Wanda was a trailblazer for women in engineering and technology, an outspoken advocate for the peaceful use of nuclear technology, and a self-described “born volunteer” who served her community in multiple roles via an array of organizations. But, more than that, she was a friend and mentor. An inveterate collector of people, her inexhaustible fund of warmth, intelligence and generosity made her a powerful and beloved force in countless lives.

Wanda died on Wednesday July 23, 2025, just a couple months short of her 94^th birthday. She is survived by her husband Yasuhiro Muranaka, her eldest son Marcus Than Beck, her daughter-in-law Amy Tatala-Beck, her granddaughter Lilly Beck, and her cousins James McDaniel, Billie Jo McDaniel, and Barbara Vick. She was preceded in death by her younger son William Clay Beck, her father Sydney Pollard Munn, her mother Laura Jane Kennebrew Munn, her elder sister Maidelle Munn Baugh, and her nephew Cyril D. Baugh.

She was dauntless! During her life, she faced down challenges and celebrated achievements. She experienced grief, disappointment and loss, and rose above them over and over again, declaring “I will not be robbed of my joy.” In the process she consistently chose to let curiosity, kindness and humor set the tone for her rich and interesting life.

Wanda was born in Brownwood, Texas, on September 13, 1931. She excelled as a student, graduating from high school at 16, and was working toward her pre-med degree when she married at 18 and turned her energy toward supporting her first husband and raising a family. After the family moved to Corvallis, Oregon, she chartered a charity-based thrift shop to serve needy graduate and undergraduate students and their spouses, and ran the organization until it possessed a hefty capital asset base. She was also a crisis volunteer, on call around-the-clock to help avert suicides among the general population.

She divorced in her early 40s and found herself responsible for supporting two sons, an invalid mother, a sister with health challenges, and a nephew. At that time her work experience had been mainly as an assistant to professionals in a range of fields, including medicine, education, investment, accounting, and law enforcement, and she had never earned more than $650 per month. In a story headlined “Mother-turned-engineer finds college a good investment”, published in 1978, she told the Tri-City Herald “I knew that, whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to do it on a bachelor’s degree, because I had no time or money to go beyond that.”

The article continues: “When friends and family questioned her decision to return to college, ‘I told them I was going to turn 45 anyway. I could see my life as half over or half ahead of me… I figured I had 20, maybe 30 years as a productive person … so I evaluated whether I wanted to spend those years punching typewriter keys and telephone buttons or did I want to do something that would pay off for me and the people who mattered to me?’”

She took three years to earn a four-year degree in nuclear engineering from Oregon State University. Money was tight, but she sold what she could, took out a bank loan, and juggled her finances. At one point three months behind on her bills, she was one of 17 women chosen from 25,000 applicants for a $2,500 Marlo Thomas-McCalls scholarship. During her senior year she became the president of its student chapter of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and president of the student section of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).  She would continue her volunteer work with those organizations in the Tri-Cities until well into her 80s.

She graduated in 1977, and interviewed for a job with Westinghouse working on the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF), then under construction at Hanford in Richland, Washington. She described the reactor as “the most exciting technical thing on the horizon,” and “the most advanced, most safe, most efficient, and most beautiful nuclear reactor in the world.” Wanda spent nearly two decades working on the design, construction, start-up, nuclear safety oversight and operation of the FFTF, and in 1991 Soroptimist International Club in the Tri-Cities honored her as a Woman of Distinction. When politics and anti-nuclear sentiment led to the shut-down of the FFTF, she fought passionately to save it. And when the final process of rendering the reactor permanently inoperable began in 2004, she described it as a tragedy.

Wanda retired from Hanford in 1995 and was elected to the Richland City Council, where she served a four-year term. In 2001 President George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH). She served in that role for 17 years, during which she was credited for bringing “clear-headed and practical perspectives on the diverse questions confronting the board” and was described as “an independent-minded colleague of feisty conviction, candor and sympathy.”

During her professional career she was also a member of the Health Physics Society and the Hanford Advisory Board, and she served her community through Soroptimist International and the Mid-Columbia Girl Scout Council. She participated extensively in outreach to inform the public about Hanford, and she supported the local arm of MESA, a nationwide initiative that empowers students from underserved communities to enter STEM fields. She was honored repeatedly by the SWE and the ANS, and was inducted into the Oregon State University Engineering Hall of Fame. The American Association of Engineering Societies and the ANS chose her to participate as a delegate to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, also known as the Earth Summit) and its Agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Global Forum 1994 in Manchester, UK; and the 1997 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC, also known as the Kyoto Protocol) in Kyoto, Japan. She participated with the Energy Community Alliance of the League of Cities to support post-Chernobyl Slavutych (Ukraine), and was appointed by the Oregon governor to serve as the Oregon Chemical Disposal Advisory Commission board member to oversee the reclamation of chemical weapons at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Despite her extraordinary level of achievement, Wanda never lost her ability to step aside from the demands of her career and focus on the people she loved. A firm believer in the importance of taking time to Do Nothing, she relished good food and stimulating conversation, and her sense of humor was tickled by both the earthy and the absurd. She also never lost her curiosity and desire to learn; days before she died, when she was experiencing some uncomfortable symptoms, she commented to her caregiver, “I thought I’d learned everything I needed to know about the dying process, but I wasn’t expecting this. Isn’t it interesting!”

Wanda’s Celebration of Life will be held at Einan’s at Sunset Funeral Home, in Richland, on August 18. In lieu of flowers please consider making a donation to:

The SWE Wanda Munn Scholarship, which is awarded to re-entering or nontraditional engineering students, Wanda Munn Scholarship – Society of Women Engineers; or email hq@swe.org or

The Soroptimist International Re-Entry Scholarship

Her oral history interview is available on YouTube at Interview with Wanda Munn