Pulaski Times

Since March is Women’s History Month, we’re featuring famous women from Arkansas every week this month.

Today we spotlight Raye Jean (Jordan) Montague, RPE.

She was born in Little Rock in 1935 and graduated from Merrill High School in Pine Bluff in 1952. She wanted to study engineering at what is now UAPB, but at the time, Black women could not receive engineering degrees in Arkansas. Instead, she earned a business degree in 1956 and began working as a digital computer systems operator with the U.S. Navy. She rose through the ranks, becoming deputy program manager of the Navy’s Information Systems Improvement Program in 1984. During her career, computer technology advanced from UNIVAC I, the first commercially available computer, to the modern desktop.

She produced the first draft for the FFG-7 frigate in just 18 years – the first ship designed by computer, and resulting from her work on the first automated system for selecting and printing ship specifications.

Montague received the Navy’s third-highest honorary award, the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, in 1972. In 1978, she became the first female professional engineer to receive the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Achievement Award, followed by the National Computer Graphics Association Award for the Advancement of Computer Graphics in 1988. She received a lengthy list of honors from other military branches, academia and industry.

Her engineering projects included the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Navy’s first landing craft helicopter-assault ship, and the Seawolf class submarine.

She retired in 1990 and eventually returned to Arkansas, after five decades in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. She remained active in Little Rock until her death in 2018.

(Photo from Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame)

Original source can be found here.