Home Is Where the Heart Is
A Project Proposal
In 1987, a young woman, Gina DeMott, was living in the rural town of Moultrie, Georgia. After living there her entire life, she realized that she needed to leave the small town, and that was when she faced one of the toughest decisions of her life. As a young child, she often witnessed her hard working, southern mother take care of the entire family. Gina always thought she’d be just like her mother, living on a farm and watching her family grow.
Overtime as technology began booming in the late 1980s, Gina became more and more interested in computers. She commuted to Valdosta State University, 45 minutes away from home, every single day to improve her education in the field of computer science. Eventually, she moved out of her parents’ home with her brother and began working at Riverside Manufacturing where she was the only female programmer on staff. After 2 years, Gina began to realize that she was under paid when compared to male programmers who were assigned the same tasks as her.
The conservative values of the south prevented Gina from reaching her high set goals. Well driven at the time, she felt a calling from the bigger cities in Georgia. Opportunities in the urban cities of Georgia were much greater, even for female programmers. Leaving everything behind in Moultrie, a city where her heart resides to this day, seemed to be an unbearable decision.
Eventually, my mother, Gina, ended up working for multiple companies in Albany, Georgia, Houston, Texas, and in Montgomery, Alabama. It completely amazes me that she could move around so much after it was so hard for her to leave Moultrie. It is obvious that once she got away, she gained much more confidence and turned into the independent woman that she is today.
For me, Moultrie has always been a slow place with quick thinking people. Many times, I could barely get a word in a conversation between my full mouth of pound cake and the witty, playful banter between cousins, uncles, and grandparents. It was fun to watch, but I always felt very different from these relatives that only lived 2 hours away. Also, as a child born into the technology age, I would often be dreading being away from the internet and video games for a family trip, but looking deeper into the DeMott family history makes me understand why it was so difficult for my mother to leave.
It was natural for farming people in Moultrie to stay there. Her mother, Alice, had never worked and was the mother of a beautiful southern Georgia family. The sons of the family planned to live close to home as well, both sides of grandparents lived very close, and her maternal cousins were even subsets of her paternal family because her mother and her aunt both married DeMott brothers. The family was huge and everyone looked after everyone else. Obviously, this could be annoying at times, but Gina loved it.
The DeMott family had been in Colquitt County for over a century and had put significant effort into growing it and their family within its boundaries. Her grandfather, Frank Curtis DeMott or “Big Papa”, became wealthy using his land for farming and cattle after his father had struggled through farming in Moultrie in the late 1800s.
Through this dedication to Moultrie and the success that Frank Curtis had achieved, the DeMott family carried a lot of weight in the town of Moultrie and the county around it, Colquitt County. Over the 20th century, many successful businesses sprouted from DeMotts, but they also stuck to their roots by continuing the family business of farming.
Her father was a loving, strong man that fought in World War II, but mysteriously would never talk about it except in small bits. All she knew was that he was in France during the Battle of the Bulge and that he was proud of fighting for his country. In fact, the five generations of men before Gina all served in the United States Military all the way back to the War of 1812. The men of the DeMott family were very proud of where they came from and were willing to protect it.
My mother would have to break away from that century-old understanding that everyone wanted to stay with the family for many reasons if not just for tradition.
How could she leave? She never liked being away from her family and she would always be cared for in Moultrie.
If she left, though, there would be so many more chances for her in the work she had chosen to do. So, she was faced with the choice of moving away from her family town to get paid double her current salary in an information technologies job or stay close to home as nearly her entire family had done for a century.
Throughout my childhood, I would see my mother in front of a computer every day. The clicking of her keyboard could always be heard throughout the house if she was not on a conference call with other Hewlett-Packard employees across the country. When I would peak around the corner of her office to get a look at the numbers and displays that equated to complete jibberish to my young brain, her desk would be covered in notes that were illuminated by the bright colors of graphs and data sets. To me, it always made sense for women to be in front of computers, utilizing programming, and handling large sets of numbers easily, but now I know that it was not always as common.
Through understanding my mother’s reasons to move away from her deeply close family I plan to investigate about larger change in the United States of America. This country had made large leaps towards equal rights for men and women over the 20th century, but many times discrimination was overlooked. Also, I will look at how technology has grown in this same time period. I know that the two subjects go hand in hand more and more as women are becoming more involved in STEM areas.
Now I know how strong my mother had to be to continue working in the field she was best at while so many forces pushed against her. Especially when one of those forces was not even one that she wanted to push back.
Interview Questions:
- When you think of Moultrie, what is the first or warmest image that comes to mind?
- What was your dream job when you were a child?
- Before the incident at Riverside Manufacturing, did you ever think you would really leave Moultrie?
- Why was it so hard to leave Moultrie?
- How were you introduced to computers? What was your first memory with one?
- Do you feel like your experience with technology was hindered when you were younger because of where you were raised?
- At what point did you decide that you wanted to focus your career with technology?
- Did you see a significant change in how you were treated in the STEM world once you were working for a company in a larger city?
- Did you ever think about how you were a leader for women in the STEM world at the time?
- If so, did this motivate you in your goals and aspirations?
- Why did you and Dad move to the places you did? Was it always just for better jobs?
- How did you handle raising two children while also working a demanding job?
- Was it easier to move from Moultrie to Albany or to move to Houston after you had already lived on your own for a while?
- How did you perceive your female STEM coworkers? Were there many of them?
- Do you have any opinions about the presence or treatment of women in STEM today? Are there still changes to be made?
Working Bibliography
Encyclopedia on Moultrie
Strickland, Micheal A. Moultrie. Athens: Georgia Humanities Council and the U of Georgia Press, 2005. Print.
History of Colquitt County
Covington, W. A. History of Colquitt county. Atlanta, GA: Foote and Davies Co., 1937. Print.
History of the woman who worked with the first computer
Bartik, Jean, Jon T. Rickman, and Kim D. Todd. Pioneer programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik and the computer that changed the world. Kirksville, MO: Truman State U Press, 2013. Print.
American Women in Technology
Zierdt-Warshaw, Linda, Alan Winkler, and Leonard Bernstein. American women in technology: an encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Print.
Timeline of Hewlett-Packard’s History
“Timeline of our history.” HP Timeline | HP® Official Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.
