Remembering Rosie

At almost 96, Beatrice Carney's memories of World War II are 70 years removed. She turns sometimes to her daughter, Susan Earls, to make sure she has a particular detail straight.

She recounts that her beloved husband, Hugh William Carney -- "Bill" -- served in the Army Air Force as a navigator and navigation instructor. And she -- like so many war brides -- went home to live with her mother on Long Island, taking her 7-month-old son, William Nilsson Carney, with her. She's delighted to show off the pictures of her young family. And she's proud to pull out a tiny brown envelope, deeply creased from 70 years of folding and refolding, to illustrate the job she did at the Sperry Gyroscope Corp. near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

"The (Norden) bombsights had little mirrors which needed to be attached with very tiny screws," the Bentonville resident says, her slender hands demonstrating the perhaps 1-inch space into which the assembly had to fit. "My fingers were small enough to do it."

Women simply did not do that kind of work before World War II. With millions of men gone off to the battlefield, factories making essential military equipment had to have laborers.

"They promoted the fictional character of 'Rosie the Riveter' as the ideal woman worker: loyal, efficient, patriotic and pretty," the U.S. government's "Rosie the Riveter" website states. "A song, 'Rosie the Riveter,' became very popular in 1942. (And) Norman Rockwell's image on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943, was the first widely publicized pictorial representation of the new 'Rosie the Riveter.'"

The American Rosie the Riveter Association, of which Carney is a member, was founded in 1998 "to recognize and preserve the history of working women, including volunteer women, during World War II" and to bring together the women and their descendants -- "Rosies," "Rosebuds" and "Rivets."

Finding Rosie

Mabel W. Myrick, membership vice president for the Alabama-based American Rosie the Riveter Association, feels a certain sense of urgency about finding other Rosies she has not yet met.

"All of us are in our late 80s and 90s," she says, "and if we don't find them now, their stories may be lost. Sometimes their daughters don't really know what they did during the war."

Myrick, 88, grew up outside Birmingham, Ala., and went off to Washington, D.C., right out of high school. She was a secretary at the Pentagon until the war ended, then worked for the Veterans Administration for a couple of years before going home.

When the United States entered the war, 12 million women (one quarter of the workforce) were already working and by the end of the war, the number was up to 18 million (one third of the workforce), according to the U.S. government's Rosie the Riveter website.

"After the war, the cultural division of labor by sex reasserted itself," the website states. "Many women remained in the workforce, but employers forced them back into lower-paying female jobs. Most women were laid off and told to go back to their homes.

"During World War II there was a change in the image of women, but it was only superficial and temporary," the website concludes. "The reality was that most women returned to being homemakers during the prosperity of the 1950s. However, the road taken by women in the work force during World War II continued into the future. Society had changed. The daughters and granddaughters of Rosies continued on the road blazed by their mothers and grandmothers."

"We want people to remember the different kinds of jobs we did," Myrick says. "I admire those that got down in the dirty jobs like welding! The ladies did everything that a man could do. We had to. And we opened up the job market for women today."

Now, she says, "we're trying to get a record because there was no record kept of us like there was men in the military."

That's why Myrick is campaigning to get women like Carney to speak out and help find their sister Rosies. Among the services offered with membership in the Rosie the Riveter Association is a registry of women honored for their war service, an annual convention and collections of stories like Carney's. The organization published its fifth book, "Rosie the Riveter Stories: The Legacy Lives On!," in November 2012. The books and other information about the association can be found online at rosietheriveter.net.

Rosie remembers

Bea Carney has already told her story in a unique forum. In 2012, Niki Stewart, director of education for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, recorded her memories to one day be heard as museum visitors view Rockwell's iconic "Rosie the Riveter" painting.

Oil on canvas, the 52-by-40 inch artwork dominates a wall in the Early 20th Century Gallery at the Bentonville museum. The label text explains its importance in the museum's collection.

"Rosie the Riveter, Rockwell's iconic image of an American woman employed in the production of military hardware, represents a distinctive melding of contemporary wartime life and art historical tradition. Posed before a waving American flag and dressed in red, white, and blue, Rosie proudly displays a series of patriotic badges across the bib of her overalls. A tattered copy of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' lies underfoot. Rosie is a powerful reminder of American women's critical contribution to victory during World War II. Closer examination reveals the art historical origins of Rockwell's statuesque figure: Michelangelo's depiction of the prophet Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel."

Carney enjoyed seeing the painting, she says, and she enjoyed her work during the war. But she'd rather talk about her family -- not just her beloved Bill.

Born Beatrice Lorraine Nilsson in Manhattan -- and nicknamed "Minkie" by her godfather -- Carney comes from a long line of independent, interesting women. Her grandmother and her mother both performed on the vaudeville stage as tap dancers, she relates as Earls pulls out two pairs of size 4 dancing shoes to show a visitor.

"Nana was a comedienne as well," Carney points out, and chatting with her, it's clear the trait was handed down in the family. She jokes often, laughs easily and smiles most of the time, particularly as she talks about her husband, who died in 2008. They met at a symposium on marriage, she recalls, and "I took one look at him and thought, 'Oh, brother!'" When a volunteer was needed to operate a mimeograph machine, both of them raised their hands.

Was it love at first sight?

"Well, yes, I guess it was," she says. And yes, she adds, he was "gorgeous."

The couple dated for a year, were engaged for a second year and married on June 21, 1941. Almost two years later, Carney got his 1A classification notice, and he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in April of 1943. The Army Air Corps later became the Air Force, Earls explains, so although his active service was as a commissioned officer with the Army, he was discharged from the reserves in 1951 as a first lieutenant in the Air Force.

After a long career in business, Carney taught Latin and French at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and the couple lived abroad for several years in the 1980s, when he was the director of the SMU-in-Paris and SMU-in-Madrid student programs.

After the war, Bea Carney never again worked outside the home -- and never wanted to, she says. She raised three children -- Bill Jr., Susan and James -- has four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren and worked for many years in her home, teaching piano lessons. She was the originator of Bea's Music Teaching Aids, a legacy carried on by Earls' daughter, Laura Smyczek, a piano teacher and mother of three in Wisconsin.

Now, Carney and Earls are working on compiling her memoirs. Carney has boxes of letters she and her husband exchanged -- every day -- during the war that reflect conditions in the military and at home.

They also tell the story of one "Rosie" whose love affair never ended.

"I still think of you all the time," he wrote to his wife in one. "I love you very deeply, and all my life is wrapped up in you."

NAN Our Town on 06/19/2014