|
· National
park honoring World War II icon can't keep up
with the demand
By John Geluardi
STAFF WRITER Contra Costa Times
Article Launched: 08/19/2007 03:04:11 AM PDT
The popularity of Richmond's Rosie the Riveter
national park was largely unknown until the first-ever
summer tours quickly booked up, and the waiting
list grew to 300.
Park employees were so overwhelmed with calls
from around the Bay Area that they scrambled to
add two additional tours, which also filled up
immediately.
"There have been groups calling who want to bring
their own buses, and they just want us to supply
a guide, which we don't have the personnel for
yet," said park interpreter Betty Reid Soskin. "And
that's in addition to the family groups of four,
five and nine."
Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical
Park consists of numerous official locations, mostly
on or near the city's waterfront, and dozens of
unofficial sites. The tour takes visitors to Kaiser
Shipyard No. 3, with its five historic buildings,
a 220-ton wartime whirley crane, the SS Red Oak
Victory ship and five dry docks where the Rosies
helped build and launch ships.
Park tours offer rich insight into life in Richmond
during the war through documents, artwork, welding
artifacts and even fashions of the day, which includes
a near-mint condition wedding dress worn by a Rosie.
The tours became public for the first time this
year, and the response is a clear sign that the
park has captured the public's imagination.
The last tour is scheduled for Aug. 31, after
which, park officials will buckle down to finish
planning the Home Front Festival by the Bay, a
three-day celebration of the new park with arts
and crafts, street theater, music, children's activities
and a lot of food. Festival events begin Sept.
28 and will go right through the weekend.
Perhaps Rosie the Riveter park looms large in
the public imagination because World War II was
the incubator for so many of the things we accept
as standard in our day-to-day lives.
"During the war, we see for the first time women
joining the workforce in substantial numbers, racially
integrated assembly lines, the first pre-paid health
care system and government-sponsored child care,
which was the progenitor of the Head Start program," Park
Superintendent Martha Lee said. "These things grew
into powerful social movements after the war, and
here in Richmond, we have rich examples of how
those seeds were planted."
Rosie herself
has become a powerful national image that evokes
strong, independent and competent women. If you
have any doubts, consider this: When U.S. Rep.
Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as the first female
speaker of the House, she wore the "We Can Do It" button,
which depicts a determined Rosie with her denim
sleeves rolled up over a well-muscled arm.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton is employing the same image, though
she has swapped out Rosie's face for hers and emblazoned
it on campaign T-shirts, buttons and coffee mugs
"I'm not sure why the park has become so popular," Soskin
said. "I think Rosie has always been a part of
Richmond's past, but now it is becoming part of
the nation's history."
Contact John Geluardi at 510-262-2787 or jgeluardi@bayareanewsgroup.com.
ROSIE INFORMATION:
PARK WEB SITES: http://www.rosietheriveter.org and http://www.nps.gov/rori
BETTY REID SOSKIN'S BLOG: cbreaux.blogspot.com
"UNTOLD STORIES" VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc490zRLWMA
| 
