In America we are watching a wonderful group of senior women coping with living in the ever-changing world of today. Many of them are dealing with it without their lifetime mates—watching a country that in many ways they hardly recognize as the place where they grew up and raised their families.
Not so many years ago, many of these widows had war-time romances, which grew from the hundreds of letters to their “future husbands” during those tough years of the Second World War.
Many of these gals married the returning soldier, sailor, or Marine when he once again got “stateside.” And thousands of them went on to live what is so often viewed as the American Dream.
These war-time sweethearts and even many mothers and sisters who headed off to build airplanes, gun turrets, and pontoon boats are an important story in our colorful American history.
I personally have two of these great gals in my life, my mother-in-law and my mother. Perhaps a bit unusual, but I have two “Rosie the Riveters” in my family tree.
Typical of many, and I might add very attractive young ladies of their generation, these two gals in their 20s spent a period during the war years as part of the “women in the war” workforce effort.
Now, both widows and in their—well, let’s just say more than 70 years of age—it is no surprise to see that that same spirit and ability to focus on the future still makes them the vital, engaging women that they are today.
When you talk to these women they speak of that time with great clarity, and can clearly tell you with great detail about the jobs they performed during the war. It’s like the pages turn backward and the memories of those days are as fresh as yesterday as they recount the stories from that period.
My mother in law, Vera, spent her adult life working with her husband in their family-owned businesses. They, like many other couples married a few years after the war, became true entrepreneurs, starting and operating several successful businesses during their 49 years of marriage. But during the war, she was employed at Firestone in Winston-Salem, where she worked making bulkheads for pontoon boats. It is strange to envision this 5-foot-2-inch woman attempting to build anything the size of those boats.
“The tools we used to cut the rubber looked like small pizza cutters,” she told my wife recently. And even though those years were filled with shortages and hardships, ration cards, and long lines —when she talks of living in a boarding house, away from her family with many other women doing the same thing, she recalls those days fondly.
Then there is my mom, Gwenn, who worked in the North for Firestone, where she was an Air Force aircraft inspector for the B29s and the Widow Maker aircraft.
“Those guys and gals on the line hated to see me coming,” she says. “I was a really tough inspector and I caught lots of things. I knew how important it was to really look for the smallest problem or imperfection,” she loves to tell me.
I can see them both now, these strong, resilient women, watching the newsreels of the war at the movies on their rare night of entertainment at the local theaters, anxious to hear any news of places where their friends and family were on the front lines. These women and thousands of others were the soldiers, sailors, and Marines of the home front.
We have many of the same kinds of courageous wives, fathers, and families and men watching and waiting at home in our state and across the nation today.
They may not be working in a war plant, but they are working to keep their families together, raising children, giving stability to their homes while their loved ones are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, and other parts of the world so we can be safe at home here in America.
This column is written with only one intention, and that is to say, “hats off to all the ‘Rosies,’” in all the conflicts where Americans are serving in harm’s way. God bless them all wherever they are on the home front, and thanks from a grateful nation for their sacrifices.