Rosie in the News
See more News Stories

Rosie the Riveter has received a lot of ink and continues to be a story that grips the nation. Due to permissions restrictions, we are unable to reprint all of the many articles which continue to appear in print.

Co-developer for Richmond prewar nursery named
See Katherine Tam's Nov 15, 08 article in the West County Times >>

World War II-era housing complex to be transformed
See Katherine Tam's Nov 15, 08 article in the West County Times >>

Please join Ford Motor Company, the National Park Service, the National Park Foundation and the City of Richmond on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 at the launch of an exciting new partnership to support the Rosie the Riveter World War II/Home Front National Historical Park in a nationwide effort to collect stories, authentic artifacts and personal histories from living “Rosies,” their families and all the men and women who joined the World War II Home Front effort. Ford, a Proud Partner of America’s national parks, is generously supporting this effort in partnership with the national park Foundation through a grant to the Rosie the Riveter World War II/Home Front National Historical Park.

Rosie the Riveter World War II/Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond has the largest concentration of intact WWII historic structures ad sites in the United States. The stories and artifacts collected through this initiative will be incorporated by the Park into future exhibits, research centers and historic records, to bring to life the stories of those who came together on the home front to help ensure victory overseas in WWII.

The media event will take place in the Park at the Ford Assembly Building, 1400 Harbour Way South in Richmond. Check-in will begin at 10:30 AM, and the short program will begin promptly at 11:00 AM. Refreshments and tours of the site will follow. Please RSVP by November 10 by contacting Elizabeth Tucker at 510/232-1542 or Elizabeth_tucker@nps.gov.

The March-April, 2003 issue of "National Parks Magazine" (http://www.npca.org/magazine/) features the article, "Remembering Rosies" on Richmond's own Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park. View the entire article as a PDF file by clicking HERE.

Friday, January 26, 2001 - Rosie the Riveters get their own national park Clinton approves the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond to honor women's work on the homefront By Lisa Coffey Mahoney, Staff Writer

When Ann Steppan and Barbara Brown Manakoff heard there was a possibility that they could get jobs at the Richmond Kaiser shipyards during World War II, they eagerly pursued the opportunity. The girls had just graduated from high school -- Steppan from Piedmont High School and Manakoff from Oakland High School -- and were ready for an adventure. Steppan's mom, Bernice Cox, however, was not so taken with the prospect of her daughter working at the shipyards -- particularly after she learned the girls were to work the graveyard shift. "She would not let my friend and me go out there by ourselves, so she went to work there with us," said Steppan, who is now 77 and president of the Montclair Women's Club. Steppan, her mom and Manakoff, a Pleasant Hill resident, were among thousands of women who became known as "Rosie the Riveters," a term popularized in a 1942 song. It became a nickname for all women who worked in wartime industries.

Between 1943 and 1944, Cox drove the threesome from Piedmont to Richmond each workday evening, without benefit of the freeway. "I remember the tule fog. You couldn't see," said Steppan. "My mother would roll down her window and try to look out and see the center divide line, and we would look out the passenger windows to see how close we were to the edge of the road." Manakoff recalled that she and Steppan often attended late-afternoon operas in San Francisco prior to going to work at the shipyards. "We didn't have time to go home and change afterward," she said, "so we'd go to the opera in our work clothes."

Once arriving at work, Cox went to the electrical department, where she helped manufacture brass plates to identify various pieces of equipment. Steppan and Manakoff headed off to the craneway to inventory steel. "When anything left (the shipyard), we had to make sure it was the right thing and that it went where it was supposed to go," said Steppan. The work was particularly demanding because of the weather, said Steppan. "When you got out on the end of that craneway in that fog at night, you could hardly see any steel or see the markings on the steel to find out what it was. That was not easy," she said. "My cranewalker was so nice and helpful," recalled Steppan. "He was so concerned about us because he didn't want us to get frostbite, which he had suffered in a job years before." To take the chill off, the girls put electric heaters in their three-sided shack on the craneway. Despite the challenging working conditions, Steppan said, "we just had a ball."

While attending Crocker Highlands Elementary School in Oakland, the two girls had been Girl Scouts at one point. "We learned knot tying at that time, and when we went to the shipyard we refreshed our minds about the knots," said Steppan. "We went to the outfitting dock and the riggers there helped us and taught us what the knots were used for." Manakoff, 77, said that like many "Rosies," she didn't seek out the job at the shipyards for the money. "We didn't care about the money," she said. "We all did what we could do for the war effort. We felt patriotic and felt that we were doing our part. We weren't alone. People were working in all kinds of factories that made little parts used in the war, such as machine gun parts. Some people knitted sweaters and socks, and other people rolled bandages. Everybody pulled together at that time." She added: "It would be really nice if people today would get that feeling of trying to do something for your country instead of yourself."

Manakoff said she and Steppan met a number of wonderful people at the shipyards. "We met a lot of nice people we would never have ordinarily met -- such as people from the deep South and the Midwest." Most of the women working in the shipyards had never held a job before, Manakoff noted. "In my youth, women did not work outside the home," she said. At the height of the war, women made up approximately 27 percent of the 100,000-strong Richmond Kaiser shipyard workforce. Women of all ages and ethnicities came to Richmond to find new, better-paying jobs throughout the war.

Their labor on "Liberty" and "Victory" ships played a role in America's remarkable productivity during the war years. In fact, Richmond's shipyards were the largest and most productive of World War II, producing 747 large ships.

Last Oct. 14, a memorial was dedicated in honor of the women at the Rosie the Riveter Memorial Park, which is located at the site of the former Kaiser shipyards. Designed by the San Francisco-based artist team of Susan Schwartzenberg and landscape architect Cheryl Barton, the Rosie the Riveter Memorial is 441 feet long, reflecting the length of the Liberty Ships produced at the Richmond Kaiser shipyards.

A Keel Walk leading visitors to a lookout at the water's edge includes a timeline of facts related to the "Home Front" period, along with memories gathered from individual women about their wartime experience. Sculptural elements representing features of a Liberty Ship are positioned along the walk and hold large panels depicting photographs, letters and other memorabilia reflecting war work performed by women throughout the nation. Steppan was appointed Alameda district chair for the California Federation of Women's Clubs' "Rosie the Riveter" project.

The project seeks to solicit information about women's club members and others who are former Rosies as well as locating memorabilia, photos, publications and historical data from the World War II era to support the Rosie the Riveter Memorial Project Archives. Meanwhile, former Richmond City Councilwoman Donna Powers, who spearheaded the effort to establish the memorial, is thrilled that the shipyard site has been declared the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. On Oct. 25 legislation by Congressman George Miller (D-Martinez) was signed by President Clinton, establishing the national park.

The park's Home Front Visitors and Educational Center will be located in the former Ford Assembly Building, said Powers. "We are going to be the premier place in the United States which will tell the World War II home front story," she said. "This is the only memorial that honors women's labor during World War II in the United States." Thirteen of the Richmond Kaiser shipyards' original buildings and structures will be included in the park, including the Kaiser Permanente Field Hospital, day-care centers, war workers' housing and craneways.

Powers, who is a board member and founder of the Rosie the Riveter Trust, hopes that the center will be up and running in two and a half years. "The trust is the organization that will raise the money to implement the national park. We will have to raise a lot of money. Right now, the board's focus is fund raising. We just got a $75,000 donation from Kaiser Permanente and will be hiring a grant writer," said Powers.

It was back in 1992 that Powers first lobbied the Richmond City Council to create some kind of memorial at the site of the shipyards. "There was nothing to commemorate what happened here during World War II," she said. "All I originally wanted was a little grassy park along the Bay where the shipyards were." Though the idea didn't catch on with her fellow council members right off the bat, Powers persevered. She began talking up the proposal to citizens who she knew had connections to the shipyards. "Having walked a lot of precincts running for office, I was well aware that a lot of people came from Oklahoma and Arkansas to work at the shipyards. I talked to the women about their experiences. I'm from Oklahoma, so I really hit it off with many of these people."

Eventually, Powers put together a questionnaire in order to solicit information from former Rosies. It asked details such as which shipyard the Rosies worked in, if they came from out of state and where they lived while working at the shipyards. "I started handing them out to people and left them on people's doors in the flatlands, where a lot of people who came here during World War II are still living," she said. Powers took oral histories from many of the women who responded to the questionnaire. "Once they're gone, we lose that history," she noted.

Powers acknowledged that she fudged a little bit on the questionnaire, indicating that a memorial was to be created honoring the Rosies -- even though city officials had not yet approved such a concept. She soon found that there was grassroots support for a Rosie memorial. "Then I took it before the council again, and they were more receptive once they knew the public wanted it," said Powers. She is grateful that National Park Service officials decided that the Richmond Kaiser shipyards were worthy of national park status when they did. "If we had waited another year, it wouldn't have happened," said Powers, citing the upswing in the economy and the move toward redevelopment of many areas in Richmond. "We would have lost these buildings."

Share Your Story - Those interested in sharing a Rosie story, photos or documents (copies only) can send the information to Donna Powers at the Rosie the Riveter Trust, P.O. Box 70415, Richmond, CA 94807. Some of this information may become a part of the Rosie the Riveter Memorial Project Archives to be located at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park. For more information, visit www.rosietheriveter.org.

Monument to Women Workers
May 1, 2000 By Peter Photikoe
(This article has been edited for the web)

Richmond ­ She wore a red polka-dot bandana, flexed her biceps, and proclaimed, "We Can Do It!" She Inspired millions of women to work on the home front during World War II, graced postage stamps and posed as the cover girl for Smithsonian magazine.

Her name is Rosie the Riveter, a character immortalized by posters supporting the war effort and a wartime song by the same name.

Photo credit: Examiner/Katy Raddatz Lucy Cortes, 83, holds a photo of herself working as a welder in Richmond shipyards during World War II.

A new monument pays tribute to Rosie ­ or rather, to the women whose work at home was vital to the war effort ­ along the waterfront at Marina Park in Richmond.

The Richmond Shipyards produced 747 ships, said Kathleen Rupley, curator for the Richmond Museum of History.

"People came from all different parts of the country," to work at the shipyards, Rupley said. "People who had never built a ship, who had never worked in industry, all of a sudden learned to work as a team to build a ship."

One of those people to migrate to Richmond was Matilda Foster. Now in her 80s, she still calls Richmond home.

"I came to Richmond to help win the war and to make money," Foster said. "They were paying good money. This yard that I worked at paid $1.05 an hour, eight hours a day, and you get a two-week vacation."

Lucy Cortes, 83, was also attracted to the well-paying job as a ship welder. She liked it so much that she kept her job for 25 years, long after most women had left.

"I really liked everything about welding, but after the war, there was nothing for ladies to weld." Cortes said. I stayed on to do repairs and things like that. Then we started to weld again. We worked on BART, building sections that go underneath the (Bay)," she added.

Drawing from that Richmond shipyard experience, Cortez offers this advice for staying happy at work. "I like the people and I like the work, that's the main thing at a job," Cortez said. "You like everybody around you, everybody treat each other the same, and then you're all right."

WWW II 'Rosies' Thanked For Work
Seven women who labored to build ships in Richmond applauded
November 11, 1999

By Tom Lochner
TIMES STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND - The women who worked in the nation's World War II defense industries got a round of applause Sunday, more than a half-century after they earned it. Seven welders, draftswomen and laborers in Richmond's Kaiser shipyards during the war were honored at "Women in the Trades," a conference at Laney College.

They were there to highlight Richmond's Rosie the Riveter Memorial Project, part of an effort to make the shipyards into a national park. Rosie was a fictional character who symbolized women war industry workers.

After the women told their stories, their sisters one and two generations removed broke into applause, rose in unison, whooped, howled and cheered.  

Former Kaiser shipyard worker Mathilda Foster and six other "Rosie the Riveters" were honored.  Photo: Eddie Ledesma / Contra Costa Times

"They should have gotten this 50 years ago," said Kathryn Turner, 37, a sprinkler fitter from Stockton and one of hundreds of Bay Area tradeswomen at the conference. "Instead, they were told to go home and raise families."

They shipyard workers - "our foremothers in the trade union movement" - did more than write labor history, said Donna Graves, a consultant with the Rosie project. Working "shoulder-to-shoulder" with men in a workplace no longer exclusively white, they sowed the seeds of the women's movement and civil rights movement of the 1960s, said Graves.

Some 747 cargo ships were built in Richmond during a nationwide wartime shipbuilding frenzy, more than in any other city.

Phyllis Gould, 78, of Fairfax, a welder, recounted her experience trying to join the boilermakers' union in 1942, only to be told women and blacks could not join. She finally made it into the union, on her third visit. In the early days, the women were assigned a chaperone. Even so, Gould said, "guys would come up to you and tell raunchy jokes into your ears.

"One of the lead men thought he was God's gift, and he would do little things," Gould said. "I told everybody on the crew that the next time, I would swing at him with my stinger" - that's a welding rod. So he did, and I did, and I knocked his shiny hard hat off."

Was that the end?

"No, that was the beginning of the harassment," Gould continued. From that day on, she got the dirty jobs, she said, until, "One day, he said, 'are you tired of this? And I said, 'I'll do it till the end of the war.' So he backed off, and I started getting good work again."

Such stories notwithstanding, most of the men were decent, said Gould and the other women, who included Gould's sister, Marian Sousa, 73, of El Sobrante, Lucy Cortes, 82, and sisters Theresa and Angela Davila, 78 and 77, all of Richmond. After the war, most of the women left the factories and receded from the nation's consciousness - though never completely.

"When I got into the building trades, there was a lot of talk about the women who went ahead of us, who really forged our path," said Brigid O'Dowd, 47, a union electrician from Richmond. "After the men came back from World War II, (the women) had to back down from those jobs. That was part of the history I inherited."

Although Gould and her contemporaries showed that women could do the job, today O'Dowd said, " you still have to prove yourself over and over again, that you can carry the ladder, work with the tools, do the job."

It's important that more women join the trades today, O'Dowd said, because when there aren't any women to follow, as was the case after World War II, "the guys tend to close the ranks."