Browsing by Subject "Northwest Airlines Corporation"

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    Oral history interview with Mildred Gignac
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2015-11-05) Gignac, Mildred
    Mildred “Millie” Gignac grew up in Carver City, Minnesota, then moved with her family to St. Paul in 1933-34. After high school, she worked briefly for the government then joined Northwest Airlines and became supervisor of the payroll department. She married a Turkish man, moved briefly to Colorado, then overseas to Syria for several years. She returned to the Twin Cities and joined Remington Rand Univac and became secretary to the director of financial control in 1956. She ascended the corporate ladder and eventually became Univac’s first female director (in 1980) with responsibility for benefits and administration. She discusses the several Univac locations where she worked, starting with the original ERA plant and the newer one on Shepard Road, both in St. Paul. After a tour of duty in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, working on information systems for employee records, she returned in 1974 to Univac’s Defense Systems division and the Eagan facility, where she continued executive positions in benefits and administration until her retirement in 1986. She offers comments on a set of Datamation advertisements from 1967. This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”
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    Oral history interview with Molly Lou Reko
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2015-11-30) Reko, Molly Lou
    Molly Lou Reko grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and graduated from Colorado College in 1958 with a degree in math, then taught mathematics at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. After taking time to raise children, she attended master’s classes at the University of Minnesota (her husband Al Reko then worked for Control Data in Minnesota) in the early 1970s and became connected to the local Minnesota educational computing network TIES, or Total Information for Educational Systems. Her husband encouraged her, with the background in mathematics and teaching, to apply to Control Data. She went to work on the PLATO multi-media computer project. She describes several PLATO programming languages, learning activities or modules, and educational products. She developed PLATO content for the Control Data Institutes, describing William Norris and his deep enthusiasm for PLATO, then managed a group of two dozen PLATO programmers. She also relates her experience with Control Data’s emphasis on corporate social responsibility, including early hiring of women and minorities, as well as work on CDC microcomputers. She completed a master’s degree in computer design and development at University of St. Thomas. In 1989 Control Data’s PLATO division was sold to The Roach Organization (TRO), then in 1991 she went to work for Northwest Airlines initially doing corporate education with microcomputers then working on worldwide installation of computing resources for Northwest’s Airport of Preference system. She offers assessments of Datamation advertisements from the late 1960s. This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”