
The U.S. Navy's "hidden figure," Raye J. Montague speaks during and interview with THV 11's Craig O'Neill at the Little Rock Rotary Club's weekly meeting Tuesday.
“I didn’t realize it, but I broke a lot of glass ceilings, and it wasn’t that I was intending to,” Raye J. Montague said Tuesday at the Little Rock Rotary Club’s weekly meeting. “It was just, these are things that I wanted to do, and I saw no reason that I couldn’t do them.”
Montague, who retired as an internationally registered engineer in 1990, was interviewed by THV 11 News’ Craig O’Neill for the event.
She spoke about how, as a black woman in the U.S. Navy, she was able to do incredible things, like revolutionize naval ship design, despite a racist and sexist system that was in place. She’s considered a “hidden figure,” a reference to the film “Hidden Figures,” which tells the story of three African-American women who helped engineer America’s space program.
Montague’s first obstacle was the University of Arkansas denying her an engineering degree. So she pursued and received a bachelor’s in business administration instead, from AM&N College (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff).
She began working for the Navy in 1956 as a digital computer systems operator at the David Taylor Naval Ships Research & Development Center, now known as the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Potomac, Maryland.
It was there that a supervisor gave her a “so-called impossible task,” which changed the course of her career for the better.
The task was to, in six months, get a computer system to work that the Navy had already spent six years and $600,000 on.
Her office’s computer was shuttered at 7 p.m., and she couldn’t get big blocks of time during the day to work because others needed to use it. So she started coming back at 7:30 p.m. to turn the computer on and work late without pay for the extra hours.
When her boss discovered she’d been coming in late, he told her she couldn’t work there alone at night. So she brought her 3-year-old son and her mother to keep her company. Eventually, her boss assigned staff to help Montague meet the outrageous deadline.
As that work neared completion, Montague asked to design a ship using the system. Montague said she was told no one would use it. That changed a few weeks later, when President Richard Nixon took office and his administration told the Navy to design a particular ship in two months instead of the standard two years.
Montague’s boss asked her to design it in a month; she did it in 18 hours and 26 minutes.
To this day, Montague has seen her first ship in photos, but not in person. She was not allowed to attend its launch, but recalled meeting a captain when she was named a “hidden figure” in April. He told her that first ship she designed was the first he’d sailed on.
Designing that ship launched her career, Montague said.
She’s been honored numerous times since then, with the Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award, a nomination from the Secretary of the Navy for the Federal Woman of the Year Award and scholarships that bear her name.
Montague also worked on the Navy’s first landing craft helicopter-assault ship. The last project she had a hand in was the Seawolf-class nuclear submarine. Another of her ships was involved in an attack on ISIS two years ago.
Montague said she also helped develop the CAD system, which is used to produce ships, clothing, cars and — by her own dentist — false teeth.
Montague, who said a teacher once told her to “aim for the stars, at the very worst you’ll land on the moon,” was also on the team that figured how to retract the arm of NASA’s moon soil sample-collecting robot.
Montague is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.