From the June 16, 2010, Aiken (SC) Standard "Codebreaker was one of few remaining."
Mabel Garvin Crawford died June 17th in Wegener, SC, and was one of the last US Navy veterans who ran decryption machines that cracked the Axis' encoded messages. She was one of 250 who worked dawn to dusk at a converted building at Hunter College in Washington, DC.
It was still top secret until 1995 when the effort was declassified and the National Security Agency issued Exceptional Service Awards in September. Until then, she and the others were unable to talk about their war service.
Widowed in 1941, she moved from Wegener to Aiken where she met Odell Weeks who encouraged her to join the military. From 1941 to 1942, she worked as a cryptologist using one machine to decode German and Japanese cyphers and another to relay the intercepted messages to US military command.
All the windows in the building were bricked over and Marine guards were posted around it. They could not leave the building during the work day.
The generator for the machines was a giant proto-computer that was so noisy it left most of them hard of hearing.
Workman's Compensation? --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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