"Everyone in This Picture Is Dead"

When I was writing The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, I often had this picture up in the background, and would often look at it.  (It can be found in the linked document on p. 56.)  Usually when I looked, the title of this entry would come to mind at some point.

I liked looking at the picture as a window on the world I was writing about, and to admire young Agnes Meyer's fierce intelligence and determination, still blazing out of the picture over a century later.

And, as I wrote it, I found much to admire about her.  A great American, never known and now nearly forgotten, this country owes her much, and I was glad to shine a light on her.  She accomplished so much despite so many obstacles.

Which is not to whitewash her.  She made mistakes, the kind rivals could use against her and certainly did.  Intelligence and determination are worth admiring, but they don't eliminate error.

But overall I found her far more admirable than not.  I was determined on my own part to tell her story with honesty and accuracy; she deserved no less and I'm sure wouldn't have wanted it otherwise.  I like to think I succeeded.

Still, the picture I looked at did influence me in one direction.  I kept looking at a picture of people and seeing good, honest folk, more than one of whom served her country and served it well.

"Everyone in this picture is dead."  As I wrote, I strove for honesty and accuracy.  But I aimed for one more thing.  I tried not to be unkind.

Agnes Meyer Driscoll began her Navy civilian career on 1 August 1919, 100 years ago today.

Agnes Meyer Driscoll Pictures

There are a dearth of pictures of this seminal American codebreaker available.  The originals are better than the selections below; they're just high-quality screenshots taken from The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll (pdf here; use this contact form to request a free hardcopy).

As such, they are in the public domain. 

I've posted them since they might help someone who needs a picture, and doesn't have time to contact the publisher, The Center for Cryptologic History.

Age 13

Hall of Honor photo

Age 21

Yeoman First Class Agnes Meyer

Agnes Driscoll, mid-1920s

Agnes Driscoll, probably mid-1920s

Agnes Driscoll, probably mid-1920s, close-up

Agnes Driscoll, late 1920s

Agnes Driscoll, circa 1932

Agnes Driscoll, mid-1930s

Agnes Driscoll, 1958

Agnes Driscoll, 1963

Hope these prove useful.  (As always, I also hope they help this woman get the recognition she has long deserved.)

February 9, 2024: I put everything I could find out into the biography linked in the opening paragraph above.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to find out anything else that isn't in there...but I didn't. 

Agnes Meyer Driscoll: Marking History

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll was published by the Center for Cryptologic History in 2015.  It won an award around that same time.  Now, it's made an impact, on 22 July 2017.  A visible impact.

Driscoll spent most of her formative years in Westerville, Ohio, near Columbus; The Neglected Giant gave the address of her childhood home. Some history-minded Ohioans noticed, and decided to do something about it:

I found out about the historical marker when one of the movers and shakers behind it commented on this blog:

I enjoyed your work on Agnes that I did a short (amateurish) video for our local Field Of Heroes we do for Memorial Day in 2016. We were honoring Women in the Military.

That and the work of many others has turned into Agnes being recognized by the Ohio Historical Society and a plaque being erected in front of one of her childhood homes here in Westerville.

If you search my name on YouTube hopefully you can find the video, and there are photos of the ceremony on Facebook at @WestervilleHistory.

Feel free to contact me directly if you would like to know more... thank you for doing this. The impact from your work has been wonderful here.

Driscoll's work in breaking codes, including her contributions against the Japanese JN-25, which helped win the turning-point Battle of Midway, made a mark in history, but that work has largely not received the recognition that it no doubt should have.  I'm not just pleased that Ohio chose to highlight the history made by one of its own, I'm thrilled I helped this happen.

Her grandnephew Capt. Victor Meyer, USN (ret.), pictured, was among those I interviewed in the researching The Neglected Giant.  His pride in his relative was evident then, and visible now.

The Neglected Giant: Writing about Agnes Meyer Driscoll

You don't have to read too far into the biography I wrote of codebreaking pioneer Agnes Driscoll (nee Meyer) to realize it's got its scholarly side; the footnotes are a pretty good indicator of that.  If you go all the way through to the seven appendices, you'll have an even better idea.

(Form for ordering a free hardcopy here; softcopy directly here.)

But, although getting the scholarly side right was critical, the aspect of writing about Driscoll that concerned me most was making it readable.  I did my darnedest to make it a page-turner, even literary.

The page-turner part, as far as I could make it so, came about through three elements.  The least of the three was throwing in a little foreshadowing here and there.  More useful was pacing: Many of the narrative sections are followed by reflective ones.  The major element was through the section and chapter transitions.  I put a lot of figurative sweat into those.

See, any time a written work has a portion that's clearly ending, that's an opportunity for readers to stop turning pages and do something else.  So making not just a smooth transition to the next part, but an engaging one, is crucial.

Here's an example:

...She might have been seething with resentment, fuming with frustration, or burning with ambition, but the evidence is inadequate for us to be sure.

"We Didn't See Anything Burning": 1938-1941

The "heat" imagery of the last sentence of the one section, and the word "burning" (a repeat, as well) in the following section heading didn't happen by accident.

Whether the biography has any literary merit or not is for others to say, but I did strive to use what techniques I could.  For example, since the theme of the work is what a giant she was, I used wording throughout to reinforce that image.  If you want to know what I mean, go back and look at the fifth paragraph of the previous entry, starting with (italics added), "She raised herself..."

The biography was a lot of work, but it was also incredibly gratifying.  If you get half the satisfaction from reading it that I had in writing it, you're in for a treat.

If you have a Goodreads account, you can rate The Neglected Giant here

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

The links in this entry are correct as of September 2020 

She helped save thousands upon thousands of American lives, but you've probably never heard of her.  A remarkable woman who lived a remarkable life, she was never famous and has become almost forgotten.  History has neglected her.

Codebreakers don't tend to gain fame in the first place, although Alan Turing is a welcome exception.  But even among those who pay attention to such a specialized field, Agnes Driscoll (nee Meyer) gets name recognition, but is rarely mentioned in the same breath, or even the next breath, as a William Friedman.

But she should be.  Hired as a stenographer, which was typical for women almost a century ago, she turned herself into a codebreakder, and became one of the best.  She is given credit for breaking two Japanese codes virtually single-handedly.  She was almost the only codebreaker for the Navy for a couple of decades.  You would think that would be enough.

But she also did more individually than all but one other person to break JN-25, the code Japan's navy used at Midway.  (The organizational credit for breaking it correctly goes to the Navy's Station Hypo.)  Midway was the turning point in the Pacific war, putting Japan irretrievably on the defensive, and breaking JN-25 helped save many thousands of American lives.

She raised herself up to become a premier codebreaker.  Anecdotal evidence abounds that she was a warm woman, encouraging others' growth.  She soldiered on, standing tall, doing so at an age long after virtually all of her peers had moved on to other duties or retired.  Yet she never rose through the ranks as high as they did, and their names are typically mentioned above hers even today.

Why?

One of the last things I was able to do before retiring from government service was to tell her story.  It's a free federal publication, and a free hardcopy can be ordered using this request form, or the softcopy viewed here (links updated September 2020).  Go read it.  You can skip through the technical parts; you don't have to learn old codes and codebreaking.  But do learn about a great codebreaker.  Better yet, about a great American.

Help undo decades of neglect.