Lewis County lost a lot of walking history last week with the passing of Doris (Hastings) Bier and Roy I. Rochon Wilson, both 97, and people I’m honored to call friends.
Two decades ago, when I joined the local effort to recognize and honor Rosie the Riveters and the Guys who worked on the home front during World War II, I had no idea how blessed I’d be by capturing the stories of these members of the Greatest Generation.
So often in a society focused on youth and beauty, we overlook the people who have passed their prime, but they offer so much wisdom, experience and inspiration. I’m grateful my now-adult children met both Doris and Roy so they could learn from them.
Take Doris, for example. I want to grow up to be like her, a woman who at 87 donned a white hardhat and climbed into the bucket of a crane just to see what it was like. At 93, Margaret (Shaver) Shields, volunteer historian at the Lewis County Historical Museum for nearly four decades, joined Bier in the bucket and soared 105 feet into the air after speaking to girls at a career fair in Puyallup.
Both worked in defense plants during the war. Doris put together Diamond T truck axles at the Mount Rainier Ordnance Depot, and Margaret worked as a mechanic for Boeing Co. in Seattle and Chehalis. Margaret died in July 2018, and Doris passed away Friday morning.
These remarkable women were only two of the dozens I met while compiling “Life on the Home Front: Stories of those who worked, waited, and worried during WWII.” I’m so glad we captured their stories when we did and honored them for breaking the proverbial glass ceiling to work in trades, thanks to Edna Fund, a former Centralia City Council member and Lewis County commissioner.
In 2014, our Lewis County Rosie the Riveters graced the Washington Women in Trades calendar — Bier, Shields, Margaret Langus, Sarah Zopolos, Helen Holloway, Shirley Erickson, Ethel Nelson, Eva Hauck, June Deskins, Loretta Downey, Mardelle Hadaller and Dorothy Powell. Afterward, at the invitation of Seattle’s Robin Murphy and Cynthia Payne, Fund and I often drove some of the women to Seattle for the annual Washington Women in Trades dinner, where they were honored as heroes.
Slowly, over the years, we lost one Rosie after another, until only Bier remained, perhaps because she was only 16 when she worked at Mount Rainier Ordnance Depot, where a coworker who knew her father told her to go home and play with dolls. Instead, she won an E pin, a red carnation and a toolbox on wheels for her excellent work.
“Doris has been my friend for almost 20 years,” Edna said. “She could tell about her time during World War II to young and old and keep them spellbound. She never lost her enthusiasm. She had a sharp mind.”
Doris (Hastings) Bier was born Dec. 30, 1927, in Centralia and grew up in Adna. When the war effort needed workers, the high school sophomore answered the call, graduated from Mechanic School at Cloverdale in Lakewood, wrapped a bandana around her hair, and excelled at her job at the Mount Rainier Ordnance Depot, even with her long red fingernails. She earned $1.50 an hour.
She recalled the war years — planting victory gardens, driving a truck to harvest crops, seeing B-17 bombers called Flying Fortresses, passing a sentry on the Adna bridge over the Chehalis River, collecting for bond and scrap metal drives at school, and rationing of butter, meat, gas and sugar.
When the war ended and a couple of people in Adna objected to the return of the Satos, a Japanese-American family who had been interned at Tule Lake, this spunky teenager stood up in the Grange and told people they should be ashamed of themselves, forgetting how Tom Sato and his family had delivered Christmas oranges and produce to their doorsteps.
After graduating from Adna in 1947, she married Clayton Bier, from Rochester, on June 13, 1947, with Janie and Irene Sato as flower girls. When his pastor and her pastor refused to marry them because of the Japanese ancestry of the flower girls, they simply moved the wedding to a church that wanted them, the Centralia Presbyterian Church, where, she said, “the girls were the stars of the show.”
She and Clayton raised five children — Nancy, Linda, Wayne, Robert and Peggy.
Cynthia Payne with Washington Women in Trades noted how touched she was by a writeup about Doris in the 2014 calendar: “All of their children married people of different nationalities and races. When we asked her about tolerance and her open heart, she said she has always been for the underdog and just did (and does) what’s right.”
In their senior years, Doris and Clayton enjoyed traveling. They had been married 68 years when Clayton died on Nov. 11, 2015. She is survived by her five children — Nancy in Michigan, Linda in Oregon, Wayne in Chehalis, and Robert and Peggy in Centralia — 14 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren, and 12 great-great-grandchildren.
In December 2017, this Gold Star grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday party with a Rosie the Riveter-themed party in Oregon. At the time, she told me she was enjoying a third childhood, despite losses such as her husband’s death and the killing of her grandson Joseph Bier, on Dec. 7, 2005, by an improvised explosive device in Ramadi, Iraq.
In June 2023, Doris participated in the annual Rosie the Riveter convention held in Portland, and in August that summer, she shared her stories of wearing coveralls and steel-toed shoes with girls attending the Steel Toe Teens Girls’ Summer Camp at Shoreline Community College in Seattle.
“I just remember how quiet it got at summer camp and how the girls were listening to her story and how much they all wanted photos with her,” said Robin Murphy, human resources manager for Alaskan Copper & Brass Co. “Her story was amazing and proof that young girls can learn anything. I miss our Rosies.”
Marisa Spencer, a journeyman plumber from Des Moines, Washington, who said she always looked forward to seeing Doris at the annual Washington Women in Trade dinner, noted, “It was such an honor to have her there when I received the Tradeswoman of the Year Award.”
“Doris was a huge inspiration for me as a tradeswoman,” she said. “It was wonderful watching her come to the Steel Toe Teens camp and speaking to the next generation of possible tradeswomen.
“After spending time with Doris, I always left feeling I had learned a life lesson or had a better way to look at things in life and at work. She was wonderful to my daughter, Emilija, and she even sent me one of her handmade quilts, which we will take care of and cherish forever. She was a wonder lady blazing the trail for so many!”
In March 2024, when I was invited to speak about women’s history and my books at the Woman’s Club of Olympia at the Abigail Stuart House, I introduced Doris as living history and listened raptly as she shared her stories.
Edna and I celebrated Doris’s 95th birthday with a paint and sip at the Morgan Arts Centre in Toledo, and earlier this month, we took her to lunch for 97th birthday.
We aren’t alone in our admiration for this remarkable woman. Just last year, Third Congressional District U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, honored Doris by sharing her story on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
And Doris isn’t the only one with a presence in our nation’s capital. I remember how Roy Wilson choked up during an interview a decade ago when he spoke about how his name is listed as one of the nation’s leaders on a wall in the Smithsonian National Indian Museum.
I brought these two remarkable nonagenarians together for a visit in November 2016 after Doris expressed interest in seeing the longhouse, medicine wheel, museum and library that Roy had constructed on his Dorning Road property outside Winlock.
Wilson, a Methodist minister for 47 years, passed away last Tuesday, Feb. 11. He chaired the Native American Ministries Committee of the Pacific Northwest and served 32 years on the Cowlitz Tribal Council. He was tribal chair for nearly a decade and lobbied lawmakers in Washington, D.C., for federal recognition of the Cowlitz tribe, which it received in February 2000. He served as the tribe’s spiritual leader until 2018.
I first met Roy, whose native name was Itswwot Wawa Hyiu, Bear Who Talks Much, during a writers’ critique group at Centralia’s Unity Church. I’d read many of his more than four dozen books on Cowlitz traditions, legends, culture and religion and admired his efforts to build bridges between Native American and white cultures.
Roy, who was born in July 1927 on the Yakama Reservation, held monthly Indian Christian Sunday afternoon services in his hand-built longhouse, mixing Christian teachings with Indian cultural beliefs. I enjoyed taking my children and their friends to the services, giving them a glimpse into another culture and the opportunity to meet a man who loved people of all races. We all prayed to one God, called the Great Spirit by Native Americans, sang worship songs in the Cowlitz tongue, and listened to a master storyteller.
In his later years, Roy built his longhouse, museum, and library on his Winlock property and collected more than 3,000 volumes on Native American history and culture. I gave a couple of books to him for his 90th birthday in July 2017, which was celebrated at St. Mary Center north of Toledo.
“I met Roy when I asked him to approve the Cowlitz Indian section of The Land Called Lewis in 2007, so about 18 years,” said Sandra Crowell, of Olympia, whom Roy described as a member of his inner circle of friends. “I knew him as a spiritual leader and speaker as well. I believe he made a remarkable bridge between Christianity and Native beliefs that will be remembered by hundreds of people. He introduced so many people to Indian history and culture through drumming, medicine wheel classes and his teachings. That is his legacy. His presence was bigger than life, and he will be sorely missed.”
Roy is survived by his wife of 31 years, Cherilyn, eight children, 14 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
Celebrations of their long and fruitful lives are planned. The service for Doris is at 11 a.m. on March 1 at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis and the one for Roy will begin at 2 p.m. on March 9 in Kitchen No. 2 at Fort Borst Park in Centralia.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
