Over six million women took wartime jobs during World War II, and three million volunteered with the Red Cross. Yet society did not recognize them until half a century later, when the club was founded.
Like Dorothy Key.
“I’m not sure what they want me to tell you,” Key, 98, of Goshen, chuckles as her daughter and friend encourage her to retell her experiences during WWII. She adjusts her Rosie the Riveter red and white polka dot scarf and starts from the beginning.
“The superintendent had all of us go to the auditorium in December. She set up a big radio, and with big loudspeakers, there was no such thing as television then, so we heard the President make that famous talk and asked Congress to declare war on Japan,” Key said.
Key was about 14 years old when she heard FDR’s speech, and by the time she was 16, she was off to work in Los Angeles.
Key grew up in the small town of Horatio, Arkansas, but she was determined to help the war effort, even if that meant leaving her family. She said that life on the farm in Arkansas wasn’t for her, and when she received a letter from her older sister asking her to come live in Los Angeles and work with her, Key was ready for the adventure.
“Mother was pretty easy. I think she’d like to go on her own. But my dad, that was something else,” she said, “I begged and I cried and I did all the things that kids do when they don’t get their way. And he finally said, okay,” Key recalls.
She said that she remembers her father walking with her the entire mile walk to her bus stop and carrying her suitcase for her.
“I just imagine, since I’m older and have more sense, I can imagine his heart was absolutely breaking when he saw me leave. But shoot, I was 16, I knew everything,” she said.
This independent spirit is a common denominator among women working on the home front. Their “we can do it” attitude motivated them to work selflessly for their country after a day at school, in Key’s case.
She said that once she was in LA, she would go to school until around noon and catch a streetcar to the factory. Key worked at Hydropac as a machinist, working on hydraulics for airplane parts.
“It was a small plant, and they kind of humored me, because I was, well I was the kid,” she chuckled.
Key also recounts having to change her clothes constantly. “We had to wear dresses to school and pants to work, so I carried my clothes with me,” she said.
But few things stopped her from contributing to the war efforts, and her age was most definitely not one of those. Key said that she knew there was a great need for people to donate blood, but she wasn’t old enough to do so without her parents’ permission.
“So my sister said, I think I’d get by signing that,” she said. Her daughter Sandra Key explained that she remembers her mother saying that it was her obligation to donate blood, since there were so many men dying for their country so far from home.
“I did meet several young men that were killed, and so this has a lasting impression,” Key said herself.
So Key continued her efforts until the war ended, and remembers the day vividly. “Oh, the end of the war, the whole world went crazy,” she said.
Key remembers her and her friend listening to the announcements on the radio and that there would be celebrations downtown LA. She and her friend caught a streetcar and made a stop at a neighborhood shopping center before heading downtown.
“People were so crazy. The bells were ringing and dogs barking and people shouting and people hugging each other strangers, and we stayed maybe an hour. It was just too rough for us,” Key said.
“We never did go downtown,” she laughed. People were crazy. It was something that we’d all been looking forward to … That was a good time, believe me.”
Doreen Kilen
Also on the West Coast, Oregon native Doreen Kilen, 98, of Eugene, spent her last year of high school working in Portland with her father to manufacture Liberty Ships.
Kilen wears a pleasant smile and dangling earrings with the Rosie the Riveter character on them. She speaks kindly and is appreciative of the women who introduced her to the Rosie club.
“I thought it was just the riveters that were the Rosies, but these gals kind of talked me into letting me join them,” Kilen said.
Kilen, the oldest of four children, grew up in Monmouth, Oregon, and always had a close relationship with her father. When she was 17, she went with him to Lebanon to learn how to operate machinery.
“They were teaching people how to use machines. So I learned how to operate a lathe and my dad operated a shaper,” she said.
Kilen said that they then went up to Portland and worked at Monarch Forge & Machine, making parts for Liberty Ships, which supplied the soldiers. While she attended Lincoln High School, her father would pick her up from school, and they would work the swing shifts.
“They took a great big picture of all of the people on the outside [Monarch Forge], which is how I happened to realize that I really was a Rosie,” she chuckled.
Kilen and her father were living at the Roseland hotel for the time that they were working at the factory.
“I enjoyed working, and the pieces I was working on with the lathe had to be 1/1000 of an inch accurate. So it was fun to kind of measure them out and watch them grow and cut them down in the parts that were supposed to be,” Kilen said.
She said that at the time, the men were very appreciative of her work and kind to her while she worked alongside those who were not overseas.
She recalls christening one of the ships that came into the harbor, and her family came up from Monmouth to share in the excitement.
“My dad and I went to the shipyard and watched. We sat and watched them christen the ship and hit it with the champagne,” she said.
Kilen described the end of the war as being much quieter in Portland than how Key described it in LA, but she said everyone was very relieved when the news came.
“As soon as the war was over, we came back to Monmouth, and I graduated with my class of 10 fellow members because the fellas were all at the war,” she said.
In the summer after she graduated, Kilen recalls her dad coming to her with a proposition.
“My dad had taken care of all of the affairs, I had no idea how much I made,” she said, “One day he said to me, would you like a fur coat or would you like to go to college? Well, there was no question what I wanted to do, so I ended up going to Oregon State.”
At Oregon State, Kilen was one of six women majoring in Mechanical Engineering. During her time in college, she met her husband because they both had the same dentist.
“This gentleman walked over and said, ‘I could possibly help you if you need help on your chemistry,’ and I didn’t pay attention to that. But two weeks later, he called, and he said, ‘I have enough money for a coke date. Could you go for a coke date?’ I thought that was a good idea,” Kilen said, smiling.
Kilen then continued her life in Oregon, living in Eugene most of the time, and discovered the Rosie club through Dolly Marshall’s presentation about her life as a Rosie.
“When [Dolly] first came to Willamette Oaks and spoke about the things [she] had done at that point, I got hooked. I thought it was wonderful,” she said.
“We listen to the questions that youngsters will have . . . people really care, and they learn a lot. It was an era that is like none other. Women did help a lot at that time, so it’s nice to see it being recognized,” Kilen said to her group of Rosie club members. Then everyone clapped and thanked her for her service.
Dolly Marshall
Dolly Marshall, 95, of Springfield, leaves quite an impression for only being 5 feet tall. She may be considered “the baby of the group,” but she retells her story with matter-of-fact eloquence.
She was just a freshman in high school when she was recruited to be a plane spotter in New Jersey.
“A bunch of army people came to high school and recruited us. And of course, we immediately said, “Oh, that would be fun,” Marshall said, “So they sent us to a three-week training school to learn these silhouettes to be plane spotters.”
“You had a specific regimen, and you said the height or the altitude, which direction they were coming from, which direction they were headed to,” Marshall explains how she and her classmates participated in the plane spotting, “At night, you just said that you heard them, and if they were high or low.”
Marshall said that they would sit in the press box at their high school football field since she supposed that was the highest place around.
“We also belonged to the Civil Air Patrol cadets. So we had uniforms,” she said, “We went to Fort Dix and learned to march in unison, which was really fun to learn. And then we also went to Fort Dix to dance with the soldiers every month or so.”
Marshall said her whole family was involved in the war. Her mother would use her ration stamps to buy ingredients to make sponge cakes for the soldiers in the hospital, and her father was a warden who made sure everyone had their blackout curtains drawn.
“Apparently I’m still a member of the Civil Air Patrol,” Marshall said as she pointed to a pin on her red and white polka dot Rosie scarf (worn to every meeting). The pin was given to her by a young man who had read her biography and was a naval pilot.
“I was so excited and thrilled because he hunted me out, and he said he wanted to give me this,” Marshall said.
The pin was actually his Civil Air Patrol tie clip because he had learned to fly there as a cadet, and Marshall was able to meet him at an award ceremony in Washington, D.C.
After the war ended, Marshall continued her high school education, being the only girl in her school to take the scientific track. She then went to the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art to pursue a major in Industrial Design with only one other woman in her class.
With her degree, Marshall traveled all over, working in pipeline construction, as a field recorder, and even joining the Peace Corps.
“I was usually the only woman in the room because I did a lot of drafting, lots of sexual harassment in the early days, before we had any of the helpful things we have now,” she said.
Marshall recalls a temporary construction job as one of her worst experiences.
“In this job, they were really horrendous. Some of them were very nice to me, some of the guys, but a few of them did nasty, obscene things. And when I left that job, this one guy came up and said, the last woman who came here, we had her out by nine o’clock in the morning the first day. So I thought, right,” Marshall said as she scoffed and rolled her eyes.
Marshall said that this is why she loves to share her experiences as a Rosie with women in her community.
“That’s the part that’s that I enjoy the most about speaking to the schools is to see women who are now in traditionally men’s jobs,” Marshall said.
Marshall’s spirit and tenacity keep her involved in many organizations around the Eugene/Springfield community, including her three-mile walking group with other seniors.
“My husband died not knowing I had ever done any of this,” Marshall said about her time as a Rosie, “Nobody ever told me. It was just something you did when you were a kid.”
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As of today there is only one Rosie chapter in Oregon, the McKenzie chapter, and that is more than most states in the US. There were no records kept by companies of which women held these positions, and many of them died, never knowing that they were a Rosie.
Sandra Key goes with her mother, Dorothy Key, to every Rosie event to help share her legacy.
Now, we are at a time when the women who remember these experiences are in their late 90s and doing their best to share their stories so their impact can be returned to the history books.
Yvonne Fasold, events coordinator and Rosebud for the McKenzie chapter, said she is inspired by the women she works with.
“I love them and to keep from being sad because, you know, we’re losing them, I just say I am so glad I knew her,” Fasold says.
Fasold hopes these stories inspire the younger generations to remember the Rosies and understand that they can do great things like the Rosie women.
