Roxanne Vega

Off the Court

Dayton alumni, as Roxanne Vega tells it on the shows. Each story was checked against its source.

• Erma Bombeckhumorist and newspaper columnist

  Erma Bombeck, class of nineteen forty-nine, English degree. By nineteen seventy-eight, nine hundred newspapers carried her column, reaching thirty million readers. That is a Flyer in very high orbit.

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• Jessie Scott HathcockDayton's first Black woman graduate

  Jessie Scott Hathcock, class of nineteen thirty, the first African American woman to graduate from Dayton. Educator, humanitarian, civil rights leader. Mission accomplished, and then some.

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• Charles J. Pedersen1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

  Charles Pedersen, class of nineteen twenty-six, winner of the nineteen eighty-seven Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Flight confirms: that is a Flyer on the biggest podium in science.

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• David J. Bradleyinvented Control-Alt-Delete

  David Bradley, electrical engineering, class of seventy-one, was one of twelve engineers on the first IBM personal computer, and he gave us Control-Alt-Delete. When all systems fail, you reboot with a Flyer.

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• Joseph Deschbuilt Enigma-cracking decoding machine

  Joseph Desch, class of nineteen twenty-nine, led the research on the Navy machine built to read the German Enigma code in World War Two. Quiet work. Enormous payload.

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