posted 06-13-2015 01:41 PM               

On July 30, 1949 Gerry married John Prosper Mayer, an aeronautical engineer at NACA, and the two moved to Edwards Air Force Base in California where she worked in Flight Research determining stress levels of wingspans of malfunctioning airplanes. John was the chief analytical adviser for a project dealing with the speed of sound and while doing the calculations realized when the speed of sound was broken.

In 1952, Gerry and John returned to Langley and Gerry returned to her work in the flight research division. This time she was the head of the department.

...in the early 1960's, John Mayer became a member of a special task group that was selected to study space flight, thus the birth of NASA. John and Gerry moved their family to Houston, Texas where this group was to be stationed. Gerry was proud of John and said he "was a brilliant man, a pioneer, who was always thinking ahead" and together they were quite a team.