Loney Clinton Gordon was born in Arkansas in 1915 and moved to Grand Rapids as a child. She contributed to the development of a vaccine that has saved countless lives. https://www.michiganradio.org/post/remembering-loney-clinton-gordon-you-achieved-something-and-you-were-glad

I'd heard before of Clinton Gordon's work, along with Dr. Pearl Kendrick and Dr. Grace Eldering, on developing the vaccine for the whooping cough in the 1940s.

What I didn't know is that there is still a recording of Loney Clinton Gordon.

The recording was made by @GVSU professor Carolyn Shapiro-Shapin in 1998, and preserved by the amazing folks in the local history section at @GRPL. The recording was made on tape, but librarians digitized it for us for this story.

And there is so much more about Loney Clinton Gordon I never knew. Like, that she went to South High School at the same time as Gerald Ford. She and her sister Ivory were among the only Black children there. Here they are in the Girl's Junior High Glee Club in 1931

Another interesting thread, that I wasn't able to fully report out for this story, is that Loney's sister Ivory was a scientist in her own right. Here's her @michiganstateu master's thesis from 1951 https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/16258/datastream/OBJ/download/A_study_on_the_antibacterial_activity_of_2_4-dichlorophenoxyacetic_acid.pdf