Home Front – Dot the Welder

The legend of “Rosie the Riveter” has inspired romantic ideas about American women doing their patriotic duty during World War II.

But for Dorothy Kelley, the motives were more personal. Recently divorced, she was raising four children on her own. And after seeing women from the shipyard cashing $600 checks, she traded a job at a Montgomery Ward department store for long nights of welding.

Kelley — called “Dot” — built ships in Portland, Me., working at the South Portland Shipyards from 1942 until it closed in 1945.

Recently, Dorothy’s daughter, Joyce Butler, visited StoryCorps to remember her mother’s life in those days. Wearing overalls and heavy clothes against the cold, Kelly and the other women wriggled into the ships, welding ship’s seams together in tight spaces.

Injuries were part of the job, Butler recalls. She says her mother’s neck and chest became “all spotted with burn marks, from the sparks.” She worked nights, so her days could be free for her children.

Joyce Butler and her daughter Stephanie, Portland, ME

Butler says that after the war ended, her mother was forced to work two jobs, and her children were sometimes left to fend for themselves at home.  “But still, she was determined to keep us together as a family,” Butler says.

Dot Kelley lived to be 94 years old.

Produced for ‘Morning Edition’ by Michael Garofalo. The senior producer for StoryCorps is Sarah Kramer.

Some 6 million women worked in manufacturing jobs during World War II. They were known as “Rosies,” after the iconic image of a woman in work clothes, flaunting her muscles, who appeared in recruitment posters, in a popular song, and in a Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Listen to “Rosie the riveter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CQ0M0wx00s

The Four Vagabonds sing “Rosie the Riveter” by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, from early 1943

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Home Front Humor – 

“Housing shortage or no housing shortage – that’s going too far!”

Sign at the Brooklyn Navy Yards

 

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Farewell Salutes – 

Elizabeth Patterson Allner – Baltimore, MD; “Rosie” for Martin Marietta Corp and intelligence, WWII, ETO

Elisabeth Baril – Warren, MI; “Rosie” at plane assembly plant, WWII

Rebecca Barker – Nashville, TN; “Rosie” for aircraft salvage, WWII

Pearl DeMayo – Kansas City, MO; an actual riveter on B-29 bombers, WWII

Audrey Holsinger – South Bend, IN; “Rosie” on B-29 aircraft parts, WWII

Vera Baker Larson – Seattle, WA; “Rosie” on B-17s, WWII

Ruth Nave Merryfield – PA; “Rosie” at Detroit aircraft plant, inspector, WWII

Rose Tangredi Ozark – Syracuse, NY; “Rosie” made machine-gun triggers, WWII

Doris Smith – Ladysmith, WI; “Rosie” in ship building, WWII

Mary Tanberg – Great Falls, MT; “Rosie” at B-24 construction, WWII

Katherine Tabee Yates – Vallejo, CA; “Rosie”   submarine worker on Mare Island, WWII

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