My Daughter the Rocket Scientist

My dad loved to brag about me – his only daughter out of six kids. When I worked as an engineer for a satellite company some years ago, he would introduce me as “my daughter, the rocket scientist.” This was not strictly true. I was writing test plans for software aboard satellites, and had little to do with the actual rockets. But he liked saying it, so I didn’t argue.

Dad had a lot of respect for smart women. He married one – my mom. They met at Catholic University, while Mom was a Chemistry major and he was studying Chemical Engineering. So it was no surprise that they had smart children – all six of us ended up in engineering or computers.

When dad was laid off from his Chemical Engineering job at Union Carbide in the seventies, he decided to open a Radio Shack franchise store. All the kids worked there as we grew up. Dad was our first employer, and taught us how to treat customers and count change and add columns of numbers quickly without a calculator. We had one of the first personal computers – the Radio Shack TRS-80.

I did well in school. Dad always acted shocked and amazed when I would come home with a graded test with 110% on it.

“How can you get more than 100%?” he would tease.“I got the extra credit, Dad.”

“That makes no sense. You can’t have over 100%. Those teachers don’t know what they’re doing.” He would walk away, shaking his head, with a grin sneaking out of the corners of his mouth.

Later I would overhear him tell his customers at Radio Shack about his daughter who go over 100% on her test, and how those teachers needed to learn some basic math skills. Through his joking and teasing, he was bragging about me.

There was no question that my dad supported my dreams, from the beginning. He never doubted that I could succeed in whatever I set my mind to. One of his favorite sayings was, “you do all right…for a girl.” In that pause before the second half of the sentence I felt his pride and his love, and the anticipation of the joke at the end.

I lost my father 3 years ago. I still feel his presence, cheering me on. I’m no rocket scientist, but I do all right. For a girl.