Jacqueline Jenkins-Nye moved to Baltimore, Maryland when she was a young child and her father started teaching at Johns Hopkins University. After high school graduation, she enrolled in Goucher College, which was then located in downtown Baltimore. There she became a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. She majored in math and psychology.
The Alpha Gamma Delta Executive Board. Jenkins-Nye was Vice President and is pictured on the left.
A 1945 announcement in the Baltimore Sun told of her engagement to Edwin Nye:
Lieutenant Jenkins is a 1942 graduate of Goucher College, where she was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. She joined the Naval Reserve in 1942 and has been stationed in Washington three years.
Jenkins-Nye likely hadn’t planned on becoming a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She along with small group of Goucher women, who excelled in math and had keen analytical minds, were recruited to help break the codes used in enemy radio transmissions. But they really didn’t know that’s what they were doing when they signed on, The women were unable to tell anyone what their day-to-day duties were like and had no idea what any of them were working on, even though many of them lived in the same place and socialized together after work. Working independently, these highly intelligent were able to break the codes. The stories of these code breakers did not come to light until more than half a century later.
The Nyes had three children. One son is Bill Nye, “the Science Guy.” They divorced in the late 1970s.
After her children were grown, Jenkins-Nye earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from George Washington University. Her dissertation, which she defended in 1982, was titled, “Program manager tasks performed by Federal HRD practitioners as perceived by incumbents and their supervisors.” She taught in DC schools as a substitute and at George Washington University. She then started working for federal agencies until her retirement from government work. In her mid-60s, Jenkins-Nye started a human resource firm and did consulting work.
She died on March 30, 2000, at the age of 79 and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.
