At the end of the summer of 1943, Dorothy returns to Farmville to teach. She tutors struggling students after school and also directs the choir. Then a letter from Langley arrives, offering her a position through the end of the war. She accepts and leaves for Langley in November. She will be living too far away from her family to come home on weekends. Her husband, Howard, is a bellman at luxury hotels. He is also often away from Farmville, because he travels to where the seasonal work is: Florida in the winter, Vermont and New York in the summer. Grandparents, and dozens of aunts and uncles, look after the children when Howard and Dorothy cannot.

The previous year, Howard’s work took him to the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. There, the Vaughans became friends with the family of Joshua Coleman, an older man who shared bellman duties with Howard at the Greenbrier front desk. Joshua’s youngest daughter, Katherine, was a decade younger than Dorothy, but her early life followed a similar path: Katherine was smart enough to skip grades in school, she was very good at math, and she eventually passed up a chance at a graduate degree in order to raise a family. She would eventually follow Dorothy to Langley.