Edwards, Painter, Herrmann, and Dingerson
descendants
|
Dorothy
(Dottie) Jane Edwards Dale Hughes
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Her Careers When
I was a little girl, my favorite game to play was “school.” I would
line up my little sister's friends on the steps, either in my house or in
front of the house, and I would stand up in front of them and play school. I
guess I always wanted to be a teacher. It would be thirty years before I got
a job teaching real school. While
I was in High School, my favorite teacher was my math teacher. I loved math
and managed to take every level of math my school offered. He advised me to
take chemistry and physics for my electives, and I did. I fell in love with
science courses, so I naturally wanted to major in those classes when I
enrolled in the University of Tennessee. I graduated in 1947 with a B.S. in
Science, a major in chemistry and a minor in physics. By attending college an
extra quarter, I was able to take enough courses in Education to earn a
Teacher's Certificate to teach both of those subjects. There
was more than studying going on throughout those years. I joined a hiking
club while I was a sophomore, and we took a group of hikers into the Great
Smoky Mountain Park several times a year. On one of those hikes, I met Bill
Dale, who enjoyed hiking even more than I did. We had several conversations
along the trail that l enjoyed, but nothing that set my heart fluttering. Later
I enrolled in an advanced electricity class. When I walked into the lab on
the first day, I stood in the doorway and looked around and saw only men, not
a single woman in the room--and I knew none of the men. I did not know what
to do. They were all around their chosen lab tables, and I was shy to select
a seat. Then Bill Dale stood up and yelled, “Hi, Dottie, come sit at our
table.” What a relief! I walked over to his table and we became partners for
that class. We fell in love and later became romantic partners. We remained
together for the rest of his life. In
1946, I managed to get a job with the Manhattan Project where the Atomic Bomb
that helped us win World War II was developed. The facility was only
thirty-two miles north of Knoxville. My job was to run tests to determine the
amount of radiation in the water that cooled the material in the
rods. Bill
finished his Masters degree in Physics and found a job with Thiokol at
Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. He worked as an engineering project
director on such projects as the retro-rocket that slowed down the module
that insured man's first landing on the moon was safe. When we moved in
October of 1951 we had a two-year-old son, so we decided I would stay home
with him as long as we could live off his salary alone. By
1970, we realized we had children who would soon be going to college, and we
didn't have the money we needed to help them get the education they wanted. I
decided I would try to get a job teaching. I discovered my teaching
credentials from Tennessee were lacking six classes to earn an Alabama Certificate,
so I decided I would add just a few more and get a Master's degree. That way,
I would be paid more each year. In 1972 I got a job teaching ninth and tenth
grades science at Huntsville High School where my children were going to
school. The next year I was asked to teach chemistry and physics classes.
Within three years of teaching physics, I was teaching six classes; since I
could only teach five classes, we had to bring in one of the math teachers to
teach one of the physics classes. I loved teaching, and I especially loved
teaching physics. During
the fifteen years I taught high school science, chemistry and physics, I
received several awards of which I am very proud. In 1983 I received the
Alabama American Association of Physics Teachers Award which is awarded by
the science teachers in our state. In 1984 I received the E. Scott Bar Award
for Excellence in Teaching Physics, an award given by the physics teachers of
several Alabama Universities. I cherish this award because I was nominated
for it when one of my former students, a physics student, gave me the credit
when his professor told him he was the best prepared student in all his
classes. His professor then nominated me for the award. In 1987, one of my
fellow science teachers at Huntsville High School nominated me to be the
recipient of The Presidential Award for Excellence from the state of Alabama.
This is awarded each year by the President of the United States to a science
teacher and a math teacher from each state in an effort to encourage more
teachers to be science teachers. The award included an all-expense-paid
week-long stay in Washington with my husband at the Mayflower Hotel. We were
treated to an elaborate dinner at the White House with President Ronald
Reagan. While there, we had a chance to meet our senator (whose brother Bill
worked with). We also attended lectures, toured the House Chambers, etc. It
was an experience of a lifetime that Bill and I enjoyed very much. One
summer during my years of teaching, the scientists working at Redstone
Arsenal invited all of the high school science teachers in our area to apply
for a month-long summer job. They thought doing so might encourage teachers
to recommend students interested in space travel to enroll in one of the many
youth programs there at Redstone Arsenal. I, along with several others, was
hired to work along with them. I learned a lot about planning the trajectory
of rockets. I later incorporated this experience into a presentation for my
physics students. I
have the unique privilege to say that I am one of the few women who worked at
both the Manhattan Project and the Space and Rocket Center where the United
States of America was preparing the world for space travel. It is my opinion
that the two big accomplishments of the United States from the 1940s through
the 1960s was making the atomic bomb to end the Second World War and opening
up space travel with the work done at Redstone Arsenal. I
loved my teaching career, but I had another career that I loved even more: I
am the lucky mother of five children of whom I am very proud. Also, I was
wife of two very good and loving men: Bill Dale and I had 48 very
happy and interesting years together before he died. Six years after his
death, I was fortunate to meet a retired minister whose loving and kind
manner brought happiness to me. I married Ken Hughes in 2001, and we had ten
loving years together. Bill and I took rearing our children very seriously
and were proud that they all chose to get a good education: nine degrees
between them! They all chose careers that centered on helping others and all
have found happiness in their marriages. They have had fifteen children among
them. Now, at my age of ninety-two, they are all giving me loving
care. I think raising my family with successful results is worthy of
considering it a career. I
thought I had completed my comments on my careers until my daughter read my
paper and declared “Mom, you didn't write about all the things you and Dad
did to make us proud to be in our family! Write about what you did for our
neighborhood, our school, church and our city.” To make her happy, I am
including a few things that we enjoyed doing. We intended these activities to
show our children how they could some day become involved and make their
community a better place. We
became active in the Parent-Teacher Association, and Bill even served as
president one year. We attended sports events, plays, and all other school
activities. We introduced our children to activities put on by our city, such
as plays, picnics, and celebrations. During our involvement in the
Blossomwood Neighborhood Association, we helped build a new swimming pool.
All of our children participated in swim teams and had weekly swim meets with
other neighborhood swim teams around the Huntsville area. We voted at every
opportunity. Getting involved with the efforts to start a Symphony Orchestra
in Huntsville was very rewarding. Bill was a member of the Symphony Board on
which he later served as President and I helped organize a Women's support
group, the Symphony Guild, for which I served in many positions, including
President. Although we introduced our children to symphony concerts, we
discovered quickly that was not their cup of tea. Bill got involved with the
Boy Scouts and I with Girl Scouts when our children were of the right age. We
opened our rec room as a meeting place and for three years I had twenty-four
junior high school girls come to my house for one afternoon each week for
their meetings. We
were very active in our Church, never missing Sunday School or Church (except
for sickness or being out of town). Both Bill and I sang in the choir. I
started a children's choir, which soon grew to two choirs, that practiced
once a week. I continued those until I began teaching school ten years later.
Bill and I each served in various capacities, and I give that church an A+
for keeping my children active and involved and out of trouble during
their difficult teen years. Then,
there were the trips we made with our first four children. For ten years, we
had only the four oldest children at home. We made two trips out west and
visited most of the National Parks in that area. Our trips were always in our
station wagons, always with our luggage riding on top, with only one suitcase
per child, always with paid-in advance reserved rooms in a motel where we
expected to arrive. One summer we traveled all around Alabama, stopping at
historical and other interesting sites. The children still remember seeing
the painting of Sam Dale, whom we have reason to believe is related to us, in
the rotunda of the capital building in Montgomery. We spent weeks planning
those trips, but oh, how we enjoy remembering them! We also took the children
to the New York World's Fair, on a week's visit to Washington D.C., hikes in
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, hikes in the Teton Mountains, and on
a trip to the Gulf Coast to do some deep sea fishing. These trips provided
another way to educate our children of the wonderful country we are
privileged to call home. Bradley,
who was born much later than our other children, also came on many trips when
he was the only child at home. Brad and I took a six-week trip to join Bill
when he was heading a team who spent several months examining Missiles that
were stored in Germany. While I was working, Brad and I traveled to several
countries in Europe. Every year Bill was allowed three full weeks, and later
four weeks, for vacations. He never missed a year, taking them all at one
time, something no one else he worked with did. As a child, Bill's father
never took the family on a vacation, so Bill declared he wasn't going to miss
a single one. I
think Deborah was right; I worked diligently enough as a wife and mother to
include these remarks as part of my “Family Career.” |
|
||||||||||||||||||