{"id":15782,"date":"2019-03-05T20:28:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T20:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/?p=15782&post_type=story"},"modified":"2023-11-20T20:26:51","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T20:26:51","slug":"unstoppable","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/unstoppable\/","title":{"rendered":"Unstoppable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring 2019 | By Robert Stephens<\/i><\/p>\n

[lead]Shortly after 2 a.m. on May 16, 2015, the medical staff at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., began pulling declaration of death paperwork for Marcie (Swilley) Washington \u201983<\/strong>. A blood clot had done what no obstacle had been able to do during Washington\u2019s 54 years: It stopped her relentless heart.[\/lead]<\/p>\n

Half an hour earlier, a nurse found Washington on the floor of her hospital room. By the time doctors responded, the heart that drove Washington to become the first African-American woman to earn an engineering degree<\/a> at 麻豆原创 had been still for at least five minutes.<\/p>\n

They quickly began resuscitation procedures on the heart that empowered Washington to break\u00a0scoring records as a player on the Knights basketball team. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. After 22 minutes, there was nothing more they could do to revive the heart that inspired Washington to explore the unknown during a storied career at NASA.<\/p>\n

Everyone left the room except for one nurse.<\/p>\n

The most dreaded middle-of-the night phone call would be made to the Fort Washington, Maryland, home where Washington lived with her family \u2014 husband, Larry; children, Talia, Tyreese and Taurus; and her mother, Erma.<\/p>\n

The nurse reached out to touch Washington\u2019s femoral artery one last time. \u201cWait \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Wait.<\/p>\n

This is not an obituary.<\/p>\n

When Larry and Erma arrived at the hospital, Washington\u2019s heart was beating again, though there was still no guarantee she\u2019d survive until sunrise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t pleasant to see her like that,\u201d says Erma, who, upon walking into her daughter\u2019s room at 3:30 a.m., went to a window to pray. (Larry still has a difficult time talking about \u201cthat night\u201d as the family calls it.) \u201cShe was transcending, leaving us. But as I stood there praying, I received an unspeakable peace, as if I was being told, \u2018It\u2019s going to be OK.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

By late morning, Washington\u2019s resilience had driven family and friends to their knees in thanks.<\/p>\n

Her heart had just taken a long break during an amazing journey. Washington was going to be OK.<\/p>\n

[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n

[photo id=”16024″ title=”PhotoGallery-template-1200x800_Marcie-6″ alt=”” position=”right” width=”350px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the fall of 1979. Washington has just begun her studies at 麻豆原创, and the young university is little more than a gap in the forest. Forty-five minutes away, Walt Disney World has become Florida\u2019s biggest tourist attraction, and the nation\u2019s space program has taken root on the coast. Things are changing around \u2014 and within \u2014 麻豆原创.<\/p>\n

Whether she realizes it or not, Washington is about to blaze new trails of her own.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom as far back as I remember, she was always very driven and determined, but she\u2019s always been too respectful of others to consider herself first,\u201d says Barbara Brown \u201996MS<\/strong>, who grew up with Washington in Palatka, Florida, and now works as the chief technologist at Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n

Of the 12,022 students enrolled at 麻豆原创 in the fall of 1979, Washington and Brown estimate that fewer than 5 percent were black. The number of African-American women to earn a degree from the engineering college? Exactly zero. Washington would change that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought of it as doing something that hadn\u2019t been done,\u201d Washington says. \u201cI love math and science, and I\u2019m outgoing, so I knew industrial engineering<\/a> would be a good fit. That was my focus. The instructors and students didn\u2019t treat me differently. Being a black female\u00a0in the engineering college? It didn\u2019t faze me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also didn\u2019t faze her when she and her fellow first-year students were told at orientation that half of them who planned to study engineering would find the work too rigorous and\u00a0change majors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true, I wondered if I\u2019d make it through a few classes,\u201d says Pam Ford \u201983 \u201991MS<\/strong>, who studied engineering and roomed with Washington during their first year. \u201cBut being around Marcie every day helped. She was like the Energizer Bunny, full of optimism, ready to finish whatever she started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington had a tight schedule, which included waking up at 5:30 a.m. for basketball practice. Despite the fact that she was among the leading scorers in Florida during her senior season at Palatka High School, Washington had to earn a spot on the 麻豆原创 roster as a 5-foot-6-inch guard\u00a0on a partial scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved the challenge,\u201d says Washington, now 58. \u201cGrowing up, I had to prove to the boys in the\u00a0park that I belonged.\u201d Washington\u2019s scrappy style stamped an identity on a 麻豆原创 team that went 23-9 in just its third season of organized play.<\/p>\n

[blockquote source=”Marcie (Swilley) Washington \u201983″ cite=”” color=”” css_class=””]\u201cI don\u2019t want to read about dying. I\u2019m only interested in living.\u201d\u00a0[\/blockquote]<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was unstoppable on and off the court,\u201d says Ford. \u201cTo this day, I\u2019ve always wondered how she did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington admits, however, that she had one brief period of doubt toward the end of her freshman year. The stress of basketball and her course load led to a fear of letting others down. That spring, she called her mom to tell her she wasn\u2019t sure she could continue juggling it all.<\/p>\n

Erma knew that Washington needed reassurance. \u201cIf you want to come home, we\u2019ll find something else for you,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be OK, Marcie.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to be OK, Marcie.\u00a0<\/em>She coveted those words. \u201cIt took the pressure off. I knew everything would be fine from that point forward.\u201d Set free from her fear of failing others, nothing would deter her from graduating and starting a career as an industrial engineer \u2014 not even failing a class the next semester. All she\u2019d needed was a little comfort from home.<\/p>\n

[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n

Washington was recruited by Kennedy Space Center over dinner at Red Lobster. \u201cI laugh when I\u00a0think how recruiters would come to 麻豆原创 to interview black engineering students,\u201d she says. \u201cThere weren\u2019t many of us to interview.\u201d<\/p>\n

[photo id=”16020″ title=”PhotoGallery-template-600x800_Marcie-2″ alt=”” position=”left” width=”225px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

Convinced that NASA wanted her intelligence and not a skin color, Washington decided to temporarily ditch her ideas about working at Walt Disney Imagineering. She\u2019d give the government one year of her professional life. One year.<\/p>\n

When she arrived for work at the space center, she saw the computers and the launchpad and the team that would work on the shuttle program. To a self-proclaimed math and science junkie, it was like arriving on a new planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn my second day, I got my security clearance and stood there under the space shuttle,\u201d Washington says. \u201cI was trying to keep my cool, but it literally made me breathless. I knew right then I\u2019d work for NASA until someone threw me out.\u201d (No one would. She retired 33 years later.)<\/p>\n

At that time, she had never heard of mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. Johnson, Jackson and Vaughan, the African-American women who helped make America\u2019s earliest space launches successful in the early 1960s, would remain relatively anonymous until the release of the book and movie Hidden Figures<\/em> in 2016. There were subtle similarities in Washington\u2019s experience early on. \u201cSome people assumed I was a note taker,\u201d she says. \u201cBut again, none of that fazed me. I had the best job with the best organization in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington worked in the Mission Planning Office of Shuttle Operations at KSC, tasked with writing schedules for the shuttle, and calculating factors such as orbiters and ground equipment to determine how many missions could be planned by the year 2000. Her fascination with code and technology piqued whenever service people came into the office to work on the computer system, and she\u2019d often ask the techs questions while they worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat epitomizes what we\u2019re about at NASA,\u201d says Brown. \u201cShe was humble enough to ask for counsel and critiques, she had the desire to excel, and she couldn\u2019t get enough of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nothing prepared Washington for what happened on January 28, 1986. Shortly before noon, she stood inside the space center for a countdown before stepping outside into the cold to watch the shuttle Challenger<\/em> lift off from the nearby launchpad and \u2014 73 seconds later \u2014 break apart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Am I seeing what I think I see?\u2019 The offices were quiet for weeks. What can you say? We didn\u2019t know where the program would go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

[photo id=”16023″ title=”PhotoGallery-template-1200x800_Marcie-5″ alt=”” position=”right” width=”300px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

Washington was about to head into uncharted terrain again. Among the changes made in the aftermath of the Challenger<\/em> disaster, NASA transferred their most highly trained experts to\u00a0its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Washington was among the people chosen to re-energize the space program.<\/p>\n

The teams worked ridiculous hours, breaking old paradigms about space-lab development and experimenting with new programming ideas for satellite delivery. Washington thrived on the\u00a0work. She also made inroads in places like Moscow and Germany, never thinking about the fact she was often the only black woman among white men until one morning when she had no way to curl her hair and no one to lend her a little help. Using reverse engineering, she ripped a brown\u00a0paper bag into strips and created her own rollers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I felt so right at NASA,\u201d she says. \u201cIt embodies the American spirit and a lesson my parents instilled in me: Don\u2019t tell us there\u2019s something we cannot do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington would need to heed those words again, years later, when she faced her biggest obstacle yet.<\/p>\n

[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n

While getting ready for work one day in 2014, Washington slipped on the stairs and initially thought she\u2019d pulled a muscle in her back. When she finally went for an MRI, she and her family received unexpected news: Washington had a mass in her back and was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells.<\/p>\n

And so started her chemotherapy journey.<\/p>\n

Two years before the diagnosis, Washington had been ordained as a minister at Fort Foote Baptist Church in Fort Washington, Maryland. The little girl who committed her life to\u00a0Jesus at 9 years old was now the Rev. Marcietta Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where she\u2019d always drawn her strength and optimism,\u201d says Ford, who coincidentally moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1992, four years after Washington moved there. \u201cIn college, no matter what was going on, she leaned on her faith in the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being unable to stand for more than two minutes at a time and the bones in her back turning brittle enough to break, she continued working for NASA and studying anything that made her a better engineer, minister, wife and mother.<\/p>\n

[blockquote source=”Marcie (Swilley) Washington \u201983″ cite=”” color=”” css_class=””]\u201cSome people assumed I was a note taker [at NASA]. But again, none of that fazed me. I had the best job with the best organization in the world.\u201d[\/blockquote]<\/p>\n

There was one subject, however, that she refused to learn about: multiple myeloma.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to read about dying,\u201d Washington would say. \u201cI\u2019m only interested in living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early on May 16, 2015, she needed all of it. The optimism. The faith. The friends from her days in Palatka and Orlando and at NASA. Word that her heart stopped for minutes before restarting spread so widely that more than 30 people would eventually arrive at the hospital. There, a doctor told her family, \u201cI have no idea how she\u2019s alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one could explain what happened next either. As the family discussed options in the likelihood of brain damage, they heard a voice: \u201cI\u2019m not brain-dead.\u201d From her bed, less than 24 hours after nearly dying, Washington proceeded to state and solve the quadratic equation.<\/p>\n

Point made. She would need that kind of resolve to relearn all the basics \u2014 how to sit up, how to eat and how to walk again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe athleticism kicked in,\u201d Washington says. \u201cWhen I played basketball, no matter how tired I was, I never wanted to come out of a game. It must be a part of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

[photo id=”16021″ title=”PhotoGallery-template-600x800_Marcie-3″ alt=”” position=”right” width=”225px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

After two weeks, Washington was out of the hospital. A week later, she completed the rehab that was supposed to take three weeks. One by one, the barriers kept coming \u2014 and she kept overcoming them. A broken back. A bone marrow transplant. Being her own donor for the bone\u00a0marrow transplant. She grew so weak that, for a while, she needed three hours to regain her strength after brushing her teeth. Through it all, she remembered how her dad, who died when she was 15, told her to fight for anything important: better streets in the community, an engineering degree, life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s strange to hear my mom tell people how I died \u2018that night.\u2019 I wasn\u2019t really dead, but I have chills right now just talking about it. To be where I am now, I think of how my mom and dad\u00a0told me I could do anything when I was growing up, and how everything would be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Washington walked back into church after being absent for several months, the pastor stopped everything and watched her move to a seat. Row by row, parishioners stood up to applaud. \u201cTake a good look, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d said the pastor. \u201cThis is a real-life miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n

Washington officially retired from NASA on February 28, 2017. But she did not stop working. As she says, \u201cI can\u2019t preach from the grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ford made the 40-minute drive to Washington\u2019s church recently to listen to her college roommate\u2019s sermon. \u201cI saw the same energy and determination that I saw at 麻豆原创. It hasn\u2019t changed in nearly 40 years,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s determination is being put to the test once more \u2014 she started cancer treatments again in March last year. She tires easily. But she also travels and reads and passes life lessons to\u00a0anyone in her path. She talks about moving forward and working for what you believe in, about the value of respect and faith. And yes, she now stresses the importance of pausing to catch your breath. Because when you do that, maybe you can hear the simple-yet-powerful advice her\u00a0mother offered during her freshman year: It\u2019s going to be OK.<\/p>\n

[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n

First Lady
\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n

She entered 麻豆原创 as Marcie Swilley in 1979 and, four years later, left behind a list of firsts:<\/em><\/p>\n

[photo id=”16022″ title=”PhotoGallery-template-600x800_Marcie-4″ alt=”” position=”left” width=”150px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

First African-American woman to graduate from the College of Engineering<\/p>\n

[photo id=”16019″ title=”PhotoGallery-template-600x800_Marcie-1″ alt=”” position=”left” width=”150px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

First women\u2019s basketball player in 麻豆原创 history to score 1,000 career points<\/p>\n

First player to lead her team in steals for three straight seasons. Only three players have done it since. She still ranks fourth all-time in steals (250) and sixth in assists (326) in 麻豆原创\u2019s record book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16029,"template":"","categories":[977],"tags":[248,148,289],"class_list":["post-15782","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-alumni","tag-college-of-engineering-and-computer-science","tag-space","issues-1348","issues-spring-2019"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Story of Marcie (Swilley) Washington: Unstoppable<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First female African-American to graduate from 麻豆原创\u2019s engineering program, NASA, ordained minister & survived her heart stopping for 22 minutes. 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