At the National History Day contest in June 2015, Sarah Bowden, a Maryland History Day student who attends Baltimore Polytechnic Institute won a trip to the Grand Opening of a new wing of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans this December 10-12.
As part of her participation in the opening of the new wing, she wrote an essay based on an oral history in the collection of the National World War II Museum.
In her essay, Bowden salutes the courage and dedication of a woman by the name of Janice Benario. Benario attended Goucher College in Maryland, where she took a course in cryptology, then joined the WAVES, and eventually worked as a Junior Watch officer where she read decoded German messages and marked positions of German ships on a map. Benario was entrusted with Top Secret Ultra material and kept her work secret, even from her family.
Read the essay on the National World War II Museum's Salute To Courage page. Scroll down and select "Maryland." You can also watch the oral history interview of Janice Benario.