"I did a lot of classified work and had a high reputation with the Air Force," Beutler says.

She spent nine years at Lincoln Lab, and remarried during this span.

"Then I was offered a position with General Motors as an experimental engineer," she says. "I led 150 people in the testing of current and next year's model cars."

In her five years there, Beutler says her "crowning glory" was her work with the "Turbo Trans-Am."

Her superiors had given her two months to figure out how to prevent the car from overheating. She solved the problem in half that time.

"But it was also my downfall because GM didn't want that kind of contribution from women," Beutler says. "I had disproved the theory that, unless you're born with gasoline in your veins, you can't be an automotive engineer."

In 1983, she went to work for General Electric as a program manager.

"By then, I had learned how to select a boss," Beutler says. "A guy who has a wife who's a professional and/or a daughter who is."

She was eventually transferred to New Hampshire where she has remained ever since.

Flying Into Retirement

Beutler no longer tries to balance motherhood and missile systems, but her life has hardly slowed down in the last few years.

"Never retire," she advises. "You'll be busier than when you were working."

She remains quite active, ice skating with a synchronized skating team, playing viola in an orchestra, teaching piano lessons and even piloting airplanes.

Beutler is a certified flight instructor and owns a single-engine plane that she flies regularly. She started flying in 1980.

"My husband got into it first [in 1969], and I got tired of being left alone on Saturdays," she says.

Beutler also tutors high school students in mathematics and physics.