[MUSIC PLAYING]
Overnight Code? The book is titled Overnight Code because David's mother produced a code that designed the ship in less than 24 hours.
Converted a two-year process down to less than 24 hours, designing the first naval ship using a computer in history.
And it happened overnight.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the virtual studio with everybody, Marlee Givens, Fred Rascoe, and Wendy Hagenmaier. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it.
Our show today is called "Overnight Code," named after the book Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering.
Raye Montague was a Naval engineer who was deeply involved in the computer-aided design and manufacturing of Navy technology. The quote, "overnight code," as you heard in the cold open, is the automated system that she revised to produce the design for a Naval frigate in 18 hours. CHARLIE BENNETT: And that process happened overnight, thus, overnight code.
This episode is a tie-in with the Georgia Tech Library event, a discussion with the authors of Overnight Code, Paige Bowers and David Montague, happening on Tuesday, October 4. We have Paige and David on the show today, talking about why they wrote the book, citizen archiving, and their collaboration.
And our songs today are about not going it alone, inspiring others, and proof. And it's a show about a Naval designer, so there might be some nautically themed songs thrown in here and there, including this one about setting your own path in the face of obstacles. This is "Sailing On," by Toots and the Maytals, right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[MUSIC - TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS, "SAILING ON"]
(SINGING) Hey, hey.
You just heard "Sailing On," by Toots and the Maytals. This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is called "Overnight Code," after the book, Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering. Our guests are the authors of the book, Paige Bowers and David Montague.
Paige Bowers is a journalist whose work has appeared in national magazines and newspapers her previous book was The General's Niece-- The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought To Free Occupied France. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Dr. David Montague is associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he is a professor of criminal justice. David is Raye Montague's son, making this a very personal book.
CHARLIE BENNETT: David, let me start off by asking you, obviously, from your professional identity and spread, you've done a lot of writing. Is this the first time that you've done personal writing, something that really was your life and your loved ones?
That's a great question. The answer is, yes. It was very difficult. I had written a textbook before, dealing with drug policy. And for me, writing had always been about something more focused on society itself. This is my first time trying to write about something that was very personal, and quite frankly, could not have done it without my buddy, Paige, who really helped to bring the research to life. And so we just made a really fantastic team.
I would not have been able to write about something so personal without the help of somebody like her to help me to put it in perspective and tell the stories the right way. CHARLIE BENNETT: Were you all friends before you started working on the book or did you meet through the book? DAVID MONTAGUE: Through the book.
Yeah. My agent saw David's mother on Good Morning America and saw the potential for a really good story and reached out to the family. I was called in after the fact to help them bring a proposal to market. Originally, the plan was for me to work closely with David's mother on what would have been her memoir, but she passed away right as the book found a home. The focus shifted to something that was more biographical. And David and I began working together then to tell this wonderful story.
And in the process, you don't have to love everybody that you work with, right? You know that, right? But in the process, David and I-- this is a very personal book. You get to know each other. And then for me, as an interviewer, and a bit of an archive rat myself, you dig into this, and get to know someone. And David and I got along very well and have certain things in common, honestly. So he's never getting rid of me now. And I'm never getting rid of him.
It was such a difficult process. Like Paige said, originally, we met through the agent. And so that's kind of how we got to know each other. And then right when my mom was in hospice, one of the last things I was able to say to her was that I promised that we would finish this book.
It had to have been an experience completely separate from any writing experience you'd had before because it was, in a way, a grief-processing writing experience.
It was. It was therapeutic in many ways because it helped me to really explore a lot about her that I never really had thought a lot about. The sense of always using whatever opportunities she had to really benefit others was really that kind of selfless type of thing that you never really think about until you were going through that process and learning more. And we would interview people. And Paige and I had this system that we developed that--
Was it a system?
Yeah, it was. It was this process that we had or whatever. We would track the people down, and she would interview them. And it was just finding out more and more detail. And then it made me think about those last few years of when she was here. It was really interesting.
It made me understand that even though she was getting all that notoriety from being on Good Morning America and all the speaking engagements, that was nice to have the recognition, but she literally tried her very best to use it to inspire people. And it really sunk in after she was gone. And I got a chance to really think about that as we were writing the book.
Yeah.
Did you all rely mostly on primary sources? What was the character of the research?
There were a good number of interviews with people who had been in her life. I mean, there were some interviewing I did of his mother. There were documents. His mother was-- she kept track of everything professionally. But then there were some interesting personal nuggets in there, like she-- I found these notes. They were things like, you will meet someone soon. Or there will be a doctor in your family. And I was like David, what is this? And he goes, my mom used to see a psychic.
And I was like, OK. And so there would be these handwritten notes, her taking notes when she was in with the person and David was in the other room drinking a Coca-Cola. And then right next to each little note she took, there was a little check with the things that happened. So there were interesting nuggets like that. There were letters that she was writing to potential bosses, like to put herself in good position or like to be persuasive about getting a different job and so forth.
And you can see the thought process in drafting these notes. There were secondary sources too because this was a period of rich history. She was a person who definitely was born into a moment in terms of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights struggle but also when computers were coming into vogue and really starting-- people were really starting to use computers to do interesting things and experiment with them. And it was also a time when the US and Russia were locked in the Cold War.
So Russia came out of World War II with some more modernized ships and so forth. And the US was trying to rebuild its fleet. So for a woman who had a little bit of a tinkering side to step in this moment with all this, I guess, ferment is the way to say it, to step into the middle of this, it was a time that was ripe for her to become who she ultimately became.
We'll be back with more from Paige and David after a music set.
File this set under QA 76.6.N526.
[MUSIC - MA RAINEY, "PROVE IT ON ME BLUES"]
You just heard "Proof on Tape" by the Apollo Ghosts and before that, "Prove It on Me Blues" by Ma Rainey. Those were songs about having the evidence in hand.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and our guests today are the authors of Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman who Revolutionized Naval Engineering. Paige Bowers is a journalist, and Dr. David Montague, Raye Montague's son, is a professor and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Paige, you called yourself an archives rat. So was going through this material-- was it like going through a collection that you found in an archives, or did you see some things that were different from previously processed collections that you had worked with?
These were not processed at the time.
Yeah.
So that was one thing that was different. If you go into an archive like the Bibliotheque nationale, there's a very methodical process of what you're looking at, dated, organized, that sort of thing. This jumped through parts in time. And so you would have to reorient yourself as you were looking at the paperwork to kind of figure out where it fit into this big puzzle of life. As we found these papers and tried to make sense of them, you had to be a little more nimble.
You had to adjust to what you were finding and figure out where this fit into certain contexts. CHARLIE BENNETT: David, can you talk about the emotional experience of watching personal papers, your family's, your mom's personal papers, become research material and become a book?
Well, I mean, I grew up with her. I mean, Paige kind of talked about she documented everything. And I ended up doing a lot of the same thing professionally. And the reason she did it was because she felt-- this was before we had digital-- ability to digitize so many things. There are so many people that basically questioned her credentials, questioned her work and things like that. And so I was always used to seeing multiple, multiple copies of the same thing around the house.
And I mean, of course professionally, she had had people break into her files at work and try to sabotage things. And so I kind of grew up seeing a lot of that. But seeing it turned into research material, I thought it was just a perfect thing to happen because it just seemed to make sense to me that here it is I was thankful that she did that level of overthinking.
Again, it was therapeutic in the sense that when I was going through records around the house, I was able to collect some things for the book and then get rid of some things that were multiple-- I mean, I'm talking five, six, seven copies of the same thing. So there were photos. There were documents from work. When Paige came to visit here in Little Rock, I think she was surprised at how much material there really was. I don't know. Maybe you weren't.
But there were so many photos, so many documents. I had tried to go through and whittle them down to one copy of each, but still it was so difficult to do. I mean, she kept copies of everything, all her pay stubs, every promotion thing, every-- she kept copies of documents, correspondence in the Navy. And I kind of do the same thing now.
What I thought was kind of interesting about this process was how much of the same thing I was actually doing myself in the sense of really being very meticulous about documenting my work history. But it was really interesting to see it turn into like, hey, we already had this stuff. If she had not been so meticulous about what she had done, we wouldn't have had as much to work with.
She did do a lot in terms of providing interview material and so forth and talking about her story, the early parts of it. But quite frankly, if she hadn't left us all of these bits of information, it would have been harder, I think, to pull some of this together.
There was one piece-- David sent me this box early in the process of some of this material. And it landed on my front doorstep with a thud. And I wiggled it into my house, and I opened it up. And there was this binder in there. There was this binder in there, and I started flipping through the binder, not knowing what it was. And it took me a while to figure out that this was the binder of the code that his mother tweaked to design the first ship by computer.
And I thought to myself, God, this should be in an archive somewhere. What is this doing in my house? But it's treasures like that. That's one of the things that I love about archives. Sometimes you aren't quite sure what you're going to find. And then when you find it, it's like a little bit of magic that contributes to whatever you're there to write about or find out about. CHARLIE BENNETT: So how did you all split the actual process of writing the book? Did you have particular jobs?
Were you trying to be a two-headed author? How did you find your way to that co-writing relationship? I had begun writing some of it early in the process because when you draft a proposal, what you need to add or sample chapters, the original draft was written in what I guess I attempted to be her voice. And then we would toss things back and forth. David, is this right? David, is this-- how do you feel about this? I think it went relatively smoothly, though.
And it had to because there was not a tremendous amount of time to get it done. But it is done. And it's something-- it's a book that we're both particularly proud just because of the journey to get this complete.
And I would just add, in terms of the process that I called the system-- it really was not a system--
[INAUDIBLE]
But the process, the how we worked together, I mean literally downloaded my mom's iPhone contacts and put them on a Google sheet, and started reaching out to all-- and of course, people were like, who is this Paige person? So I'd have to kind of do like a preliminary contact with them. And so I was kind of like-- I was the investigator. I was kind of--
He was. That's exactly who he was.
Yeah. So I was pulling the material. And then Paige was doing the digging and pulling the material together, making it make sense. And I'm just telling you, I was just so-- I didn't really think of the connections until Paige was doing her-- I'll just call it magic, the way she's able to kind of take-- I mean, she's used to doing that type of thing. In her previous book, she did the same kind of thing. She's able to take bits and pieces and pull them together to make them make sense.
And that's something I don't have a talent for. I can dig, and I can find things people don't want me to find, but I can't tell the story in a way that she is able to. Does that make sense? So I think in that sense, we really balance off of each other very well because then we would kind of come together and fill in some of the gaps and things like that. Or it would lead to additional things that weren't even on our radar, perhaps.
Right.
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with more from Paige Bowers and Dr. David Montague, authors of the book Overnight Code on the left side of the hour.
Hi, this is Dr. Frasier Crane. I'm listening. Oh, no, wait.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, this is Alex McGee. I am the university archivist. And you are listening to Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show on WRAK Atlanta. (SINGING) Tell the man I'm coming. Tell them count the days. CHARLIE BENNETT: Our show today is called "Overnight Code," named after the book Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman who Revolutionized Naval Engineering. I'd like to read you the first paragraph of the first chapter of that book.
"Raye Means needed someone to give her a chance. On paper, the 21-year-old college graduate should have been a shoo-in for any job opening that required a bachelor's degree and a flair for math and science. But it was 1956. Although Washington, DC was on the verge of becoming the first majority-Black city in the country, there were still racist attitudes there that made it hard for a young woman like Raye to embark on a meaningful career.
She had already faced her share of obstacles back home in Arkansas, where she was treated as less than because of her gender, and then because of her race barred from pursuing the formal degree in engineering she wanted since she was seven years old. From that young age, though, she began viewing obstacles as challenges that could be solved another way. Whenever Raye ran into trouble, her mother, Flossie Jordan McNeil, advised her, kick like the devil and holler for help."
File this set under D362.N38.
[MUSIC- ARBUS, "45"]
You just heard "This Boat" by Joey Dee and the Starliners, and before that, "45" by Arbus, songs about not going it alone but going together by boat.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back to Lost in the Stacks. We're speaking to the authors of the book Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman who Revolutionized Naval Engineering. Paige Bowers is a journalist, and Dr. David Montague, Raye Montague's son, is a professor and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
There is a photograph of his mother. It was a black-and-white photograph with a gentleman. David's father was Ray's second husband. And we were trying to tell a story, weaving some of these other people through. And so I said is this her first husband? Who is this man? And when David was in DC, he took the picture to the man's sister and said, is this your brother? And so it was things like that helped us piece together these elements. The photographs told stories.
There's one that really-- if you think about a picture being worth a thousand words, this one said it all. It's a picture of one of those old, large computer rooms with the big processors all around the wall. And there are people sitting listening to someone talk. And it's a room full of white men and Raye Montague in the front row, the only woman, the only person of color. That is definitely in the book because that is what she faced, and it was illustrated right there just so perfectly.
In a way, you weren't sure if you could find something that illustrated just in a way outside of the words, outside of the research. You weren't sure if you could find something that could illustrate it as well as that picture did. I don't even know if David knew that picture was there, but when I was in Little Rock sitting in his office going through stuff with him, I found it. I'm like, would you look at this picture?
So we set that aside in a huge stack of photos that we had to whittle down to about 25 to 35 for the book. And it was very difficult to get to 25 or 35 because there's so many photographs that he and his mother kept. And they were all really wonderful. And because of the emotion tied up in this process it's-- gosh, you want to use it all, but you can't. You have to have to be discerning. CHARLIE BENNETT: Can you summarize-- it's such a-- there's so much going on here.
But can you summarize what you want a reader to take from this book once they've picked it up? What are you hoping to do for your readers? We talked about magic. Give them a bit of magic to show that you-- we all come up against certain obstacles at some point in our life. We all are told at some point you can't do that. You're not suitable for that or what have you. But this just kind of offers a different way through.
You can live the life of your dreams with some gumption and some effort and wisdom and smarts. You can do it, basically. I mean, that is really what it is. And people get through hard times. It's possible. If you're feeling I can't keep going this way, David's mother pushed through a lot. Once she retired from the Navy, David said she slept for a while. She slept. And I couldn't-- when he said that, I was just, like, god, that's a really good way to end this chapter.
When you have her banging up against so much to become the person and the professional she aspired to be. It isn't easy. Sometimes we need to rest before we go on to what's next.
I mean, she was just so worn out and tired. And she retired in her own way. I mean, she went out on her terms. I remember when she retired it was 1990, and I was just finishing college the year before. And she made her preparations. And there were people that basically said, well, you can't just retire. You have a kid in school, and they're going to go to grad school and things like that. And she had already planned for all of that.
And by the time people realized that she was planning to retire, she already had her paperwork submitted. So she was ready to go. She did it in her own way, and that was so typical for her to do that and then finally to say, OK, now I need to take a break. And then as she rested, she slept a lot after she first retired. She went right back out there and did a lot of the stuff she did before she retired, which is doing a lot of public speaking.
And she was very active with her women's group, The Links, Inc., and doing all of these different kind of community things that she had even more ability to do as a retiree. So she didn't-- she slowed down for a bit. She took a pause. But she really kind of got right back into things that she had been doing on government's time to benefit the society. And so that's a lesson too. If you plan and you work hard, then you can do things on your own terms.
And there are a lot of people that don't understand that. They don't believe that. For instance today, I have to go to prison today. And so I'm going to go and talk to the inmates.
They caught you, huh? DAVID MONTAGUE: Yeah, they caught me. Yeah. So I'm going to go. It's interesting is that my mom actually went to prison with me a lot. We had this rehabilitation program here in Arkansas. And remember, I was putting people in prison, my first career.
And so it wasn't until coming to Arkansas and really getting paired with somebody who used to be on the parole board when I was a volunteer there and would carry me to prison with him, got a chance to really appreciate giving back in that way. And it became infectious. And so my mom, even when she was in a wheelchair, would still visit the prisons every now and then and motivate people, inspire people.
And so even in retirement, like Paige is talking about, she still would go out, motivate-- and it became kind of like the thing that kept her motivated until the very end. And I remember-- and this is an important point, I think, because she kept-- her health was deteriorating. And when she would go to do public speaking or travel, it took a toll on her physically. She had COPD, and she had congestive-- she had some cardiac issues as well.
And every time she would come back from a trip, she would have to kind of stay down for a few days. And I finally said something, I said, Mom, you got to be careful. She's like, I want to go out doing what I love to do. So a lot of the advice that she gave me, she literally gave the same advice to so many people. You know what I mean?
Like belief in yourself, being flexible with your life, and not feeling like you're just always committed to taking one path and belief in professional development as you continue your growth, just being sincere and a good person. She didn't care about anybody's background. She didn't care about what they believed in, who they loved. She didn't care about their religious-- she just cared about people.
And so even though people had done her wrong, had done her dirty a lot because of all the isms, she wasn't bitter about that. She still felt like it was her place to really be a good steward for society and really help other people. And I think that says a lot because a lot of people are not like that. They won't do that. And they get burned a couple of times, and they're done. But she would recognize that some people-- if they'd done her wrong, she wouldn't trust them anymore.
Don't get me wrong. But she always believed in trying to do the right thing by people. And I think that's something that is a good lesson that she said over and over again to so many people. Again, I used the word infectious before, but that's literally what it has been because when I go to the prison today, that's exactly the kind of stuff I'm going to talk about today for [INAUDIBLE]. I'm carrying some coworkers with me too. But that's really kind of same stuff she did.
She used her connections, her access to be able to open doors and spread the word and try to make things better than it was for her. And I think that's kind of, again, the message of the book itself. CHARLIE BENNETT: David and Paige, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you for having us. We enjoyed it.
Yes. Really enjoyed this. Thank you so much.
We've been speaking with the authors of the book Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman who Revolutionized Naval Engineering. Paige Bowers is a journalist, and Dr. David Montague is associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where he's also professor of criminal justice.
File this set under VM140.M778B69.
[MUSIC - "FOOT FORWARD"]
You just heard "Don't Forget About Me" by Barbara Lewis. And we started our set with "Foot Forward" by Sans Soucis, songs about telling your story and inspiring others to remember you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Our show today was called "Overnight Code," featuring the authors of the book Overnight Code-- The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman who Revolutionized Naval Engineering. MARLEE GIVENS: Paige Bowers and Dr. David Montague will be at the Georgia Tech Library on Tuesday, October 4, in conversation with Alison Law. WENDY HAGENMAIER The event will be in-person and online. You can find out more at the library website, library.gatech.edu.
And with that, roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier.
Today's show was edited and assembled by Charlie not quite overnight.
Legal counsel and a binder full of photos from our youth were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
How did they get all those pictures?
Special thanks to Paige and David for being on the show, to Catherine Mansi for the help, to Raye Montague for doing all that she did, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Find us online at lostinthestacks.org. And you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix. CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week's show is an introduction to another new member of the Georgia Tech Library faculty. And guess what? It's another archivist. WENDY HAGENMAIER: We are everywhere. FRED RASCOE Sure are. Time for our last song today.
Raye Montague might not have been a sailor during her time in the Navy, but she did hard intellectual and computational labor to benefit those who did sail. Her labor was as nautical as any ship's crewman. So let's close with a song about the work of keeping ships afloat. This is "Toiler On the Sea" by The Stranglers. Have a great weekend, everyone.
[MUSIC - THE STRANGLERS, "TOILER ON THE SEA"]