Joylette Hylick was a senior in college when she watched the first American orbit the earth, but she didn't really know how much her own mother had to do with it.
"She would never come home and say look guys I'm responsible. That just never happened,” Hylick said.
Hylick’s mom wasn’t ordinary in 1962, and she isn’t today.
For 33 years, Hylick’s mother, Katherine Johnson calculated complex math for NASA.
She calculated the trajectory for the first American to go into space and did the majority of the math related to John Glenn’s famous flight on “Friendship 7.”
Most people are unaware of the woman who crunched numbers, behind the scenes, to ensure the success of astronaut John Glen and the US’s first orbit around the earth – but now they will. Thanks to “Hidden Figures,” a movie starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe.
Henson plays Johnson.
The real Katherine Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918, graduated high school at 14 years old, and college at 18 years old.
"She always liked numbers,” Hylick told WUSA9.
Hylick is one of three siblings, and says in her early life Johnson worked as a teacher, and applied for a job at NASA in the early 50s.
In 1953, she began working as human computer at what was then known as the “National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,” or NACA.
Hylick knew her mom was working on the new space program, but says she never kept a lot of her work quiet.
“It was just work. She just enjoyed it,” Hylicak said.
“She's very humble so she's not one to come home and say guess what I did today."
Johnson was an African American woman, working, in a man's segregated world.
"She accepted any challenge that came,” Hylick explained..
“Her father told her when she was growing up that you're no less than anybody and you're no better. I think that just said that there was nobody you needed to be intimidated by. She knew what she knew. She knew what she wanted to know. She said if I don't know the answer I'll get it."
After years of few people knowing her name, Hylick says she’s thrilled her mother is finally getting the recognition she deserves.
