
Luella Mae Armstrong
1929–2023
Early woman aeronautical engineer, returning employee, world traveler
Luella Mae Armstrong, a retired aeronautical engineer for The Boeing Company who was often one of the only women among men in her education and career, died Nov. 19, 2023, after a long battle with a degenerative nervous system disease.
Armstrong was born in Spokane, Washington, to a stay-at-home mother and mechanical engineer father. She earned good grades in school and especially enjoyed math and science. In 1947, when she was in high school, a math teacher suggested she pursue engineering — an uncommon encouragement to a young woman in those days.
So, she did, majoring in aeronautical engineering at the University of Washington. She wore jeans when working in the school’s foundry but always changed back into a skirt when leaving the shop, as was customary at the time. And she remembered one professor telling her that even though she was a woman, she could remain in class, “but I’ll barely pass you.”
She graduated in 1951 as the only woman aeronautical engineer in her class and the first in her family to graduate from college. A brief article that ran in both the Seattle Times and the Spokesman-Review in Spokane featured Armstrong under the headline, “One girl in air engineers graduates with 174 men.” She took issue with the headline and the article, which referred to her as “a pretty University of Washington graduating senior …” who “wasn’t bothered a bit” by being the only woman.
Armstrong’s work in the university’s aeronautical laboratory stood out and she became part of a team of seniors conducting wind tunnel testing for Boeing. When she graduated, Boeing immediately offered her a full-time job as an engineer.
At Boeing, Armstrong worked in aircraft structural dynamics, analyzing landing loads, gust loads, and flutter forces in the company’s air tunnel. Her work contributed to the development of the B52 and the WB-50D Superfortress.
Armstrong joined the Society of Women Engineers in 1954. A letter of recommendation for membership from a colleague at Boeing stated, “She has applied herself to her work with considerable energy and has demonstrated the ability to organize her work in an efficient manner.” She served the Pacific Northwest Section as chairman, as presidents were called then, from 1956 to 1957 and again from 1957 to 1958.
She met and married Bill Mudge in 1955 and became pregnant the next year. It was customary at the time for women to leave work early in their pregnancies, but Armstrong kept working until her pregnancy became noticeable. She eventually left and raised three children while developing her skills in computer science and coding.
Armstrong returned to work outside the engineering field in 1979, but at a party she mentioned to a woman who happened to work for Boeing that she was an aeronautical engineer. Soon she found herself back at Boeing as a computer-aided design, or CAD, specialist. She rejoined SWE as a senior member in 1983.
Armstrong earned a certificate of outstanding performance at Boeing for her work on the 747 and 767 airliners. She often mentored younger engineers, teaching them to think in terms of three dimensions rather than relying solely on computer results and 2D CAD designs. “I would explain to them that you have to visualize,” she told the Seattle Times in a 2016 article.
That article was written in response to a request from her grandson, Ryan Anderson, then 21, who asked the newspaper to correct its 1951 article: Armstrong was, after all, a woman and not a girl, as the headline had referenced. “She’s my biggest hero,” Anderson told the paper. The newspaper obliged with an article headlined “UW engineering grad wasn’t a ‘girl’ among men in ’51.” The author, Erik Lacitis, wrote: “It’s a bit late — 65 years late — but the Seattle Times is happy to clarify a story the paper ran on Sunday, June 10, 1951.”
Armstrong retired early from Boeing in 1995 and began to travel the world. She served on the altar guild at her church and thoroughly enjoyed time with her grandchildren. She was an avid fan of the UW Huskies and Seattle Seahawks football teams. She is remembered by family and friends as a trailblazer and the epitome of altruism and unconditional love.
Sources
Seattle Times, SWE archives