relations assignment from her superiors in Washington. She is a wonderful image figure for our young people - speaks of the potential of young people, the joys of learning, the need for risk-taking. Capt. Hopper says she's already received the highest award I could ever want. That has been the privilege and responsibility of serving very proudly in the United States Navy. She taught at Vassar for 12 years, and has the assistant professor of math at Barnard College when she left in December, 1943, to enlist in the Naval Reserves as a WAVE. We are mighty proud to have you with us Capt. Hopper.
[There is a picture of, then, Capt. Grace Hopper on that page]
Worthington Descendants Newsletter - Vol 3, No. 3, Page 3: April, 1985
One of Captain John Worthington's G.G._____ Granddaughters:
Commodore Grace Hopper tells us -
"A Ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
"I like the world of today, much better than that a half-century ago. Today the challenges are greater. I like our young people, they know more, they question more, and they learn more. They are the greatest asset this country has." Commodore "Cousin" Grace, wrote and told me that what she had learned about her ancestors on all sides, and the wars they had fought in; the things they had mastered, then with them behind her - she could do anything.
[There is a picture of President Reagan congratulating Commodore Hopper following her promotion ceremony at the White House.]
Worthington Descendants Newsletter - Vol 5, No. 1, Page 3: October, 1986
Amazing Grace - copy of a Newspaper clipping:
Female admiral, age 79, ends 45-year Navy Career
Boston (AP) - Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, the nation's oldest active military officer and co-inventor of the widely used computer language COBOL, retired yesterday aboard the Navy's oldest commissioned warship.
The 79-year-old Admiral Hopper, nicknamed the "Grand Old Lady of Software" and called "Amazing Grace" by her subordinates, was honored on the USS Constitution.
"I regret leaving active duty. Do you realize I'm the last of the World War II WAVES to leave active duty?" she told the 275 relatives, friends and Navy officers assembled on the desk.
"The only phase I've ever disliked is, 'Why, we've always done it that way,' " she said. "I always tell young people, 'Go ahead and do it. You can always apologize later.'"
The usual retirement age for a military officer is 62, but Admiral Hopper had remained on active duty under a procedure approved by Congress that allows yearly extensions.
"She's challenged at every turn the dictates of mindless bureaucracy," Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, Jr. said as he awarded her the Defense Department's highest honor, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal for exceptional meritorious service.
He recalled that Admiral Hopper once "gave me a stern lecture on computers. It was the roughest wire brushing I've had since I got this job."
An 18-piece Navy band played, an officer in a War of 1812 uniform presented Admiral Hopper with 43 roses, one for each year of her Navy career, and seamen scampered up the ship's rigging for a salute.
Admiral Hopper, whose great-grandfather was a rear admiral in the Civil War, joined the Naval Reserve in December, 1942, armed with a Ph.D. from Yale University, a decade as a mathematics professor at Vassar College and midshipman training at Smith College.
She later reported to duty in the basement of a laboratory at Harvard University, where she worked with machines designed to make calculations for the Allies fighting in Normandy. There she learned to program the first large-scale digital computer, Mark I.
Her husband died in the war, and she never remarried.
She remained in the Naval Reserve after the war and joined a company that was building the Univac I, the first commercial large-scale electronic computer. The company later merged into the Sperry Corp.
At Sperry she taught computers to design their own programs. She also worked on an idea the spawned COBOL, a programming language that changed computers from a tool for mathematicians to a tool for businesses. It became the most widely used language for large computers.
In 1966, Admiral Hopper retired form the Naval Reserve as a commander, but she was recalled less than a year later to impose a standard on the Navy's many computer languages.
With the retirement of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover in 1982, Admiral Hopper became the oldest officer still on active duty in the armed services. She won a special presidential appointment to the rank of rear admiral the following year.
[Picture: Adm. Grace Hopper salutes as she leaves the USS Constitution. Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. after retirement ceremony]
[Note with story: Rear Adm. Cousin Grace is one of Capt. John Worthingtons granddaughters. She descends through his oldest son John. We are mighty proud of her.]
Worthington Descendants Newsletter - Vol 10, No. 4, Page 4: [last edition 1991]
A duplicate article from Vol 3, No. 3.
Internet Websites for "Amazing" Grace
McKenzie, Marianne. "The Amazing Grace Hopper," Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, 1994 conference proceedings. TAP: The Ada Project web page on Grace Hopper at
Women of Mathematics: A Bibliographic Sourcebook, Louise Grinstein and Paul Campbell, Editors. Greenwood Press, 1987. June 1997
Note of Thanks to Cousin Roger for this website. The U.S. Navy has a couple of websites, however, they have moved and the webmaster has not been able to find them.