WWII Factory Worker Who Was ‘Rosie the Riveter’ Dies

CLARKSVILLE, Ind. — Rose Will Monroe, who played Rosie the Riveter, the nation’s poster girl for women joining the work force during World War II, has died. She was 77.

Monroe, who died Saturday, was working as a riveter building B-29 and B-24 military airplanes at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Mich., when she was asked to star in a promotional film about the war effort. She was also featured in posters.

Her role became synonymous with thousands of women who took defense industry jobs, working at factory positions usually held by men.

“They found Rose and she was a riveter and she was the one who fit the profile for the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ song,” her daughter Vickie Jarvis said Sunday. “So she happened to be in the right place at the right time and was chosen to be in some of these films.”

Unlike many “Rosies” who returned to the kitchen after the war, Monroe kept working. She drove a taxi, operated a beauty shop and started her own construction firm in Indiana called Rose Builders. It specialized in high-quality custom homes.

Monroe’s other daughter, Connie Gibson, recalled going with her mother to see the Goldie Hawn movie “Swing Shift,” about a woman working alongside men in a munitions factory during wartime. In one scene, a man asked a female colleague to get a left-handed wrench.

“Mother laughed at that because she remembered the men doing that to the women in the factory, thinking they were too dumb to know the difference,” she said.

In addition to her two daughters, she is survived by six sisters, nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.