At the Portland Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade Saturday, a gigantic display of Rosie the Riveter flexing her arm adorned a float carrying the grand marshals — more than a dozen of the more than six million women who worked on the home front to help America and its allies win World War II.
Riding on the Boeing Co.-sponsored floral float was 95-year-old Doris Bier of Chehalis, one of a dwindling number of Rosie the Riveters, Maggie the Mechanics, Wendy the Welders, and other women who worked in the defense industry building ships and airplanes.
“It was outrageously awesome,” Doris said of riding as a parade grand marshal and attending the annual American Rosie the Riveter Association convention, held in Portland this year. “I was hesitating at first coming down here — thought I’d be a nuisance to everybody, but I didn’t care if I was or not. I enjoyed every minute.”
A 15th Rosie who looked forward to riding on the float — Marcella Von Tangen of Vancouver, Washington, a Native American who worked in the Kaiser Shipyard in Portland and Doak Aircraft in Torrance, California — died in the hotel the night before the parade.
As Edna Fund and I watched the parade inside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum and participated in the convention, I kept thinking how glad I am that Centralia honored Lewis County Rosie the Riveters 18 years ago. They served as grand marshals of the 2005 Summerfest Fourth of July Parade when its theme was “America’s Unsung Heroes.”
At that time, Edna, who had interviewed dozens of WWII veterans for the Veterans History Project, and her committee of volunteers identified about 80 WWII defense workers locally. In early spring, we mailed each a booklet soliciting memories of the war years, and nearly 50 returned them. I scanned photos, ID badges, rivets and other memorabilia they brought to the library and, after we took a trip to Bellevue to review photos and stories in the Boeing Co.’s historical archives, published a book, “Life on the Home Front: Stories of those who worked, waited, and worried during WWII,” which chronicles how World War II affected Lewis County residents.
In 2005, when the Rosies and the Guys headed the Summerfest parade, Edna and her committee also spearheaded efforts to put a plaque outside the Lewis County PUD, the Chehalis building where Rosies built B-17 wings during the war.
Five years later, in March 2010, the Rosies reconnected at Centralia College and listened to Helen Holloway talk about working for three defense industry companies during the war. They visited and shared stories of growing up during the Great Depression and working in factories. Unfortunately, many of those honored in the book five years earlier had passed away.
In 2012, Edna gathered the Rosies at the Chehalis-Centralia Airport to see Sentimental Journey, a B-17 bomber, also called a Flying Fortress, that stopped there in 2012.
A few years later, Edna and I met Seattle’s Robin Murphy and Cynthia Payne of Washington Women in Trades, who had organized a reunion of Rosies in 2002. They began featuring Rosies on calendars in 2007 to honor those who broke the proverbial glass ceiling by showing that women can succeed in trades as plumbers, welders, riveters, carpenters, and construction workers.
Edna offered the names of a dozen Lewis County Rosies who graced the 2014 calendar — Doris Bier, Shirley Erickson, Helen Holloway, Ethel Nelson, Margaret Shields, Eva Hauck, June Deskins, Loretta Downey, and Margaret Langus, Mardelle Hadaller, Dorothy Powell and Sarah Zopolos.
All have since passed away except Doris Bier, a mechanic who assembled Jeep axles at the Fort Lewis Ordnance Depot when she was 16 and faced discrimination from an older man who told her to go home and play with dolls.
Her daughter, Linda Blackmon, and granddaughter Terri Blackmon, both of Gresham, Oregon, joined her at the convention.
“We didn’t know anything about Rosies really until she started doing things with you up in your area,” Linda said. “She may have mentioned it but just in passing. It was no big deal then. So it was really a lot of fun to hear about and to watch her do all these things.”
Edna and I loved meeting other Rosies and their children, known as Rosebuds, and grandchildren.
Like 100-year-old Virginia Hines Basler of Ypsilanti, Michigan, who, when she was 19, worked at the Willow Run Bomber plant riveting B-24 Liberator bombers.
“The only thing I remember was that was good money — a good paycheck,” she said. “I enjoyed it. It was something different.”
She wanted to help the United States win the war, which she described as “terrible.”
“We had to win the war because I couldn’t learn Japanese,” she quipped.
After working two years as a riveter, in 1943 she enlisted in the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, known as the SPARS, an acronym for the motto “Semper Paratus — Always Ready.” Although lured by the idea of training in the Florida warmth of Florida, she was sent to New York and then worked as a baker and cook in Washington, D.C.
“It was fun,” she said. “I had a friend who liked to ride bicycles. We just rode bicycles all over Washington, D.C.”
When the SPARS demobilized 14 months later, she returned to Michigan to work and raise a family. She lives in her own house in southern Michigan, which is warmer than where she grew up, and grows a large garden.
“I’m still able to take care of myself,” she said, noting with resignation that her daughter and a granddaughter live with her.
Although she used to smoke and drinks occasionally, she attributed her longevity to her genes. Her mother died six weeks shy of her 108th birthday.
Goshen, Ore.’s Dorothy Key, 96, was an Arkansas teenager during the war who traveled to Los Angeles to work on airplane parts as a machinist for Hydropac. She was a high school sophomore who attended school until noon and then worked at the factory.
“We had to wear dresses to school and pants to work, so I carried my clothes with me,” she said.
She was accompanied to the Willamette River Sunday brunch cruise on the Portland Spirit by three of her four daughters, a granddaughter, and a great-granddaughter.
Louise Unkrich of Swedesburg, Iowa, who will be 99 in August, worked as a bucker assembling parts for B-26’s and B-29’s at the Glenn L. Martin bomber plant near Omaha, Nebraska.
The Rosies signed T-shirts and programs at the convention, and after the river cruise, as we waited at Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park for Edna to bring the car, Doris shared her story with Nancy Menagh of Lake Oswego, a member of the Gold Star Wives of America whose husband, Marine Captain Philip S. Menagh, was shot and killed in a training accident at Fort Bragg on June 9, 1984. They shared tragedy in common as Doris is a Gold Star grandmother whose grandson, 22-year-old Marine Cpl. Joseph Bier of Centralia, died in a December 2005 explosion in Ramadi, Iraq. Doris’ father, Lloyd D. Hastings, died at 38 from the effects of mustard gas he inhaled while fighting in France during World War I.
Then a man crossing the plaza with his wife and a granddaughter stopped and asked Doris, “Are you one of them? The Rosie the Riveters?” Doris answered affirmatively and again shared her teenage experiences with strangers in Portland.
What a terrific weekend immersed in living history, learning from Rosie the Riveters and those who love and admire them.
•••
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
