A local employment recruiter heard that Sherman had chemistry knowledge and offered her a job at a factory in Sandusky, Ohio.
The job turned out to be at the Plum Brook Ordnance Works munitions factory, charged with the responsibility of manufacturing explosives trinitrotoluene (TNT), dinitrotoluene (DNT), and pentolite.
[1][4] Sherman became pregnant out of wedlock in 1943, a difficult dilemma in an era when such behavior was considered extremely shameful and women were often given back-alley abortions or hidden away from their friends and family.
[1][5][6] After spending the war years designing explosives for the military, she applied for a job at North American Aviation, and was employed in their Rocketdyne Division, based in Canoga Park, California.
[10] While working at North American Aviation, she met her future husband, George Richard "Red" Morgan, a Mechanical Engineer who had graduated from Caltech.
In order to improve the performance of the first stage, they awarded a contract to North American Aviation's Rocketdyne Division to come up with a more powerful fuel.
[12] The fuel needed to give extra power to the rocket while still maintaining the same engine design from the Army's Redstone missiles, a very difficult task.
[11] Due to her expertise and experience, Morgan was assigned to lead a group of college interns at North American Aviation's Rocketdyne Division[13] and their work resulted in the birth of a new propellant, Hydyne.
[15]: 166 In 1957, the Soviet Union and the United States had set a goal of placing satellites into Earth orbit as part of a worldwide scientific celebration, known as the International Geophysical Year.
[16] The Soviet Union successfully launched the Sputnik 1 satellite on October 4, 1957, an event followed soon after by a very public and disastrous explosion of a Vanguard rocket.
In July 2013, the BBC's online news magazine released a short video tribute to Morgan, narrated by her son, George.
[11] He had built and launched homemade rockets with friends in the Arizona desert, and as he recalled, "If I'd known how much expertise in rocketry my mother had, we could have asked her for help and saved ourselves a great deal of trouble.