Winifred S. Jonas, 96

April 13, 2021

Winifred “Wink” Jonas, 96, of Brethren Village, Pennsylvania died peacefully on April 13, 2021. Born in Martinsville, Virginia she was the daughter of Charles Irving and Winifred Waverly (Atkinson) Smith. She was proceeded in death by her loving husband of 67 years, George Herbert (“Herb”) Jonas.

When she was a child, Wink’s family moved from Martinsville to a small tobacco farm in North Carolina where she learned to work hard helping her family operate the farm during the Great Depression. After her graduation as valedictorian of her high school class in 1942, she attended Pfeiffer University, then Furman University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in science and mathematics in 1946.

While attending college, Wink spent her summers assembling radio handsets at RCA in Camden, New Jersey. One of her fondest memories of that time was of young army pilots periodically flying their planes between the college buildings at the “girls” college. Upon her graduation, she worked as a mathematician at the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground. She was initially part of the “human computers” teams that worked with adding machines to develop firing tables for the artillery. Shortly after that, she was selected to join a team of other women to program the new ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first completely electronic computer. At that time the “conventional” wisdom was that men could not focus long enough to correctly write the required long programs and wire the machines to make them run. Wink assisted mathematicians, physicists, and engineers analyzing captured German V2 rockets. She worked through several generations of large computing devices and assisted in analyzing instrumental data for many projects, including the first hydrogen bomb.

She left this position to raise her family, but returned to college in the early 1970s, earning a master’s degree in education from the University of Delaware. She then taught mathematics and science at Harford Day School in Bel Air, Maryland, for 11 years, a job she found especially rewarding.

Wink and Herb had three children, a son who is a retired chemist, another son who is a geologist and mining engineer, and a daughter who is a veterinarian.

After her children left home, Wink returned to work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground after attending college a third time to take courses in modern computer programing languages. She worked for seven years at CSTA as a programmer and system manager on projects that included testing the M1 tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle.

Retiring in 1987 after 18 years of service with the Department of the Army, she was honored in 1996 as a Pioneer in the Computing Field.

Wink and Herb were an inseparable team until his death in 2017. They spent their retirement years tirelessly working for racial and environmental justice, providing many University of Maryland law students with experience in helping communities maintain a healthy and safe existence. Wink and Herb were named Harford County Living Treasures in 2005 for their work (see recorded interview at Interview with George Herbert Jonas and Winifred Jonas – Harford County Living Treasures – Harford County Public Library – Digital Maryland).

A private family burial will be held.