Marin Women's Hall of Fame

Millie Hughes-Fulford
By Connie Karczewsk

     On June 5, 1991, Millie Hughes-Fulford got out of bed at 3:00 a.m., ate her breakfast, and dressed for work. But this was not to be an ordinary day. This day her biggest childhood dream was coming true. This day her many years of study as a scientist would take her to the highest heights. This day she was blasting-off into outer space as a NASA astronaut.

     While zipping-up her space suit in the darkness of that early morning, Millie must have thought back to when she was just eight years old. Back then, on Saturdays, she would wake up early to watch television reruns of Buck Rogers and Rocky Jones, Space Cadet. Her sleepy blue eyes would pop open wide as she cheered her science fiction idols through danger and adventure. The TV screen was her window to a make believe world of space travel.

    Those childhood days were spent in Texas. Much of her life's story happened there before her pathway to the stars led to Marin County in 1973. She was born Millie Elizabeth Hughes in 1945 in Mineral Wells, Texas. There she and her older sister Gail were raised and went to school. Their father, Charlie Hughes, owned and ran a local grocery store. Lanore, their mom, made a traditional home for the family. Both parents would return to college later in life and become schoolteachers.

     In the classroom of everyday life, Millie's dad taught her many valuable lessons. From early days in his grocery store, she learned to believe in herself and develop her natural strengths. She worked side by side with her cousin who was a boy. When someone said "go get another case of Green Giant peas," she would carry '. a case just like her boy cousin. No one told her that she shouldn't because she was a girl. No one stopped her working. That simple act of equal treatment would shape her life. She saw no differences, and felt no limits. She tackled everything with a "can-do" spirit. How important that ability to compete physically with males would one day be.

    There were other people who gave her life direction. Some of them she never even met! She read about them in books. Her favorite heroine was Madame Curie. Marie Curie was a Polish scientist who, way back in 1889, discovered radium. How exciting it was to know that a woman could be a scientist! There was something powerful about making important scientific discoveries.

    Millie recognized that Madame Curie did not shy away from doing jobs considered as man's work. In Marie Curie's world, many people did not think women were smart enough to know about science. When Madame Curie found important answers to questions in her husband's laboratory, people said he must have done it. But Curie did not get discouraged and give up. Instead she focused on the work to be done and did it well and proved her abilities. By the time her career ended, she had received two Nobel prizes. These awards meant she did excellent work for the good of mankind. No one, male or female, had ever received two. What a special honor! "I want to be like her," Millie thought.

     Another person Millie read about and looked up to was George Washington Carver. He was a black man who lived during the time of slavery in the South. Books and teachers were not available to him there. Anyone caught teaching him to read could get in trouble. He didn't know why his quest for knowledge should worry some people. He only knew he wanted very strongly to learn. On his own, he left home to seek an education. This began a long, and often lonely, journey to finding his dream.

     Carvers goal was to develop better planting methods for the poor farmers of the South. So he studied botany (the study of plants). He had the idea that changing the crops, or rotating, would make the soils richer. During his lifetime he made no less than 300 discoveries including the invention of peanut butter. Besides learning how to improve farming methods, he became famous for finding other new uses for the peanut and the sweet potato. Not only did he make the discoveries, but he worked hard to teach both farmers and consumers about what he had learned. When people knew how many ways the foods could be used, and how healthy they were to eat, farmers would sell more and more.

     Millie respected George Washington Carver's courage in overcoming prejudice and hard times. A self-made man, he was not one to sit and wait for someone else to help him. He taught himself things that were never known before. That was his way. "I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one's self," he wrote.

    After reading about Madame Curie and George Washington Carver, Millie felt certain that, "Scientists can be the most important people on the planet." Someday she wanted to be like them. Today Millie's own life inspires young people to become useful scientists - on the planet and off.

     As a young student, Millie had to work extra hard on math problems. Some days when her father came home from working a long day at the store, he'd see Millie bent over her homework at the kitchen table. No matter how tired he was, he found the energy to help her. She remembers how kind and gentle he was in spite of being six foot four with hands twice the size of her own. He would pull her up onto his lap to take a look at the math book. From up there, the problems didn't seem nearly as big. He made her feel smarter, too, when he would ask, "What do you think the answer is?" Then he'd listen and patiently encourage her to find the answer on her own. His belief in her became her belief in herself. Like magic he changed problems into challenges. Figuring things out could be as much fun as solving a riddle, or finding buried treasure.

    Besides developing strong bodies and brains, people build character. She grew older and wiser in the character department from another experience working in the grocery store. This lesson was not about stocking the shelves or selling. This was a lesson about making decisions. At about age twelve she was promoted to grocery checker. One Saturday she was checking-out a customer. Millie couldn't help but notice bruises all over the woman. In the woman's arms was a young baby who also had black and blue marks. Millie could see that the woman and child had been beaten.

    Her grocery basket had cigarettes, baby food, and general items. The bill totaled $5.80. The woman had only $5.00. She put the baby food back and kept the cigarettes. That moment froze in Millie's mind and heart. That day she saw what being dependent on someone could mean. It could mean being afraid. It might mean doing what others wanted you to do, instead of what you knew was right. It was wrong that one person should hurt another. She promised herself it would not happen to her. She would learn how to take care of herself.

     By the time Millie was sixteen, she could manage all aspects of the store on her own from stocking to inventory to accounting. She worked on her car, replacing the fan belt and changing the oil. In school she was ready for college level work. While most of her female relatives grew up to be teachers or housewives, she wanted to study science. Her mom was very proud of Millie, but wished her daughter would choose English or history. She suggested Millie learn typing.  There were lots of office jobs for girls. After a lot of thought about all these ideas,

    Millie stuck with her own gut feeling. So she enrolled as a science major. One of her favorite teachers at college was "Dr. Mac." His real name was Dr. Sam R. McInnes. He was the Chairman of the Physical Science Department at Tarleton. Dr. Mac noticed that Millie was quick to understand chemistry. He could see the enjoyment she got from it, and he believed she had something to give. When she was 18, he asked her if she wanted to teach the lower level chemistry lab by herself. Would it be too hard? How would the freshman students react to her? After all, she was only a junior herself. She turned-on her "can-do" spirit, buttoned-up her lab coat, and went for it! The experiment was a success. She did an excellent job, and made a big discovery in the lab that year. She discovered that she could teach and the more she knew, the more she wanted to know. And the more she did, the more she wanted to do. For this she would need graduate work. While many of her classmates were getting jobs or going home after college, her plans were for an advanced degree. She had married at the beginning of her junior year and in the last semester of her senior year, the young couple had Tori. In that same spring semester she graduated from Tarleton State College an excited and thankful young mother.

     Finding a graduate school took a lot of effort. The road was not straight and clear. She had to jump over hurdles that others built in front of her. In 1968 not many women attempted an advanced degree in Science. Men were in charge of who got admitted into science programs and most thought a woman asking to get in was mighty unusual. Some people were still slow to believe that males and females had equal abilities. Not too much had changed since the days of Madame Curie. Besides, she was married and now had a daughter. Tori, to care for and raise. They thought that a young mother with a child could not keep up with all the hard work their school demanded. So, because she was a woman and a mother, her application to one school was rejected. They told her that she was a "bad risk".  She disagreed and moved on.

     This is not the last or only time she would overcome obstacles and disappointments to achieve her goals. She took her GRE's when she was 8 ½ months pregnant to compete for a National Science Foundation scholarship. Her strongest support and opportunity for success was found at Texas Woman's University in Denton. They accepted her application to enroll. She received her NSF scholarship for the next three years. She was an American Association of University Women (AAUW) fellow in her fourth year. After her flight in 1991, Millie endowed the Charlie Hughes scholarship fund for young mothers at Texas Woman's University. She wanted to give to other young mothers the gift that she had been given: an education and a chance to be in control of their own destiny. Being a student and a morn was like being two people at once. It offered new demands and new challenges. It was another way to grow. Sometimes, like on test days, she had to take Victoria (Tori) to class with her when the woman providing childcare to Tori was ill.  Motherhood means making changes, quickly, and not always doing what is planned.

     Overall, she found that being a mother shifts the emphasis of a woman's life for a time. Although she held a full-time academic position, she devoted more of herself to her daughter than did her male co-workers.  There were Tori's school activities, games, campfire girls - all the other good things that a mother does. Millie sees a lot of women coming into the forefront today taking that pattern: "The modern woman has two stages of her life. One where she is doing her duty to society as a parent and homemaker, and the second where she is contributing to the society as a whole with her inborn talents."

    After she earned her doctorate in biochemistry, Millie spent her first postgraduate year at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Then she moved to her positions in California in 1973. She was now a true Marinite, commuting from Greenbrae to her new positions at the Department of Veteran's Affairs Medical Center and the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco. The road ahead would have many hills to climb and bridges to pass over.

     The next decade was filled with exciting and satisfying research at the Medical Center lab. At last she was doing the work she had studied so long for. She poured her energy into projects that answered questions and found new biochemical pathways. Maybe her discoveries would cure an illness. Perhaps the experiments she worked on would prove an unknown theory. At home she enjoyed being a morn, and homemaker. But that's not all. In 1979 she bought a plane and then learned how to fly! In 1981, Millie and her first husband divorced.

    In 1983, wedding bells were ringing a second time. She found a perfect "Number One buddy" in George Fulford. George was an ex-member of the Royal Canadian Air Force Acrobatic team. He also flew as a captain for United Airlines. Together they shared Millie's favorite hobby - scuba diving. People are lucky, and few, who have an active and full life on land, sea, and in the air.  For most, all of that would keep them busy enough. But two days after her wedding, an out-of-this-world opportunity was presented to her.

     Millie and George were still toasting their new marriage when Millie told George about a phone call from Dr. Claude Amaud from the University of California Medical Center. A call from him about something in the lab would not be too surprising. But this call was anything but usual. He wanted to know if she'd like a chance at becoming an astronaut. Her heart skipped two beats!

     She had so many questions. Why was she being asked? Were women being considered for space travel? Where would she be going? How long would it take? How could she keep up her work at the lab and continue her scientific career? As he answered each question her excitement grew. Astronaut training was newly opened to women. She was being considered because of her important and respected medical research Those who made the team would be trained as payload specialists. Payload specialists are chosen for the special experience they bring to a mission. Millie could offer advanced know-how in life sciences. If chosen for the training program, and if she passed, she would do research on the space shuttle. She would be the first woman civilian scientist-astronaut.

     She had to decide if she wanted to try for it. She was so excited that you might think she would say "yes" automatically. But she knew this issue was not only about her. Many things, and other people, must be considered before she answered. Top scientists from around the country would be trying for the chance too. If she accepted this challenge, how would it affect Tori and George? After all, the three of them were just starting out together. It would be a huge adjustment for them too. Her commitment to the mission would mean not always to be with them - even on birthdays. They would need to take care of additional chores at home too. They had to feel okay about sharing her with NASA and her current career. Without their willing support, the opportunity would have to pass. The family as a whole came first. But, oh boy, how that little girl inside her still wanted to fly into space.

     Together, the family decided to accept the challenge. She sent in the application. One day in January, 1983 official response came. From the sixty applicants, she had been one of four selected for the in Space Life Sciences One (SLSI). If she could make it through the rigors of training and final selection, she would be an American Astronaut. She had won the chance. Now it was up to her to "make it so."

     The original training and mission commitment was for eighteen months. The time had come to say good-bye to Marin for a while. The family's Mill Valley home was sold. They all moved to Houston, Texas near the Johnson Space Center. The Columbia's mission date was set for early in 1986. There was a lot to learn before then.

     Excitement launched her through early mornings and late nights of study. She learned everything about the spacecraft. Each crewmember on board must know how to handle any emergency. Performing experiments in outer space would be different. This meant new lab methods had to be developed. Then they were practiced over and over. She also had to attend classes about areas of science not in her specialty.

     An astronaut's physical condition must be tops. Space travel demands a superior degree of strength and endurance. A civilian trainee whose every day job did not require this, had to work twice as hard. It meant pushing to limits where no muscle had ever gone before. The women had to meet the same standards as the men. Hours of exercise and daily workouts were crammed into already busy days. At night, well-deserved rest had to wait. There was still daily contact to be made with her San Francisco lab. The work must be kept up and running.

     The mission's launch date was fast approaching. Then one day, word came that NASA had changed the schedule! The Columbia crew was disappointed. They would have to wait until the next time. The Challenger project would go instead. In February of 1986 when the Challenger blew up, losing its crew of seven, the country and NASA were devastated. Every astronaut and every American felt a great personal loss. Many people wondered if the risks of space travel were worth the costs. The space program came to a sudden and tragic stop. Millie and the rest of the crew watched as their own lift-off date faded into the distance like the tail of a passing comet.

    Sometimes events happen that force a change in our lives. For Millie and her family this uncertain turn of events was one of those times. They wondered if her mission would ever fly. It was time to rethink their commitment to the astronaut program. The eighteen months they had all agreed to had already passed. The family missed living in Marin County. George and Tori wanted to sell the Houston house and return to California. Millie wanted to keep her family together.

      She also knew she could be much more effective in her research at the Department of Veteran's Affairs Laboratory in person. She had to be in there fighting for her job, yet she was "much too stubborn" to give up her role in space history. She had to come up with a "give and take" answer to the problem. The compromise she made was to move back to Marin with her family, but fly back to Texas two weeks every month. She was optimistic that the delays at NASA would not last too long.

     Weeks turned into months and months into years. NASA still had no definite plan to send the SLS-I up on its space mission. Finally, the research work in California reached a crucial point and needed her full-time attention. She requested a leave of absence from the space program activities. She must now concentrate on her lab work at home. While on leave, she got the call to duty from NASA. The mission was scheduled for 1991. Back she went to live her dream.

     She returned to NASA to discover that, "Everything we planned in the beginning had been revised." Science had changed so much from when the experiments were first proposed.. They rolled up their sleeves and started over in the lab. She rolled up her sleeves in the gym, too. It was not unusual to find her sweating to the music of Star Wars at the astronaut gym at Johnson Space Center. This was it - the final push to get herself into the best physical condition of her life. She would need to be super fit to get through the intense, final phases of mission training. At the same time, she was traveling to other continents to answer people's questions about NASA and Spacelab. It felt like she was putting in more air miles than her husband the pilot. Unfortunately, their travel routes never seemed to meet.

    As the mission date neared, training activities included water survival. The day she walked into water survival school she was 44 years old. She was also the only female. The other trainees were extremely fit young "Top Gun" type men the age of her daughter. Millie saw their looks of  "what is this middle aged woman doing here?  At the same time she thought. I'm an astronaut, who are you?  By the end of the three day ordeal she had been dropped into the ocean from 1,500 feet up with a parachute, dragged through the water at 20 knots/hr. and left in shark infested water for hours.  She never lost sight of her goal, and never questioned if she could do it. She had learned her lessons from hefting cases of Green Giant peas.    

     After being out of sight for hours out in Biscane Bay, the helicopter came to rescue her. As she was pulled up, the wire rotated around and had a view for miles and miles.  She saw her fellow classmates scattered about the Bay in their little orange rafts all alone. Once inside the rescue helicopter she knew she had made it. She could do it. She felt Great. Hers was the 'right stuff.' The crew chief patted her on the helmet, gave her a lollipop and dumped her back into the ocean. It made her feel like Charley the tuna who was rejected and thrown back into the sea because he was too small. But really she was not being rejected, just tested for survival instinct. Still, she had to admit to herself, "You know, you could die doing some of these things." On the fourth day, going toward the, classroom for the last time, two of the young men came up from behind shouting Millie, Millie... She slowed and they caught up and got in step with her. They said, 'you know Millie, every time we were out there wondering if we could do it, we would look at you and say if she can do it, we can do it!" Millie grinned to herself.

    When she wasn't out having high seas adventures, the California lab work was still her baby. She was the only astronaut-scientist to keep up a research lab while in training. If there were Nobel prizes in managing time well, she would surely have been awarded one. Juggling all these jobs and missing her family was the hardest thing she had ever done. It took a lot of sacrifice. She realized that, "Everything has its price, and I have paid a heavy price to be an astronaut. "

     As lift-off date grew ever closer, she focused on the scientific goal of the mission. Her desire to study the effects of space flight on the human body gave her the courage to continue.  In the space lab, testing would be done on the heart, lungs, and bones. This would be the first mission to bring back important data collected on females in space. The experiments and testing would be done on herself and fellow astronauts. They would return with information necessary to include women in future space travel. "We need to know what will happen when we set up a lunar base, or a 2-1/2 year mission to Mars," she said.  If we have data only on men, only men will go to Mars.

     Finally, after all the stops and starts, and pain, hard work and two scrubs, the crew of the Columbia arose at 3:00 a.m. to prepare for lift-off.  Seven and a half long years had passed since that day in 1984 when she was first selected. Once inside the shuttle, last minute delays gave the crew time to worry that the mission might be scrubbed a third time. Lying on their backs, strapped tightly into their flight seats, the crew waited, and waited.  They joked with each other and tried to remain calm and hopeful.

     At last they heard those beautiful words, "five, four, three, two, one." The rocket shook and rumbled with power and promise.  Outside, the crowds cheered and stomped and roared.  Inside, hearts were pounding. Underneath, the fiery ball of energy rolled like thunder. Louder and louder it grew until the only way to go was up.  Millie remembers, "When the solids ignited and we were gone, it was all right - finally we were off. "   It felt as if each day she had worked for this moment was now being piled one on top of the other, lifting her higher and higher.

     During the 3.9 million nautical mile flight, she worked 18-hour days.  She stopped only for brief periods of sleep, or peeks out the flight deck window. Her sky blue eyes popped wide open as they had when she was a child. Because of devoted scientists like herself, space travel was no longer merely make believe.  From that long-dreamed-about viewpoint, the earth was a beautiful and rich looking planet. At the same time it seemed vulnerable. "I felt very protective toward Earth," she shared during an interview after her return.  The big blue halo surrounding our planet was awesome.  So immense it was, and striking in color.

     The spacecraft traveled at 18,500 mph (or 25 times the speed of sound). It took only ten minutes to get from one coast of the United States to the other. There were lots of photo opportunities from sea to shining sea. While over the Bay area, she snapped pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Angel Island, like a tourist from another universe.

     Marinites down on earth were getting to their daily jobs by driving through the Waldo tunnel. Up above, Millie's tunnel commute to work was not concerned with seat belts or bridge tolls or gravity.  The Spacelab is joined to the Space Shuttle by a 20-foot long connecting tunnel.  Millie merely pushed off, stretched her arms out in front of her, and "flew" through the tube like a weightless Superwoman.

     The absence of gravity made collecting blood samples in space "unexpectedly more difficult," she said. The blood did not want to come out of the veins and flow up the tube. She and the other astronauts were mighty sore before enough samples were collected.  It took a few days to get used to another effect of weightlessness. You don't know if you are up or down."  For the first couple of days I was very conscious of which was the floor and which was the ceiling. But after awhile I lost all that.  I could float upside down and feel perfectly natural." As for the Shuttle's dining experience, the view was stellar but the "backpack food" couldn't be recommended.  Even Millie's special cargo of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen cookies "tasted like cardboard”.

     In the end, had the mission met its goals?  After the return of the Columbia, NASA called it the most successful mission of the shuttle era.  It "brought back more biomedical data than all the Soviet and American flights have brought back in the last 25 years."  The research results will give clues to treating bone disease, heart problems, and other disorders.  The work of Spacelab's crew will help people all over the world.  When asked to sum up the personal value of her astronaut experience she replied, "I feel incredibly lucky to have gone. It was worth every day of the wait. I saw the Earth, and she seems alive."

     What has our astronaut-scientist been up to since coming back down to earth? First, she reacquainted herself with family and friends.  Her work at the Veteran's Administration continued (with a bit less distraction), and she teaches at the University of California.  Paying bridge tolls and wearing a seat belt are back in. Defying gravity is out.  Time spent at home is very special.  She loves to cook and eat her own homegrown vegetables, which don't taste at all like cardboard. She has made Full Professor. Even going to the local Safeway is a real treat after the weeks of preflight quarantine.

     She especially likes speaking with young women about their futures.  Her stories encourage them, and her easygoing "can-do" spirit is contagious. When trying to unlock the answers to our everyday problems, she recommends a 'big picture' approach.  Science and research are the keys to our success as a human race, she believes. Women have much to offer and should accept the challenges of a better world as their own.  Each individual needs to find her special desire and develop it into useful works.

     When asked what one thing she would place into a time capsule that best describes who she is, she chose: "My 'Captain Midnight' decoder ring." That represents the curiosity that I have had since I was a young child of wanting to solve puzzles and recognizing patterns. I think that's the hallmark of a good scientist and human being."