article<\/a> in the Boston University Arts & Sciences magazine, after the U.S. entered World War II, 10,000 well-educated women across the country were sent a letter with two questions: \u201cAre you engaged to be married?\u201d and \u201cDo you like crossword puzzles?\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cThose who answered no and yes, respectively, were recruited as \u2018code girls\u2019 to intercept and decrypt messages coming over the airwaves from Japan,\u201d Lara Ehrlich writes.<\/p>\n
Pearlmutter was transported to Arlington Hall in Virginia, where she worked long hours in secret for the Signal Intelligence Service, the U.S. Army\u2019s code breaking division. The job required a familiarity with the Japanese language, so Pearlmutter jumped in.<\/p>\n
She worked as a cryptanalytic aide for several months. Although they were closely monitored, she and her best friend managed to escape Arlington Hall for various \u201cescapades\u201d \u2013 at one time getting locked in at the cemetery at night. They jumped the fence to get out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got into a lot of trouble,\u201d Pearlmutter said. \u201cBut we were adventuresome.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the war, her adventures continued. Pearlmutter worked as a travel agent and traveled the world. She saw the iditarod in Alaska, visited mud baths in Israel. There haven\u2019t been too many places that Pearlmutter hasn\u2019t visited, her daughter Debby Fourstar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very aware that anywhere I could go, I could meet somebody that I could learn from and enjoy,\u201d Pearlmutter said.<\/p>\n
For decades, Pearlmutter didn\u2019t speak of her wartime contributions. Fourstar recalled the stories of her father, a decorated lieutenant colonel, but said that it was only until later in life that her mother began to reflect on her experiences.<\/p>\n
Pearlmutter\u2019s life path has given her many thoughts about war, human relations with one another and leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the idea that we can avoid conflict,\u201d she said. By communicating and interacting with those of different backgrounds, we can \u201cavoid unnecessary killing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She recalled being taken by her father to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a child and seeing a statue of the warrior David.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s quite a statue\u2019 to my dad,\u201d Pearlmutter said. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Well, he was a very important warrior. And he was a very personable man, who knew how to draw a line and quit when the quitting is good.\u2019 And then later on in my life I said, I wonder if other persons who are also in a job of leadership have done the same thing, quit while you\u2019re still ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pearlmutter moved to Mancos four years ago, and lives at the 82-acre Thunderbird Ranch. She\u2019s an artist \u2013 and according to her family and friends, is still quite \u201cadventuresome.\u201d<\/p>\n
ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"II code breaker speaks at Mancos library<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,638,83,29,184],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-library-and-museum","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter","tag-veterans-affairs"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90344,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66184\/revisions\/90344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66184"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}