This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
Canada: 
Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
We feel it when we sing the national anthem before a hometown baseball game, or when we watch fire works, bursting in air on the 4th of July. And, we especially feel it, when we see the Statue of Liberty, her torch raised high, guiding travelers to her shore – sights and sounds that evoke our patriotic feelings, in other words our American spirit.
Every generation has experienced a time when – love of country, pride in its people and the freedom they cherish are symbolized by a national icon. As the youngest member in a multi-generational household, I was privileged to hear the personal recollections of each family member as they recalled family milestones.
My Neapolitan grandparents told me how they had followed the shadow of their ancestors to make that journey of a lifetime to America. I especially remember, with a certain pride, these stories heard at grandma’s knee, of her voyage to America and of her arrival in New York harbor.
For Grandma, and her family of travelers, it was the Statue of Liberty that inspired a feeling of awe and patriotism. It signified for them, the symbol of their new home and citizenship. Their first sight of Lady Liberty would forever be imprinted in their mind’s eye. Grandma often recalled how her father, whom she had never seen cry before, was weeping openly at the sight of America’s most famous lady of liberty.
And how an unforgettable stillness fell over the ship as it made its way to shore. "No screams of joy, no boisterous cries, said grandma, just numbed silence." As a patriotic symbol the Statue of Liberty stands 151 feet, 1 inch high and weighs 225 tons. The length of her right arm is 42 feet long, her hand 16 feet 5 inches long.
Her facial features include a prominent nose that measures 4 feet, 6 inches set between eyes 2 feet 6 inches in width. Standing on her concrete pedestal base, she rises to a neighborhood of 305 feet. Under her huge feet are broken shackles representing liberty's victory over tyranny. Lady Liberty needs her mighty dimensions to hold a 23-foot-high cement tablet in one hand; the "Torch of Freedom" high above her head, in the other hand; and the hopes and dreams of millions, upon millions, of immigrants cradled in her bosom.
As part of a generational household, I absorbed much of my family's culture and their stories and memories. Like my grandmother, my mother also had an American symbol of freedom to inspire her patriotism. For her, the icon of the day, was another famous lady, who was a lot smaller in stature than lady liberty, and not quite as beguiling with robes and lantern, nevertheless, just as regal and awe inspiring in her dusty denim overalls and heavy metal goggles.
Her name was "Rosie The Riveter", a composite character created in the mind’s eye of several American artists. She would come to represent the tough, dedicated, unyielding spirit of America's wartime working woman. Rosie represented the average woman who went to work in aircraft factories and shipyards at jobs vacated by men who answered the call to war.
Historians who recall these kinds of facts, will most likely rank Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio among the 20th century’s most beloved cultural icons, as each man, in his own way, helped to inspire a sense of appreciation for our American freedom. But for the uniting of spirit in a wartorn America, it was "Rosie" who led the way. "Rosie the Riveter" was the American working woman’s favorite W.W.II poster girl.
The most popular version of "Rosie" was created in 1943 by the brush strokes of Post cover artist Norman Rockwell. Rock well painted his version of "Rose the Riviter" for the May 29th edition of the Saturday Evening Post. Inspired by the women of America, who had replaced men in the factories and shipyards to help the war cause, Rockwell created his own version of "Rosie".
He portrayed her as a monumental figure with powerful muscles. She wore men's overalls and a dark blue work shirt with rolled up sleeves to show off her strong arms. Rosie is pictured sitting on a crate- striking a pose that was borrowed from Michelangelo's Prophet Isaiah on the Sistine ceiling. Goggles at her brow, a halo above her head and wearing an imperious expression. A heavy riveting machine rests in her lap, in her hand, a huge sandwich. Americans were amused and delighted by the connection between Rockwell’s Rosie and Michelangelo's Isaiah.
Which was first revealed to the public when the Kansas City Star ran images of the two paintings, side by side. It was observed, that just as Isaiah was called by God to convert the wicked from their sinful ways and trample evildoers underfoot, so Rockwell’s Rosie trampled a tattered copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf under her all-American penny loafers. Rockwell had captured the true grit and enthusiasm of these hardworking women.
Despite Rosie's intimidating bulk, and manly attire, the artist took great care to convey his subjects femininity by giving her painted fingernails, lipstick and her neatly turned, and finger waved, red curls. Rockwell found the model for Rosie in Mary Doyle a nineteen-year-old telephone operator in Arlington, Vermont. On May 29th, 2002, with American patriotism at its current highest, Norman Rockwell's original painting, oil on canvas, was auctioned off by Sotheby’s for $4.959.500.
There were other popular versions of "Rosie the Riveter". During WWII, Life magazine commissioned artist Edna Reindel to create a series of paintings that featured women of every age and background donning goggles and overalls while they drilled holes in junction boxes for the PV-1 bomber, welded the intake duct on a P-38 fighter plane, cut the edge on a wheel well and tightened the screws on the gunhood of the p-38 and made final checks of the Lockeed corporations Ventura bomber.
Working side by side with the men in the factories, they wore heavy denim overalls, badge numbers and their hair tied in kerchiefs. Reindel depicted these women working side by side, enthusiastically, alongside factory men. With these paintings, Rosie the riveter was born, the mythical icon who captured and represented the American woman's fighting spirit. In another famous poster, painted by Howard J. Miller, "Rosie" is featured dressed in gray overalls, her arm bent at the elbow and her fist clenched.
A slogan above her, in red, white and blue Letters, says " WE CAN DO IT!" At home these same factory women were planting Victory gardens, growing their own vegetables to subsidize the economy; they used lard, tinged with a touch of yellow food coloring to replace the rationed butter. Nylon, needed for more important things like military parachutes, had become a wardrobe luxury.
Cruising around in the family car, once a favorite Sunday afternoon ritual for these ladies had to be curtailed now until the war ended. Gasoline was strictly rationed and wasting it on joy riding was prohibited. After the war, women were supplanted by men in the work place but gender roles would forever change because of the wartime work force of women represented by "Rosie the Riveter", who gave America its first real glimpse of the working woman. To me, and to a generation of Americans who remember WWII, Rosie has come to represent an iconic image of American culture and its enduring legacy.
Be the first to comment