40. Judith Love Cohen — a.ka. Jack Black’s Mom

AMY: Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode, everyone! I’m Amy Helmes…

KIM: And I’m Kim Askew. Amy, the woman we’re going to be discussing today is someone you discovered randomly on the Internet.

AMY: Yeah, someone posted an anecdote about her to Facebook (it’s sort of gone viral this spring) and I’ll admit I was initially skeptical when I read it.

KIM: Understandable. So much of what’s on the Internet is complete bunk.

AMY: Right. So I headed over to Snopes.com to feel this story out, and they confirmed it, and then when I researched this woman a bit more, I was bowled over by her many accomplishments. I was like, “This woman was incredible!” She was a prolific author, she was an aerospace engineer and also, for a time, a professional ballerina in New York City. But when you Google her, basically all the headlines about her sum her up in three words: “Jack Black’s mom.”

KIM: As in, Jack Black the Hollywood actor?

AMY: Exactly. And as much as I love Jack Black (He’s hilarious and seems generally adorable), we’re not going to be referring to her as “Jack Black’s mom” in the rest of this episode; she deserves to be called by her actual name: Judith Love Cohen.

KIM: She was a writer of children’s books in the later part of her life, and we’ll get to that in a bit, but growing up in New York (she was born in Brookly in 1933) she was considered a math whiz. According to her Wikipedia page, by 5th grade, her fellow classmates were begging her to do their math homework for them. She majored in math at Brooklyn College but eventually realized that she preferred engineering, and think about this for a second. How many women in the early 1950s were studying engineering?

AMY: Not many, I’m sure, but also, how many were studying engineering while also a member of the Corps de Ballet for the New York Metropolitan Opera? It seems that lasted only a short while, but I mean, that’s incredible.

KIM: It’s amazing. And also to think of her as excelling in these extremely different spheres… the scientific world and also the arts. I love that. Also, seeing old pictures of her, you can totally picture her on the stage. She looked a bit like Audrey Hepburn.

AMY: After two years at Brooklyn College she ended up moving to Southern California in 1952 and worked as a junior engineer at North American Aviation while attending engineering school at the University of Southern California at night. She got her bachelors and masters degrees there. And to go back to the point you made earlier, Kim, she said she didn’t recollect ever meeting another female engineering student while she was studying there. 

KIM: She went on to an aerospace engineering job at Space Technology Laboratories, where she worked until she retired in 1990, and when you read about some of the projects she worked on, it’s impressive. 

AMY: She was on the team that created the guidance computer for the Minuteman Missle. She worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. But most famously, she worked on the Abort-Guidance System that was used to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts safely home after an explosion crippled their spacecraft. The astronauts later went to her place of employment to thank the whole team for helping to rescue them. And circling back to the first internet story that sparked my interest in Judith Cohen in the first place, legend has it that she was at work the day she went into labor with her fourth child, Jack (Jack Black’s actual name is Thomas). She brought a printout of a problem she’d been working on at work to the hospital with her. Apparently she called her boss later from the hospital to let him know she’d solved the problem — and oh, yeah, she’d had a baby, too. This anecdote was recalled by her oldest son, Neil Seigel in his obituary to her, so it’s not just the stuff of urban legend. (But this just drives home the point that she was a working mom while she was earning her degrees and saving astronauts in outer space…. And frankly, I would imagine that Jack Black was probably a handful in his youth, so that’s just one more credit to all she accomplished.) 

KIM: [Responds.]

AMY: She served as president of the L.A. chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. Again, according to her son, Neil, “During her engineering career, she was a vigorous and tireless advocate of better treatment for women in the workplace. Many things that today we consider routine – the posting of job openings inside of a company so that anyone could apply, formal job descriptions for every position, and so forth – were her creations. She had a profound impact on equality in the workforce.”

KIM: When she retired in 1990 from her engineering job, she was ready for her second act, as a writer and publisher. She had already been writing a monthly column for Engineer of California magazine, and she had written a play, “A Passover To Remember,” which was staged twice in Los Angeles. So upon retirement she wrote a book targeted at 10-year-old girls called “You Can Be an Engineer” but she couldn’t find any publisher who wanted it, so she and her third husband ended up creating their own publishing house called Cascade Press, through which she began writing nonfiction aspirational books for young girls. 

AMY: Yes, she created the You Can Be series of books to encourage young girls to pursue careers in science and engineering. Titles include You Can Be a Woman Chemist, You Can Be a Woman Video Game Producer, You Can Be a Woman Architect. She wrote at least 20 of these books — I love the idea of little girls stumbling across them in the library and being inspired. She sold more than 100,000 copies of these books.

KIM: [responds] She also wrote the “Green” series, which were books for young children that promoted environmentalism. 

AMY: She died in 2016 from cancer, but I’d like to note that in the mid 1960s she had taken up dancing again — recreational folk dancing, which she continued to enjoy into old age. 

KIM: [responds]

AMY: And just a little side note: the company Cohen had worked for as an aerospace engineer (TRW) was eventually acquired by Northrop Grumman, where my own Aunt Carol works as a software engineer, so this episode is dedicated to Aunt Carol and all the other women who are still breaking glass ceilings in the STEM fields. Women still only make up less than a third of the workforce in science, technology, engineering and math-related fields.

KIM: [responds… she’s amazing, etc.] She was so much more than just “Jack Black’s mom.” Which reminds me of our next Lost Lady whom we’ll be discussing next week — Edith Lewis is a woman who has been lost in the shadow of her great love, author Willa Cather, but Lewis had a fascinating writing career of her own, and we’ll be discussing her — and her relationship with Cather in our next episode. 

AMY: We’ll be joined by special guest, Dr. Melissa Homestead, whose recently published book, The Only Wonderful Things examines this partnership in great detail.

KIM: I can’t wait! Until next week, don’t forget to tell your book-loving friends about our podcast to help us spread the word about these amazing forgotten women. And leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts if you’re enjoying the episodes!

AMY: Bye, everyone! Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.