Wearing jeans, sturdy shoes and a broad and welcoming smile you will find Mary Hurst at the local Four Seasons Farmers Market on Thursdays and Saturdays. She will be there selling her delicious homemade jams, jellies and pickled quail eggs, among other things. She says she considers herself a farmer at heart.
After retirement in 2016, Mary and her husband relocated to a farm in our area. She and her family are just over the ridge from a couple with whom my husband and I are very close friends. Through them we were blessed to meet Mary and because of that, Mary turned out to be one of the very best guest speakers our science fiction club has had at a meeting in many years.
Mary had a pretty amazing career from 1998 until her retirement in 2016 as Historic Preservation Officer for NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. In that capacity she documented the Center’s history, including the people, land, buildings and everything in between. She loved working with the student interns.
Among the experiences Mary treasures most was meeting Margot Shetterly, author of the book, Hidden Figures. The book chronicles the lives of three black women that acted as “computers” in the early days and John Kennedy years of America’s space program and the vital part they played in its success at NASA Langley. Not recognized for those contributions for decades, when the recognition finally arrived Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson took their rightful place in history, were applauded for their vital contributions and were presented tangible recognition for it.
Mary and Margot became instant friends and that friendship endures today.
When talk began to buzz about making the book into a feature film, Mary worked with Margot and became a consultant from NASA Langley during the making of the film. Her name is in the credits.
Mary spoke to our club’s November meeting about working as a consultant on the Hidden Figures film. She brought photos and photos of artifacts from the NASA Langley Center’s archives and showed us those photos. She shared anecdotes about finding so many original artifacts that were actually used in the filming of the movie. They had been stashed away in closets and storage areas, she retrieved them and had them preserved because of the monumental historic significance they held of early space history in America that was also relative to the Hidden Figures film. It was a fascinating, heart-warming, thought provoking presentation that I will not soon forget.
Following the Saturday evening club meeting, my husband and I set aside Monday evening to watch the Hidden Figures movie. We got a carry-out dinner from KFC and settled in our family room with a robust fire in the fireplace on that cold Monday night. It was one of our most enjoyable evenings in a very busy and hectic while. As an indication of the impact of the movie, neither of us succumbed to the hypnotic warmth of the fire or the monotone drone from the television. We were caught up in the film immediately.
Watching the movie after having so recently met and listened to someone that was actually THERE; a contributor to the making of the film, someone that told us about edits and props and the cast and the research done about the early 60s and our space program of that time, added an unexpected and personal dimension to our enjoyment of the movie.
The overpowering theme of the film was the division at the time of the black and white races; the racial disharmony, the segregation, the inequality, the accepted racism. As a small child growing up in North Carolina during that restless time I remember department stores and public places with restroom signs: WHITE WOMEN, WHITE MEN, COLORED WOMEN, COLORED MEN and theaters where white people sat in the main theater and “coloreds” were only allowed to sit in the balcony. I remembered my ‘privileged life,’ which was privileged simply because of the color of my skin as I sat in the front of the bus while my “colored” contemporaries were relegated to the back. I didn’t understand it as a child and still don’t understand the parts of it that exist today. The film moved me to tears in many places BECAUSE of it. Watching it was a powerful experience.
During the two hours and seven minutes of Hidden Figures I turned into an emotional dishrag. I laughed and cried and remembered and clapped my hands a time or two. I loved seeing events I actually remembered depicted in the movie. I loved seeing actual footage of personalities, such as John Glenn that have been archived in my personal memory banks. I remembered and told my husband about being a child at Virginia Beach on a family vacation and the thrill my brother and I felt at seeing John Glenn on his morning run down the early morning, mostly deserted beach. We got up early several mornings just to see him again.
Released in 2016, if you haven’t seen Hidden Figures, I recommend setting aside a couple of hours to watch it. While it is very entertaining, it isn’t just entertainment. It is part of our history and should be revisited before some group or other decides it belongs on a “Banned Movie List” and it becomes lost in the rubble of classic books that depict some of the rawest elements of our country’s past. Without acknowledging the worst parts of us we will never be able to find the BEST of us.
Mary Hurst, you are truly an amazing woman and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for speaking to our science fiction club meeting. You opened a door for my husband and me that has led us to greater understanding and appreciation of our past … the good parts and the not so good. And you’ve made it possible for us to have a wonderful evening together by the fireplace sharing a really good movie. I hope the members of our club, some of them at least, came away with the same feelings and similar experiences.
Mary, I hope to see you again, maybe at the Farmers Market. I’ve never tried a pickled quail egg, but I just might.
heimdalco 