Efforts To Recognize 'Rosie the Riveters' Picks Up Momentum
Jeffry Scott, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12/7/04
The nation was at war and Eloise Strom, a young mother of two young boys, rose every morning before dark and rode an hour and a half in a car pool with five other women to work at the aircraft plant in Marietta.
At the end of a 10-hour day, she would hurry home to fight the war on another front: the grocery store.
It was World War II. Food was rationed. First come, first served. Get there late and there would be no flour, no sugar, no milk, no coffee. No hamburger for dinner tonight.
"It seemed like everything was hard in those days," recalled Strom, a spry 90-year-old who lives in Buckhead and worked in the old Bell Bomber plant.
On the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, more efforts are being made to honor the 6 million American women who worked in war factories and, regardless of what their specific jobs might have been, became known as Rosie the Riveters.
The national movement to remember the riveters happens to be based in Georgia, home of the 1,400-member American Rosie the Riveter Association, at the Little White House in Warm Springs.
The"riveters" not only provided the weapons and sustenance to win the war, they also altered the fabric of American life. The war was the first time most had worked outside the home and the first time they wore trousers, not dresses, in the workplace.
Rosies prompted the women's liberation movement two decades later the way that black Americans fighting in World War II set the stage for the civil rights movement, historians say.
That it took until 1998 before a Rosie group was formed is amazing, said Sadie Holt, the 73-year-old president of the Georgia chapter of the Rosie the Riveter Association.
"Most of the women went back home after the war, and returning soldiers took their jobs, so they were kind of forgotten," Holt said."They went back to living their lives and raising families. But they need to be remembered."
Holt was an 11-year-old girl living in the Florida Panhandle when the war broke out. She did her part as a volunteer, helping with paper and scrap metal drives.
"We'd squeeze the toothpaste tubes, which were made of aluminum then, until we got all the toothpaste out, because there was a shortage of toothpaste too," she recalled."Then we would recycle the tubes."
Carol Cain, a LaGrange middle school teacher, sparked the idea of forming a commemorative group after she performed as Rosie the Riveter for an event at the Little White House commemorating women war workers.
"I thought it was going to be a one-time show. Now look what it has turned into," said Cain, 44, whose grandfather worked at the Bell Bomber plant and whose grandmother was a volunteer who rolled bandages for the Red Cross.
For her performance, Cain, dressed in overalls and work boots, sings the"Rosie the Riveter" song made famous during the war by singer Kay Kyser ("That little frail can do/more than a male can do"), then tells real-life Rosie the Riveter stories and takes questions from the audience.
With children, she said, the most astounding revelation is that women did not wear trousers to work, only dresses, before Rosie."That always gets a 'whaaaaaat?'" she said.
Frances Carter, the director and founder of the organization, said the greatest hope is to establish a Rosie museum, perhaps in Washington,, but little progress had been made so far.
"We're still trying to build membership," she said.
Strom hasn't joined because she never thought of herself as a riveter."I was just doing what everybody else was doing, a part of the war effort," she said."And I worked in an office, not on the assembly line."
The Bell Bomber plant, which eventually became Lockheed Martin, employed 28,263 at its peak --- about 10,000 of them women.
The factory produced 668 B-29 bombers, which were used mainly in the Pacific Theater to bomb Japan because they had longer range than the B-17s used by the Air Force in Europe.
The plant not only reshaped the work force --- workers made as much as three times the minimum wage then, which was 40 cents an hour --- but it also transformed Marietta from a sleepy town of 8,000 into a booming industrial center.
Eleven years ago, Strom's son, Coy Short, inspired by his mother's work and the role of B-29s during the war, decided to find one of the old bombers, restore it and return it to Lockheed for display.
He and a few partners located an abandoned B-29 in bad shape in Florence, S.C., but they didn't have enough financial backing to convince the government to bring it back to Georgia. So Short's mother lent him $10,000.
In 1997, in a dedication ceremony at Dobbins Air Reserve Base attended by Gov. Zell Miller, they unveiled the restored bird, which now had a new work of bomber nose art: A painting of a woman in a white swimsuit and the name"Sweet Eloise."
Strom says she never got the $10,000 back she lent her son."If they needed another $10,000, I'd give it to them," she said."That was one of the happiest days of my life."
The nation was at war and Eloise Strom, a young mother of two young boys, rose every morning before dark and rode an hour and a half in a car pool with five other women to work at the aircraft plant in Marietta.
At the end of a 10-hour day, she would hurry home to fight the war on another front: the grocery store.
It was World War II. Food was rationed. First come, first served. Get there late and there would be no flour, no sugar, no milk, no coffee. No hamburger for dinner tonight.
"It seemed like everything was hard in those days," recalled Strom, a spry 90-year-old who lives in Buckhead and worked in the old Bell Bomber plant.
On the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, more efforts are being made to honor the 6 million American women who worked in war factories and, regardless of what their specific jobs might have been, became known as Rosie the Riveters.
The national movement to remember the riveters happens to be based in Georgia, home of the 1,400-member American Rosie the Riveter Association, at the Little White House in Warm Springs.
The"riveters" not only provided the weapons and sustenance to win the war, they also altered the fabric of American life. The war was the first time most had worked outside the home and the first time they wore trousers, not dresses, in the workplace.
Rosies prompted the women's liberation movement two decades later the way that black Americans fighting in World War II set the stage for the civil rights movement, historians say.
That it took until 1998 before a Rosie group was formed is amazing, said Sadie Holt, the 73-year-old president of the Georgia chapter of the Rosie the Riveter Association.
"Most of the women went back home after the war, and returning soldiers took their jobs, so they were kind of forgotten," Holt said."They went back to living their lives and raising families. But they need to be remembered."
Holt was an 11-year-old girl living in the Florida Panhandle when the war broke out. She did her part as a volunteer, helping with paper and scrap metal drives.
"We'd squeeze the toothpaste tubes, which were made of aluminum then, until we got all the toothpaste out, because there was a shortage of toothpaste too," she recalled."Then we would recycle the tubes."
Carol Cain, a LaGrange middle school teacher, sparked the idea of forming a commemorative group after she performed as Rosie the Riveter for an event at the Little White House commemorating women war workers.
"I thought it was going to be a one-time show. Now look what it has turned into," said Cain, 44, whose grandfather worked at the Bell Bomber plant and whose grandmother was a volunteer who rolled bandages for the Red Cross.
For her performance, Cain, dressed in overalls and work boots, sings the"Rosie the Riveter" song made famous during the war by singer Kay Kyser ("That little frail can do/more than a male can do"), then tells real-life Rosie the Riveter stories and takes questions from the audience.
With children, she said, the most astounding revelation is that women did not wear trousers to work, only dresses, before Rosie."That always gets a 'whaaaaaat?'" she said.
Frances Carter, the director and founder of the organization, said the greatest hope is to establish a Rosie museum, perhaps in Washington,, but little progress had been made so far.
"We're still trying to build membership," she said.
Strom hasn't joined because she never thought of herself as a riveter."I was just doing what everybody else was doing, a part of the war effort," she said."And I worked in an office, not on the assembly line."
The Bell Bomber plant, which eventually became Lockheed Martin, employed 28,263 at its peak --- about 10,000 of them women.
The factory produced 668 B-29 bombers, which were used mainly in the Pacific Theater to bomb Japan because they had longer range than the B-17s used by the Air Force in Europe.
The plant not only reshaped the work force --- workers made as much as three times the minimum wage then, which was 40 cents an hour --- but it also transformed Marietta from a sleepy town of 8,000 into a booming industrial center.
Eleven years ago, Strom's son, Coy Short, inspired by his mother's work and the role of B-29s during the war, decided to find one of the old bombers, restore it and return it to Lockheed for display.
He and a few partners located an abandoned B-29 in bad shape in Florence, S.C., but they didn't have enough financial backing to convince the government to bring it back to Georgia. So Short's mother lent him $10,000.
In 1997, in a dedication ceremony at Dobbins Air Reserve Base attended by Gov. Zell Miller, they unveiled the restored bird, which now had a new work of bomber nose art: A painting of a woman in a white swimsuit and the name"Sweet Eloise."
Strom says she never got the $10,000 back she lent her son."If they needed another $10,000, I'd give it to them," she said."That was one of the happiest days of my life."