The Cherokee woman from Park Hill, Oklahoma, the great-great-granddaughter of John Ross, the student of mathematics at Northeastern State, the teacher who became a human computer who became a licensed engineer who worked on missile trajectories and planetary flight calculations for three decades — she was part of the reason the space age happened when it did and went where it went.

How large a part?

That cannot be stated with certainty.

The classified record obscures the specific and the archival record is incomplete.

But the documented portion of her career — the thirty-one years, the professional license, the technical handbook, the work in Lockheed’s most advanced environment — is enough to establish her place in the history of American aerospace without requiring the gaps to be filled with speculation.

Her place is documented.