SPRINGFIELD – The iconic woman flexing her bicep, sleeves rolled, and wearing a red bandanna is a recognized national symbol. She symbolizes Rosie the Riveters, the women who handled the entire country’s home front in the Second World War. 

Although Rosie the Riveter may be a fictional character, the women who welded ship parts, spotted planes, worked on plane hydraulics, and operated lathes are anything but. 

Although these women’s biceps may not be as big as they were in the 1940s, their determined spirit and unwavering dedication to their country have not faded. 

“Some people see that as a fighting stance,” said Yvonne Fasold, events coordinator for the local Rosies chapter. “That’s not it. That is, we’re rolling up our sleeves, and we’re getting to work.” 

Fasold is considered a Rosebud since she is the daughter of a Rosie, but she has been a member of the Rosie the Riveter Club for over 20 years. Fasold has not wasted any time, either. She served as both the secretary and the president of the national Rosie the Riveter organization in 2011 and now works in the local McKenzie chapter to connect women and community members with the club. 

Being a retired English teacher, Fasold said that it is her goal to continue to be an educator, and only now is she educating people on the history of the Rosies. 

But Fasfold is, first and foremost, selfless. 

She may not describe herself in this way, but she repeatedly promotes the stories of others before her own and credits her family and husband for supporting her. 

She is dedicated to the organization and women in her community, the basic history of our Rosies, including the story of her mother, Alice Riddle. 

The legacy of Alice Riddle

Fasold’s mother, Alice Riddle, was born in 1917 and became a welder in Tacoma, Wash., during the war. Fasold said that she always knew her mom was a welder but didn’t realize her participation in the war until later in her life. She said her mother and father were welders, and she recalls her mother, at 5-foot-2, handling farm equipment with ease. 

“She was so sure-handed,” Fasold explained. “She could sew; she could peel potatoes all in one ring,” she laughed.

The Rosie the Riveter organization wasn’t established until 1998 – over 50 years after the war ended. The McKenzie chapter was established by Opal Nelson from Cottage Grove. Opal was a  Rosie working on airplane construction, and passed away in January 2020.

When Fasold retired from teaching in ’03, she started to attend the Rosie meetings with her mother and was amazed by the women recalling history she had never learned. This prompted her to learn more about her mother’s stories.

“They never knew that they had an impact,” Fasold said, referring to the Rosies. “They did not know they had an impact until you know now that everybody knows that symbol.”

The more time she spent in the club, the more she learned about her mother’s past. Riddle had worked at Todd Pacific Shipyard with her husband before Yvonne was born, where she was cutting plates for the sides of ships. She was also a part of the Boilermakers union, and she and her husband used the money they made to start a farm in Cottage Grove. 

“She said sometimes when she was welding on the deck at night when it was a swing shift, she said it would just be so peaceful out on the deck,” Fasold recounts.

Fasold has an unwavering appreciation for her mother’s work and the work of all of the Rosies she has met. Her voice is full of gratitude and admiration for the strength of the women she surrounds herself with. 

Fasold has picked up on a common theme among Rosie women: She describes it as a sort of spunk they bring to any situation that needs hard work and change. 

The legacy of Marty Autry Burnett

The embodiment of spunk was a Rosie named Marthana Rose Autry, who worked at Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp. right when it opened in 1943. 

According to her daughter B.J. Burnett, a long-time Rosebud in the McKenzie chapter, they were a military family through and through. Autry worked during the war as a typist who wrote pilot manuals for the aircraft built during the war. She held this position until 1946 and then continued her work in civil service as a typist at Coronado Naval Amphibious Base until she retired in 1987. 

Burnett said that her mother and father, a Marine, were committed to serving their country in their own fields. 

“They never thought twice about giving up or doing something to save their country during the war,” Burnett said. 

Like Fasold, Burnett said she learned of her mother’s history later in life despite being so close with her mother. Burnett said her grandmother was the first person to tell her stories of her mother’s work during the war, and she only found out her mother was a Rosie in 2004 when they moved from San Diego to Springfield. 

As her mother aged, she began to lose her vision, but she did not lose her spunk. Burnett said she would educate just about anyone on how to make things more accessible for people living with vision impairments. 

“She actually received an award for Lane County for her help with the blind and doing things for the blind people. She taught a crochet class. She was just really a very active person, but she did an awful lot,” Burnett said. 

Autry passed away in 2016 at the age of 97, but Burnett has remained in the McKenzie chapter to continue supporting her fellow Rosies and carrying on her mother’s legacy. 

“I don’t plan to stop,” she said, “Because when we go to the schools, the kids love to hear these stories.”

Burnett said that she is proud to know her grandson Brandon will share her mother’s history with the next generation of her family. She said Brandon used to read her mother’s journals when he was younger and has taken an interest in learning the family history. 

“Go home and talk to (your) grandparents and talk to their parents,” Burnett says to encourage young people to learn more about the Rosies. “See if they can remember more than they’re telling and talk to grandma and grandpa.”

The legacy of Florence Rexroad

“It’s just a matter of making time. Everybody’s pretty busy,” said Larry Orr, son of a Rosie and current member of the McKenzie chapter. 

Orr, 75, joined the local Rosie chapter less than five years ago when he and his sister learned of their mother’s participation in the war. Orr’s mother, Florence Rexroad, worked at a Boeing factory near Seattle between the ages of 17 and 18. Rexroad was an actual riveter, meaning she was in charge of fastening pins and building planes and other machines used in the war. 

“She would promote the Rosies and talk to everybody. She was very proud of being a Rosie the Riveter,” Orr said. 

“I was just a teenager in Oregon when my sister Rose broke me out of a Catholic home for unwed mothers. She said we were going to lunch, but instead, Rose took me to Seattle on the train,” Rexroad said in her biography recorded by Faslod and Orr. 

“The day after we arrived, Rose and I got jobs working as riveters on the bombers at Boeing. They trained us fast and put us to work,” she said.

Orr said that his mother was even pregnant with his older sister when she first started working at the Boeing factory and continued to work there after she had her baby. 

Later in her life, Rexroad advocated for the Rosies in her community – and with the president of the United States. Orr said Rexroad was awarded a coin from President Joe Biden while attending a healthcare rally in Portland. 

“A lot of times, women say, ‘I’m not a Rosie. I worked in welding, or I did something else,’” Orr said, “When they do stuff like that to help support the economy and the war, they’re Rosie the Riveters.”

Orr is considered a Rivet in the organization to honor being the son of a Rosie, and he says that he was inspired by his mother’s strength to continue helping the chapter. Orr urges the community to learn more about the women on the home front during the war since many are in their late 90s. His mother, Rexroad, passed away last October.

Pleasant Hill High School had a veterans appreciation assembly on Nov. 7 and invited the Rosies to share their stories with the students alongside the veterans. Orr said the event moved him and he was happy to see so many young people cheering and high-fiving the women. 

“Just meet them,” he said. “Give them their thanks because they are veterans. They kept the war going, and without them, we probably would have lost the war or a lot more … They did it because it was their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, and their uncles that they wanted to come home. They really were very patriotic and just amazing women.”