In the early 1950s, while stationed at an Air Force base in Tokyo, Col. Lucas taught English to Japanese schoolchildren and college students in her spare time.

She received a master's degree in educational psychology from Columbia University in 1957 and moved to the Washington, D.C. area in the early 1960s.

She created, organized and implemented special literacy programs aimed to increase the education levels of service personnel.

“Most people don’t realize that among all the servicemen who enter the military annually, about 45,000 of them read below the fifth-grade level, and more than 30 percent of these men are black,” she said in a 1969 interview with Ebony Magazine.

After her military retirement, Col. Lucas became the director of urban services at the old Washington Technical Institute, one of three schools that merged in 1977 to form the University of the District of Columbia.