When Julia Beard Garrett read Liza Mundy’s 2017 book, Code Girls, she realized the book revealed something quite unexpected, that her mother was a code breaker. She found a box of papers rich with documents supporting her role as a Navy code breaker. According to Liza Mundy, the women took an oath never to talk about their work. Their oath of silence was forgiven in 1990, but they were never notified so they kept their oath. All her mother told us was that she worked in the code room in Washington.

This evening webinar will present the work of the Code Girls in the Army and Navy through what was discovered about Lydia Elizabeth King Beard, Julia's mother, and the other 10,000 women who helped to shorten the war by being part of the code breaking process.

Julia was born in Georgia when her father Boyce Beard worked for the FAA at the Atlanta Airport. The Beard family moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 1957 when her father was transferred to the FAA Western Regional Office. She graduated from Richland High School, attended Texas Tech, married a Lubbock boy, Phil Garrett and moved to San Antonio. After a master’s degree from Southwest Texas State University in Language and Learning Disabilities, she was in the business of Education for 27 years, first as a teacher of Special Needs children in Northeast ISD and Alief ISD and last as a Program Coordinator in the same field. She and Phil live in Houston, have a daughter, Gentry who lives near Asheville and a son, Clayton. When she is not playing with Clayton’s little children, she volunteers her time in Houston Audubon bird sanctuaries or in national parks. She recently completed her 12th year volunteering 2 months at a time as campground host in Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico where her duties included moving rattlesnakes.