Wilma Z. Davis

She grew up in a steel town called Beech Bottom, West Virginia which had about 400 people, a church, a pool room, a drug store, and a company store. She had three siblings and her father worked for a steel company. She went to high school in Wellsburg, West Virginia and graduated in 1928. Wilma attended a small college - Bethany College which had about three hundred and fifty students at the time. She graduated with a degree in Mathematics in 1932. She was actively involved in college, so much so that she sometimes could not make it home for Christmas. Her father gave her only a thousand dollars as she left college because that was all he could afford to give her. Her mother died a few months before she graduated from college. ==Career==

After graduating from college, Wilma was meant to teach high school, but she ended up teaching first graders due to lack of jobs for high school teachers. She was enrolled in some Navy correspondence courses in cryptology by her brother-in-law who was a civil servant. Davis relished the courses in cryptology and excelled in them. She decided to sit for the Civil Service exam and got on the civil service register. She worked at the National Bureau of Aeronautics (NBS) for about nine months before she received her civil service status. She worked at the Civil Service Commission as a junior Civil Service Examiner, The Italians used their machines to transmit high-level military secrets mainly to diplomats and military officials in Berlin, Washington, and London to avoid intrusions or interceptions from other nations. Wilma was revered for her deep knowledge, prioritize assignments, successfully onboard new team members, and unwavering dedication to her work. The successful work of her team on the Japanese problem allowed the US to gain an upper hand on the Japanese. The Japanese machine was one of the most sophisticated cipher machines in that era and breaking it gave the US access to top-level Japanese messages during World War II. Frank Rowlett had put Wilma in a difficult situation by asking her to take charge of the Chinese project and report back to him. Essentially asking her to run the project without any regard for Leslie Rutledge who was the head. This made Wilma become conflicted as it went against her convictions. It bothered Wilma so much that she became physically sick and went to see her doctor. According to her doctor, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The information obtained from working on the Venona project was instrumental in the Soviet’s activities during the Cold War. Wilma Davis worked on the Venona project until 1949, then got married and moved to Canada with her second husband, John Mason. After the demise of her second husband, John Mason, Wilma received a telegram from William Friedman to return to work in Washington D.C. Wilma was put in charge of the Russian Diplomatic problem. She was then reassigned to the Venona project in 1952 after the death of John Mason. Wilma left her cryptology work again after marrying her third husband, John Davis. She took up the position of assistant director of production. Wilma remained an avid supporter of John Davis in all his roles which contributed to his accomplishments. Wilma Davis left the cryptologic field a few times during her career, but she could not stay away. She returned to work on Venona and returned a second time during the Vietnam War. Despite leaving and returning twice to cryptology over her career, she finally retired in 1973. Wilma Davis concluded her career as a pioneer cryptanalyst as the senior executive of the Cryptanalytic Career Panel. In the years following her retirement, Wilma Davis lived in Fairfax, Virginia. ==Family life==

During her early years as a cryptanalyst, she was known as Wilma Berryman. Wilma was married and widowed three times. She met her first husband, John Berryman, at Bethany College. They were both classmates and moved to Washington D.C in the 1930s. John Berryman worked at the general accounting office in Washington D.C. at the time. John Berryman died six months after Wilma began working for the Signal Intelligence. In the fall of 1949, she married her second husband, John Mason, who was a Major in the British Army. She relocated to Canada with John Mason, who died suddenly in summer of 1952 while visiting her sister, Helen, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Wilma returned to the US to continue her job as a cryptanalyst and married her third husband, John Davis, who was a Brigadier General. ==Legacy and death==

Wilma Davis is featured as one of 18 leading women in cryptology by the National Cryptologic Museum Foundation. == References ==