What was your first job and what did you learn from it?

Hoed corn for 50 cents a day. I learned that men get more money than women because the boys got $1.50 and I got 50 cents. And that life is not fair.

What are you most proud of?

In my personal life, my three children. One boy and two girls. It's been my most rewarding accomplishment.

Professionally, designing an alternative backup for UNIVAC 1 that had electrostatic memory and was microcoded. Although it was never built, it was completely designed. It was a real accomplishment. It was probably the first machine that was ever microcoded.

Who is your hero, mentor or person you most admire and why?

My Aunt Gretchen was my role model. She got out of Missouri and was a school teacher. She would come home in the summer with Hammacher suits and jewelry on her fingers. We lived on a farm and were very poor. She was all dressed up all the time and I was out milking cows.

One of my goals in life was not to have kids and not get married. I used to see all these farm women with these kids hanging off their skirts and women who said they couldn't do something because of their husband.

Aunt Gretchen married at 40 and moved to California. He opened an automobile agency. The war started and she became a riveter.

She loaned us money to go to college for two years. It was $25 a month. I went to a little teacher's college. It paid my tuition and room and I had to work.

We used to sit outside and talk and they would ask us what we were doing and what we thought. Since my aunt was a school teacher she knew how to talk to young people. She was very reserved with us, she would ask us questions and tell us things. It was really the highlight of my year - the Fourth of July, Christmas and my Aunt Gretchen coming home in the summer.

What advice would you give to young women who want to enter your field?

Be prepared is the first thing. I think that's true in a career. Be open to opportunities. I don't think we can really control what happens to us that much. Every time an opportunity occurs we should grab it. I think you have to work hard and be lucky enough to work with brilliant people. You can't control what other people do, but you can control your reaction to it.

A lot of things in my life I learned at 40 that other people learned at 20. Do one thing at a time and when you are under a deadline, you have to do one thing at a time.

I fortunately have a good trait - one. No matter how bad things are, I can only panic and worry about it for 20 minutes, and then I say, "It's out of my hands." And I honest-to-god feel calm.

We (I was pregnant and had the two kids with me) were flying back (to Philadelphia) from Missouri and they came on the intercom and said we had to make an emergency landing in Dayton, Ohio because the lights say the engine is on fire. These young stewardesses are running all around and my seven year old son looks up at me and says, "We're in trouble, aren't we?" I said yes and he looked up at me and asked, "What are you going to do?" I panicked, and then I realized there was nothing I could do and we eventually got back to Philadelphia. My husband was wild at the airport, saying, "My God, my whole family could have been killed." He did not want me to fly. I didn't fly for about 6 years.

Most important, be at the right place at the right time.