Virginia Hall Biography

Virginia Hall Goillot (born Virginia Hall, April 6, 1906 – July 8, 1982) was an American spy who worked with the British Special Operations Executive during World War II. Her effectiveness as a spy earned her the â€Å"honor† of being considered the most dangerous Allied spy by the Nazi German regime. Fast Facts: Virginia Hall Known For: Renowned spy who assisted the French Resistance during World War II, working for both British and American intelligence and becoming one of the Nazis most-wanted enemies.Born: April 6, 1906 in Baltimore, MarylandDied: July 8, 1982 in Rockville, MarylandSpouse: Paul Gaston Goillot (m. 1950)Honors: Member of the Order of the British Empire (1943), Distinguished Service Cross (1945), Croix de Guerre avec Palme Early Life and Education Virginia Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Barbara and Edwin Hall. Her name, Virginia, was her mother’s middle name. As a young girl, she attended the all-girls preparatory school Roland Park Country School. She eventually attended Radcliffe College and then Barnard, the prestigious women’s college, studying foreign language including French, German, and Italian. With her parents’ support, Hall went to Europe to finish off her studies. She traveled extensively on the Continent, studying in Austria, France, and Germany in the late 1920s, with the goal of working in the diplomatic corps. In 1931, she began working at the American embassy in Warsaw, Poland, as a clerk for the Consular Service; this was intended to be a stepping stone for a full-fledged career in the Foreign Service. However, in 1932, Hall had a hunting accident that resulted in the partial amputation of her leg. Forced to adapt to life with a wooden leg she nicknamed â€Å"Cuthbert,† her traditional diplomatic career was over before it began. Hall resigned from the Department of State in 1939 and returned to Washington, D.C., where she attended graduate school at American University. Special Operations Executive In 1940, as World War II spread across Europe, Hall was in Paris. She had joined the Ambulance Service to help in the war effort in France, but she wound up in Vichy territory when France fell to the invading Nazis. Hall was able to leave France and get to London, where she volunteered for the Special Operations Executive, the British espionage organization. Using the cover of a reporter for the New York Post, Hall spent over a year in Vichy France, working to coordinate the activities of the French Resistance. In 1942, she worked alongside noted SOE operative Peter Churchill on a couple of missions, involving the delivery of money and agents to the French spy networks. Hall worked primarily in and around Toulouse and Lyon. Hall’s work was discreet, but she quickly got on the radar of the occupying Germans. Nicknamed â€Å"the limping lady,† she was deemed one of the regime’s most wanted. In 1942, Germany seized all of France, and Hall needed to escape quickly. She narrowly escaped Lyon by train, then hiked through the Pyrenees to make it to Spain. Throughout the ordeal, her sense of humor remained intact—she transmitted to her SOE handlers that she hoped â€Å"Cuthbert† wouldn’t give her trouble during her escape. She was briefly arrested for crossing into Spain illegally, but was released with the help of the American embassy. For about a year, she worked with the SOE based out of Madrid, then returned to London, where she was recognized with an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire. Continuing Intelligence Career After completing her work with the SOE, Hall’s spy career wasn’t over. She joined the equivalent American organization, the Office of Strategic Services, Special Operations Branch, and requested a chance to return to France, still under Nazi occupation. Granting her request, the OSS sent her to Brittany, France, with a false identity and a code name. Over the course of the next year, Hall mapped out safe zones for supply drops and safe houses, worked with the major Operation Jedburgh, personally helped train Resistance fighters in guerilla warfare, and sent a constant stream of reporting back to Allied intelligence. Her work continued up until the very end of the war; Hall only ceased reporting once Allied forces caught up to her and her team in September 1945. Upon returning to the United State, Hall married Paul Goillot, a former OSS operative himself. The pair both transitioned into work at the Central Intelligence Agency, where Hall became an intelligence analyst, specializing in French parliamentary affairs. Both Hall and Goillot were assigned to the Special Activities Divison: the CIA division focused on covert operations. Retirement, Death, and Recognition After fifteen years at the CIA, Hall retired in 1966, moving with her husband to a Barnesville, Maryland, farm. She died sixteen years later at the age of 76 in Rockville, Maryland, and is buried nearby. During her life, Hall was awarded some of the most prestigious honors in the world. Not only was she made an honorary MBE, but she also received a Distinguished Service Cross, the only such award given to a woman in World War II, from the American government. The French, meanwhile, awarded her a Croix de Guerre to honor her work in occupied France. After her death, the honors continued: she was commemorated in 2006, on what would have been her 100th birthday, by the French and British ambassadors to the United States, and she was inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019. She remains one of the most effective and honored spies in American history. Sources Pearson, Judith L. The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of Americas Greatest Female Spy. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2005.Purnell, Sonia. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, Virginia Hall. Hachette UK, 2019.â€Å"Virginia Hall: The Courage and Daring of ‘The Limping Lady’.† Central Intelligence Agency, 8 October 2015, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2015-featured-story-archive/virginia-hall-the-courage-and-daring-of-the-limping-lady.html.

Jane Austen s Pride And Prejudice - 2143 Words

Jane Austen is an expert at juxtaposing romance and wit. Her novels are highly prized not only for their irony, humor, and depiction of English country life, but also for their underlying serious qualities. Austen’s plots highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. With each page, Austen is able to illustrate the absurdity of society in 19th century England through the entertaining individuals that she creates. It is easy to read a Jane Austen novel and label her characters as shallow and conceited, or shy and tenderhearted. But it is more complex than that. What really differentiates a heroine from a villainess? In many of Jane Austen’s stories, characters from different books share similar traits. However, in Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice, it is not the heroines that share comparable qualities. Instead, there are striking similarities between Elizabeth Bennett, the protagonist in Pride and Prejudice, and Mary Crawford, the antagonist in Mansfield Park. Mary Crawford and Elizabeth Bennett are similar in their liveliness, their wit, and their playfulness — all in contrast to the heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price, who is quiet, reserved, and solemn. So what makes us see Mary as villain and Elizabeth as a heroine? The answer is very simple: their moral compasses. Mary isn’t judged for her vivacious, strong-headed personality — she is judged for her moral failings, for her â€Å"faults of principle†, her â€Å"bluntedShow MoreRelatedJane Austen s Pride And Prejudice1294 Words   |  6 PagesJane Austen s exceptional novel Pride and Prejudice has been depicted as a classic that is as much a social study on class, marriage and gender as it is a romantic tale. It is an amusing representation of the social atmosphere of the late eighteenth and mid nineteenth century England, and it is primarily required with courtship rituals of the English high class. The novel is more than a romantic tale, however throug h Austen s subtle, and ironic style, it addresses gender, class, and marriageRead MoreJane Austen s Pride And Prejudice1231 Words   |  5 Pagesfinancial stability. In the novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen states that the desire for better social connections interferes with the workings of love through the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth to criticize the social class structure of the 19th century. Anxieties about social connections or the desire for better social connections, interfere with the workings of love. Darcy and Elizabeth s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply that Jane Austen views love as something independentRead MoreJane Austen s Pride And Prejudice992 Words   |  4 Pages It is unfortunate that many people tend to dismiss Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, as simply a romantic love story, even labeling it a â€Å"chick flick.† Upon a shallow reading, it may appear to be such, but a closer look at the novel reveals so much more embedded in the story. In addition to describing the entertaining relationship between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, the novel serves to forward Austen s personal values and ideas. Furthermore, there is one issue of her era that she particularlyRead MoreJane Austen s Pride And Prejudice1138 Words   |  5 PagesPride and Prejudice is a novel about the superficiality of marriage during the late 19th and early 20th century, which largely influenced the decisions made by individuals, based on connections and social rankings. 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Elizabeth lives in Longbourn with her parents, Mr and Mrs Bennet and her four sisters. In the beginning of the novel, Elizabeth s prejudice mindset and strong opinion blinds her from realizations happening arou nd her. Soon, Elizabeth s prejudice disappears allowing her to open up and fall in love. Throughout Jane Austen s novel, Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth growsRead MoreJane Austen s Pride And Prejudice1649 Words   |  7 PagesIn her novel, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen is pre-occupied with the theme of marriage. Marriage is a central issue of a woman’s life but it was even more crucial for the women of her society where women were largely dependent on the men in their lives. As a result, women pursued socio-economic stability through marriage. However, it is clear through the novel that Austen did not agree with this part of her society. In Pride and Prejudice, she gives preference to a marriage which is based on love

ADHD Diagnosis Essay Example For Students

ADHD Diagnosis Essay Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) is much more prevalent in todays societycompared to previous generations. More and more people are being diagnosed at an alarmingrate. To our surprise, I learned this disorder does not only affect children. There are many adultswho suffer from it also. ADHD characteristics are neuro-biologically based, and they oftenchange as the individual gets older. One does not out-grow ADHD even though the behaviors, orsymptoms may not be exhibited in the same manner or with the same intensity. After learningthis fact, I thought it would be very interesting to see how this disorder affects both children andcollege students. Therefore, I choose one journal article which relates ADHD to children, and theother which deals with the effects of ADHD on college students. The first journal article I researched, An Intervention Approach for Children withTeacher and Parent Identified Attentional Difficulties, explained that inattention, impulsivity,distractibility, and restlessness are all signs of a child with an attention-deficit hyperactivitydisorder. There are three subtypes of ADHD which have been defined by the Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Mental Disorders as: predominantly inattentive, predominately hyperactiveimpulsive, and combined (Semrud-Clekeman, Nielsen, Clinton, Sylvester, Parle, and Connor,1999). Usually children who exhibit these subtypes have difficulty completing assignments,displaying high qualities of work, and maintaining good behaviors. Children with thehyperactivity-impulsivity subtype do not display significant attentional problems, though they areidentified as young as pre-schoolers. However, symptoms of inattention dont typically emergeuntil the later ages, which must be why the predominately inattentive and combined sub types ofADHD have been found in older school-age children. These children who have been identified as having ADHD, show an inability touse effective problem solving over a period of time. When researchers looked at their brainstructures, they found that the frontal-striatal regions are involved with the childs ability toinhibit, focus, and shift attention. Researchers have formed interventions involving the behavioral or cognitivemanagement of children with ADHD. Attention-training strategies, classroom-basedcontingency systems, home-school contingencies, and peer-mediated contingencies are examplesof these interventions. In an effort to measure students with ADHD, in addition to medicationand intervention strategies, researchers conducted two types of tests. The first test, the visual attention task, required the child to scan fourteen rows ofds, each d had one to three marks around it. The child was instructed to select the ds with twomarks around them. The children were also told to move down to the next row every twentyseconds. The score is calculated by subtracting the errors from the total amount correct. It wassuggested that this task assesses the capacity for sustained attention as well as accurate visualscanning and inhibition of rapid responses(Semrud-Clekeman, Nielsen, Clinton, Sylvester,Parle, and Connor, 1999, p. 585). The second test, the auditory attention task, required the child to listen to randomletters and numbers. Afterwards, they were asked to remember how many letters or numbers theyheard. The child must keep in mind the letters and numbers they heard for each stimulus at thesame time. The test starts out with four stimuli and finishes with twelve. This task has beenhypothesized to be a measure of auditory divided attention as well as sustainedattention(Semrud-Clekeman, Nielsen, Clinton, Sylvester, Parle, and Connor, 1999, p. 585). The results of this study confirmed that children with ADHD who had helpthrough the intervention programs showed an increase in their performance on visual andauditory attention tasks, while the other children without the help of intervention programs didnot show any improvement. These children most likely represent a continuum of attention andactivity / impulsivity problems and may describe the population of children with significantattention problems who are infrequently referred for an assessment beyond thepediatrician(Semrud-Clekeman, Nielsen, Clinton, Sylvester, Parle, and Connor, 1999, p. 587). Itseems very probable that children with attention and work completion difficulties withoutsignificant behavioral and learning problems often go unaided in classrooms today. War Simulation Softwar EssayIt seems as if this new test could be a much better way of diagnosing someonewith ADHD compared to the methods used in the two journal articles. I feel the researchpresented in the journal articles does support the report in our popular media article byillustrating that there is continuous research taking place that just seems to be getting better astime goes by. All three articles also helped confirm my awareness of the fact that ADHD ispresently such a widespread problem. The articles also helped me to realize how manyindividuals are misdiagnosed. All types of disorders, from anxiety to manic-depression toconduct disorders, are now mistaken for ADHD, and everyone suffers for that diagnosticsloppiness (Schrof Fischer, 2000). It comes as a relief to know that with modern technology,comes more accurate ways a determining whether an individual is suffering from ADHD. If thisnew test is confirmed to be reliable, it could help correct both the overuse of Rit alin and theundertreatment of kids whose ADHD is missed by the naked eye (Schrof Fischer, 2000). All inall, Ive learned a great deal about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and I am glad to now know that there is hope for our future generation to be prepared with more improved methods to accurately diagnose people with ADHD.