c o u n t d o w n to ‘Rocket Girl’ at Imagination Theater

Andrew Vonderschmitt

Mountain Democrat correspondent

The tale of America’s first female rocket scientist blasts o when Imagination

Theater’s “Rocket Girl” by George D. Morgan opens Friday, April 21.

Mary Sherman Morgan grew up poor and was denied education until she was 9 years old. Later attending a small college in Sandusky, Ohio, Morgan left college to work in a weapons plant during World War II and later became the only woman scientist and one of only a few without a degree among a team of 900 at North American Aviation’s Rocketdyne Division, the leading rocket fuel company in America during the space race of the 1950s.

Taking charge of a team of interns, Mary’s expertise led to the creation of Hydyne a new rocket propellent that enabled America to put a satellite into orbit.

Mary’s son, George D. Morgan, penned the script about his trailblazing matriarch as a student in the English/creative writing program at CSU Channel Islands.

He admitted to Air & Space/ Smithsonian Magazine in 2009 that when his mother passed away he did not know the depth of her involvement in the space race.

He recalled making rockets as a kid in Arizona. “If I’d known how much expertise in rocketry my mother had, we could have asked her for help and saved ourselves a great deal of trouble,” he noted.

Director Lisa Bertram is a chemistry and earth science teacher at Ponderosa High School so this play is right up her alley.

“My dad sent me this obscure book he found in Minnesota,” Bertram said, “‘Rocket Girl,’ and I read it and it had all the photos from

■ See ROCKET GIRL, page B5