Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center celebrated Black History Month, "Hallowed Grounds - Sites of African American Memories," Feb. 16 with poems, interpretative dance, and a keynote speech from Naval Sea Systems Command's (NAVSEA) executive director for logistics, maintenance and industrial operations, who told of a career full of challenges that she overcame through hard work and perseverance.

Sharon Smoot, a senior executive service member with NAVSEA who supervises Naval shipyards and the Supervisors of Shipbuilding, grew up in an Air Force family and spent much of her early childhood overseas, so she began her life unfamiliar with the prejudice and civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.

"I lived a sheltered life, living overseas with the military," Smoot said. "I didn't go through culture shock until I moved (to Portsmouth, Va., in the late 1970s) and shared with the things that people here experienced."

Smoot, the 2010 Black Engineer of the Year for Professional Achievement in Government, said that she had obstacles thrown at her due to her gender, her color and for something one wouldn't think was a problem, her size.

"I have been judged unfairly because of my height," she said. "I'm 5-foot-zero. That's why I wear high heels. But in my mind, I'm a 6-foot-4, 240 pound linebacker!"

The roadblocks began during high school in Portsmouth.

"I had a counselor tell me that I could not be an engineer because I was too small," Smoot said. "I didn't know that there was a height requirement for being an engineer!"

But she wanted to be an engineer, so she chose Virginia Tech, which was in its early years of being co-educational. Smoot had to overcome a climate that didn't welcome women into her chosen field.

"On my first day in my first engineering class, (I had a professor who) said that women don't belong at Virginia Tech and they certainly don't belong in engineering," Smoot said.

Smoot began her career with the Department of the Navy in 1986, first as an electrical engineer at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and over the next 15 years moved into leadership and planning. She entered the senior executive service in 2006. Smoot repeatedly said that looks don't determine a person's ability.

"Just because I don't look like a leader doesn't mean that I'm not the leader," she said. "And don't assume that the person you are addressing doesn't have something to contribute to the conversation or the work. I don't judge you by what I see and I accept that people judge me by what they see me do."

She closed with encouraging words about how every member of the Navy, whether in uniform or as a civilian, will have a part in its war fighting and history making mission. The challenge is to take each piece of the mission as important.

"How will you contribute to your future?" Smoot asked. "What part of history do you want to contribute to?"

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