The NCF remembers Joan Chaput-Gray, wife of Alfred Gray - long-time member and supporter of the Foundation.
Joan, who worked at the National Security Agency for close to ten years, passed away on January 18, 2025 following a lengthy fight against the debilitating affliction of Primary Progressive Aphasia. She is survived by her husband, Alfred.
The fundamental aspects of this affliction is similar to Dementia but adds the loss of speech, memory and physical movement. Joan struggled hard against her challenging debilitation but unfortunately lost that battle.
Joan, a graduate of Boston College, initially worked for Trans World Airlines (TWA) as a Flight Attendant and broke the Glass Ceiling at TWA by successfully being the first female promoted to become a Flight Service Manager, appointed to supervise 13 or more crewmembers on TWA's Boeing 747 international flights. While employed at TWA she was one of the very few employees to be awarded the coveted TWA Award of Excellence for consistently Superior Customer Service.
Following her retirement from TWA, Joan worked for the U.S. State Department in the Office of Global Humanitarian Demining where she received a Certificate of Appreciation from the Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining. Joan then applied and was accepted for employment at NSA which capitalized on her high aptitude for mastering four European and one Middle Eastern language. Through self-teaching, she was attempting to obtain fluency in Russian and an Arabic language. Her final time at NSA likely was punctuated with the onset of Aphasia, the diagnosis of which was not apparent for several years.
Joan's remains were donated for medical research conducted at the Anatomy Gift Registry, which will focus on the portions of the brain mostly believed to be the cause of Aphasia.
