Raye Jean Montague, RPE

U.S. Navy Engineer | Class of 2013

Raye Jean Jordan Montague was an internationally registered professional engineer (RPE) with the U.S. Navy who is credited with the first computer-generated rough draft of a U.S. naval ship. The U.S. Navy’s first female program manager of ships (PMS-309), Information Systems Improvement Program, she held a civilian equivalent rank of captain.

Raye Jordan was born on January 21, 1935, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Rayford Jordan and Flossie Graves Jordan. She attended St. Bartholomew School before moving to Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. She graduated in 1952. She attended Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal (AM&N) College (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff—UAPB), wanting to study engineering. However, she obtained a degree in business because Arkansas colleges were not awarding engineering degrees to African-American women in the 1950s. She graduated in 1956. She was married three times: to Weldon A. Means in 1955, to David H. Montague in 1965, and to James Parrott in 1973. After her marriage to Parrott ended, she returned to the name Montague, the same last name as her only child, David R. Montague.

In 1956, Montague began her career with the navy at the old David Taylor Model Basin (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) in Carderock, Maryland, as a digital computer systems operator. She later advanced to the position of computer systems analyst at the Naval Ship Engineering Center and served as the program director for the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Integrated Design, Manufacturing, and Maintenance Program as well as the division head for the Com puter-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) Program. On January 22, 1984, she accepted the newly created position of deputy program manager of the navy’s Information Systems Improvement Program. Montague’s career spans the development of computer technologies, from the UNIVAC I, the world’s first commercially available computer, down to modern computers. She successfully revised the first automated system for selecting and printing ship specifications and produced the first draft for the FFG-7 frigate (the Oliver Hazard Perry–class, or Perry-class, ship) in eighteen hours. This was the first ship designed by computer.

In 1972, Montague was awarded the U.S. Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the navy’s third-highest honorary award. She was the first female professional engineer to receive the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Achievement Award (1978) and the National Computer Graphics Association Award for the Advancement of Computer Graphics (1988). She has also received a host of other honors from military branches, industry, and academia. Montague worked on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) and the navy’s first landing craft helicopter-assault ship (LHA). The last project with which she was affiliated was the Seawolf-class submarine (SSN-21).

Montague retired in 1990. In 2006 after fifty years spent in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, she returned to Arkansas. She lives in West Little Rock, where she remains active with LifeQuest, The Links Inc., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and the American Contract Bridge League. She mentors inmates through a community re-entry program through the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as well as students at the e-Stem Elementary Public Charter School in Little Rock. Montague died on October 9, 2018, of congestive heart failure.

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