Mae Krier
Boeing – Rosie the Riveter
Seattle, Washington
1943-1945
Boeing – Rosie the Riveter
Seattle, Washington
1943-1945
The Creation of Rosie the Riveter
There are hundreds of thousands of written pages and thousands of hours of film footage, documentaries and movies made about the courage, sacrifices, hardships, perseverance, heroism and the monumental efforts made by so many men from so many different countries to beat back the Axis powers in World War II. That saved the world from what surely would have been misery for so many. What is overlooked is the herculean effort of the people who toiled, mostly in obscurity, in the background. The unsung heroes shoveling the coal to fuel the engine to power the victory. Without the selfless efforts of this group of people the success of World War II would not have been possible.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States was provoked and fully awakened to the evils that threatened it and the rest of the world. That galvanized the nation and the free world in a common cause to destroy the enemy. Destroying the enemy was not going to be as simple as deploying the military. The military needed to be rebuilt, not only in terms of manpower but its arsenal of equipment. That included planes, ships, guns, ammunitions, bombs, tanks and other war-making equipment. Corporations across the nation converted factories and design capabilities from machine tools and consumer products to the production of military goods. That was an incredible feat in itself. But with the factories converted, who would run the lathes, presses, welders and riveters? The men had been drafted or enlisted. “Up until 1941 it was a man’s world” Mae Krier recalled.
With the men gone the burden fell to Mae Krier and thousands of women like her. Women across the United States traded their pillbox and cartwheel hats for bandanas and braided their long hair into Victory Rolls. They also traded their stylish padded shoulder dresses and pencils skirts for overalls and shop floor jumpsuits. In the states Mae and an entire army of American ladies answered the call “to do what we had to do to help our country survive”, said Mae. Many worked double duty. After a day at the factory or the shipyard they headed home to keep the home fires burning bright, so the GI’s had somewhere to come home to. Running a household during the war years was a neat trick considering everything was being rationed. It required ingenuity, creativity and a great deal of resilience and the U.S women were up to the task.
The United States government realized they would need a significant number of women from the middle class to fill these jobs. These were women who, for the most part, had never worked and who’s first order of business, up to this point, was homemaking. To spark the women’s interest and stir their patriotism, songs were created about women who worked to help the war effort. Soon images of these working women were created.
In 1942 J. Howard Miller created an image for a Westinghouse Electric Corporation production recruitment campaign showing a woman flexing her bicep and wearing a red bandana with white polka dots. From her lips came the caption, “We can do it!” On May 29th, 1943, Norman Rockwell’s drawing of a female production worker appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. The woman was clad in blue overalls and a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to reveal brawny biceps. She sported a pair of welding goggles sitting atop her brow while she took a bite of her sandwich. On her lap sat her riveter and her lunchbox where Rockwell had written “Rosie”. From these beginnings was born the iconic heroine, Rosie the Riveter and the slogan “We can do it!”
When the war ended the men came home and went into the factories and the women went home, back to keeping the house. There was much jubilation about the war’s end with parades, stories and honors for all of the U.S. GI’s that risked life and limb to win the war. But times being what they were, the women and their extraordinary accomplishments took a back seat to the men that did the fighting. “And deservedly so” said Mae, but what about the women. Mae, a Rosie who can get anything done, then embarked on a quest to get “Rosie the Riveter” or, the Rosie’s as Mae calls them, the recognition they deserved.
“We made all those landing crafts, we made all those airplanes, we made all those liberty ship, we made all of the ammunition, we made everything they needed to win that battle and not once did they mention the women. That got my dander up.” There are thousands of stories about the thousands of Rosie the Riveters. This is one of them.
Difficult Times – Depression and a Dust Bowl
Mae Krier was born in 1926 and Calvin Coolidge was midway through his Presidency. Mae grew up in the very small central North Dakota town of Dawson. Dawson had a population of 306 in 1930. Today the population is 74. Mae’s maiden name was Burkett and she is the great granddaughter of Austrian immigrants. Mae had two sisters and one brother. Mae’s father worked with her uncle on a farm and when the depression came, he went to work on one of the WPA projects. He later became the manager of a grain elevators. She remembers living though the stock market crash of ’29, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Times were tough but her family was loving and giving. If someone needed help the Burkett’s would extend a hand. “It was probably the worst decade in American history. The only good thing to come out of it was my mother got the right to vote.” “It was a terrible way of living….A roof over our head and food on the table, that’s all we got.”
“At that time the rail roads were run by coal and water.” Dawson was a town where the train stopped to refill the water and coal. “One of the things I remember so well is, as they would stop, these men would get off the train. They called them hobos or bums back then, but these were just professional men traveling just to find a job.” The forgotten men of the Great Depression would get off the train, come by the local homes and knock on doors asking if there was something they could do to earn some money for something to eat. “We had chickens, so my mother always made them sandwiches.” Mae remembers them being very appreciative of any help they received.
Mae’s uncle was a rural mail carrier and “he took the mail out into the country. There was no electric in the country at that time.” When he was called into the service Mae’s mother took over his mail route. “The women just had to step in when the men left.” Mae recalled the severe winters of the northern plains and how hazardous it was. “I think my mother was probably one of the first Rosie’s.” When Mae was in Seattle she learned her mother got snowed in…”and my father didn’t know if she was dead or alive until they could plow out and get her back into town.”
“Even though it was sad times it was a good time. We learned to respect our parents, we honored our flags, and we honored our country. We honored and appreciated everything.”
“It was very difficult times and up until Roosevelt started putting in the programs to bring us out of the Great Depression.”
Mae learned a very important lesson that would serve her and the USA well in later years. “During the Great Depression it was everyone’s job to help each other.” Everyone worked for the greater good.
The World at War
On December 7th 1941 Mae and her sister returned home from a movie to learn that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. “When Pearl Harbor was bombed all of our young men enlisted immediately” including her brother who served on a battleship in the Philippines. “It just took the heart out of our town. My father was such a happy man. When we put my brother on the train that day, when I came home, I saw my father crying. I’ve never forgotten what that was like because we had never seen that before. But don’t forget all across our country mothers and fathers were putting their sons and daughters on the trains saying goodbye. So many of them never returned.”
After Mae graduated from high school in May of ’43, she and her older sister and a friend boarded a train and headed to Seattle to work for Boeing building the B-17 Flying Fortress. “We thought it would be a lark. We would just spend the summer there.” But the ladies would stay through the duration of the war churning out B-17s and B-29s.
Mae and the Rosie’s were doing their part for the war effort, but they were just teenagers, and their thoughts were no different than any other teenager. “I was a good riveter, but I spent my time thinking about what I was going to wear to the dance tonight.” Mae met her future husband Norm while working at Boeing in 1944. Norm, who was in the Navy, was attending a military dance at the Serviceman’s Center in Seattle. Mae was at the dance and they both loved to do the Jitterbug. After a brief courtship they were married “right after Roosevelt died.”
Mae recalled completing the 5,000th B-17 in May of 1944 and all of the workers got to paint their name on the plane. After the workers were all assembled in front of the plane for a photo, the workers pushed the plane onto the tarmac. The plane went on to complete 78 missions over Europe.
Mae was a riveter and worked in the wing section of the plane. To keep the women’s hair from getting caught in their machinery or tools, the women put their hair into Victory Rolls or bandanas. “When we were working with machinery we had to wear the bandanas.” Much like the GI’s, the Rosie’s developed strong bonds between them.
“It was a time when every man, woman and child did what they could to help win the war. It wasn’t your job or my job, it was our job. I remember working with Gold Star mothers. If they lost a son, they didn’t quit working. They didn’t want another mother to lose a son because he didn’t have the equipment.” The widows had the same view. Mae doesn’t recall there being any doubt that the US and it’s Allies would prevail.
The War ends and the Men Return
When the war in the Pacific ended, Mae recalled Boeing dramatically scaling back production and that meant a lot of Rosie’s were out of a job. These women had to go home with no idea of their future. The widows now had to worry about a source of income. “That was a sad time for women.” The men were returning home and reclaiming their jobs. “Which they deserved; I’m not taking that away from them.” Mae recalled that the men were given parades, the GI Bill and other benefits. “But Rosie the Riveter got nothing.”
When the war finally ended, Norm was discharged from the Naval Air Station in Pasco, Washington. Mae found a job on the base working with the Army Engineers. There was a group of Italian POW’s that worked with Mae to send equipment to the South Pacific to aid with the reconstruction. “You know, they were no different than you or I. They just wanted to go home to their families.” Several months later Norm was discharged and the couple headed to Pennsylvania where Norm had a job as a machinist with Westinghouse.
When the Korea War came along, Mae and Norm needed extra money and Mae went to work at the Kaiser aircraft factory in Bristol, PA where she worked on the tail section of the aircraft as Rosie the Riveter.
Mae recalls being asked what the Rosie’s did after the war and if they simply went back to the kitchen. Mae replied, “Yes, and the bedroom. That’s where all of these baby boomers came from.” Mae and Norm had two baby boomers of their own, a son and a daughter. They also have several grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. “We’ve been lucky….”. Norm lived to the age of 93 and passed away just before their 70th wedding anniversary.
Recognition for the Rosie’s
Mae was a proud Rosie and over the years it galled her that the Rosie’s never received the recognition she felt they deserved. One day she decided to take the Rosie’s ‘can do’ attitude and put it to work to get the Rosie’s the recognition they deserved. “I would write to everyone that would listen to me.” Some wrote back and some didn’t, but Mae was undeterred. “One thing I worked really hard on was making the women realize they were Rosie. So many of them thought because they didn’t put a weld on a battleship or a rivet on a plane, they weren’t considered a Rosie. Their job was just as important as mine. We couldn’t have gotten that plane off the ground if it wasn’t for the part they made.”
Traveling the road to success is not straight, nor easy. There were many setbacks and the progress slow. “But I never gave up and one day the papers picked up on it.” Mae asked why, after all of the years of her waving the Rosie banner, did they decide to write her story. ‘Your story just happened to be the one we needed today.’ Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but of course, you make your own luck. “From that point on it went viral.” Mae had the good fortune to run into Deb Woolson at a WWII reenactment where they struck up a friendship. Deb and her friend Will Robinson helped Mae developed a Facebook page which help increase awareness along with Mae’s many speaking appearances. Today the Facebook page has over 6,000 followers.
The first step in getting public recognition was to get a ‘Rosie the Riveter Day’. Mae headed to Washington, DC to walk the halls, plead her case and twist some arms. When a Rosie the Riveter Day was declared in 2017, the next step was to get the Congressional Gold Medal for the Rosie’s. Around the time of the pandemic in 2020, Mae decided she would sew (of course she sews!) face masks made of the red and white polka dotted material made famous by the Rosie’s bandanas. Soon friends and other groups donated material and elastic. Mae was contacted by her former employer, Boeing, who volunteered to help with the mailing. Mae and Deb, fulfilled over 6,000 orders.
By now Mae and several other Rosie’s were driving the effort to get more recognition. Jacki Speier, a Congresswoman from California, had agreed to Sponsor the Rosie the Riveter Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2019 which would authorize the Congressional Gold Medal. Mae and the Rosie’s actively lobbied for passage of the bill. Once it passed in the House of Representatives, Bob Casey, one of Mae’s Senators from Pennsylvania, pushed it through the Senate in December of 2020. Mae accepted the award on behalf of all of the Rosie’s in April of 2024. “Believe me, we had a lot of people help us.”
Mae’s former employer, Boeing, contacted her to request a bandana and a mask to put on the robot flying the space shuttle to the space station. They named the robot Rosie the Rocketeer.
These days Mae and Deb have a podcast, Breaking Barriers with Mae Krier. It is focused on women and their accomplishments. Mae continues to talk about the Rosie’s at schools, she talks to young women about not limiting themselves, she was invited to the 4th of July celebration at the U.S. Capitol, and she was invited to Normandy for the 80th anniversary. Mae was invited to Uvalde, TX, presented the key to the city and given the opportunity to drive a Sherman tank. She was invited to parachute from a plane, but she drew the line there. And the list goes on. “Whoever imagined it would come to this?”
With all of the speaking Mae has done she says she still gets nervous. “I only tell my story as I lived it. It’s easier to do that way.” Mae has had an incredible life to say the least and the chapters are still being written.
Mae, thank you for shining a light on the history of Rosie the Riveters and all of the Rosie’s who helped power the Allies to victory in World War II. Good things come to those who wait.
There are hundreds of thousands of written pages and thousands of hours of film footage, documentaries and movies made about the courage, sacrifices, hardships, perseverance, heroism and the monumental efforts made by so many men from so many different countries to beat back the Axis powers in World War II. That saved the world from what surely would have been misery for so many. What is overlooked is the herculean effort of the people who toiled, mostly in obscurity, in the background. The unsung heroes shoveling the coal to fuel the engine to power the victory. Without the selfless efforts of this group of people the success of World War II would not have been possible.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States was provoked and fully awakened to the evils that threatened it and the rest of the world. That galvanized the nation and the free world in a common cause to destroy the enemy. Destroying the enemy was not going to be as simple as deploying the military. The military needed to be rebuilt, not only in terms of manpower but its arsenal of equipment. That included planes, ships, guns, ammunitions, bombs, tanks and other war-making equipment. Corporations across the nation converted factories and design capabilities from machine tools and consumer products to the production of military goods. That was an incredible feat in itself. But with the factories converted, who would run the lathes, presses, welders and riveters? The men had been drafted or enlisted. “Up until 1941 it was a man’s world” Mae Krier recalled.
With the men gone the burden fell to Mae Krier and thousands of women like her. Women across the United States traded their pillbox and cartwheel hats for bandanas and braided their long hair into Victory Rolls. They also traded their stylish padded shoulder dresses and pencils skirts for overalls and shop floor jumpsuits. In the states Mae and an entire army of American ladies answered the call “to do what we had to do to help our country survive”, said Mae. Many worked double duty. After a day at the factory or the shipyard they headed home to keep the home fires burning bright, so the GI’s had somewhere to come home to. Running a household during the war years was a neat trick considering everything was being rationed. It required ingenuity, creativity and a great deal of resilience and the U.S women were up to the task.
The United States government realized they would need a significant number of women from the middle class to fill these jobs. These were women who, for the most part, had never worked and who’s first order of business, up to this point, was homemaking. To spark the women’s interest and stir their patriotism, songs were created about women who worked to help the war effort. Soon images of these working women were created.
In 1942 J. Howard Miller created an image for a Westinghouse Electric Corporation production recruitment campaign showing a woman flexing her bicep and wearing a red bandana with white polka dots. From her lips came the caption, “We can do it!” On May 29th, 1943, Norman Rockwell’s drawing of a female production worker appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. The woman was clad in blue overalls and a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to reveal brawny biceps. She sported a pair of welding goggles sitting atop her brow while she took a bite of her sandwich. On her lap sat her riveter and her lunchbox where Rockwell had written “Rosie”. From these beginnings was born the iconic heroine, Rosie the Riveter and the slogan “We can do it!”
When the war ended the men came home and went into the factories and the women went home, back to keeping the house. There was much jubilation about the war’s end with parades, stories and honors for all of the U.S. GI’s that risked life and limb to win the war. But times being what they were, the women and their extraordinary accomplishments took a back seat to the men that did the fighting. “And deservedly so” said Mae, but what about the women. Mae, a Rosie who can get anything done, then embarked on a quest to get “Rosie the Riveter” or, the Rosie’s as Mae calls them, the recognition they deserved.
“We made all those landing crafts, we made all those airplanes, we made all those liberty ship, we made all of the ammunition, we made everything they needed to win that battle and not once did they mention the women. That got my dander up.” There are thousands of stories about the thousands of Rosie the Riveters. This is one of them.
Difficult Times – Depression and a Dust Bowl
Mae Krier was born in 1926 and Calvin Coolidge was midway through his Presidency. Mae grew up in the very small central North Dakota town of Dawson. Dawson had a population of 306 in 1930. Today the population is 74. Mae’s maiden name was Burkett and she is the great granddaughter of Austrian immigrants. Mae had two sisters and one brother. Mae’s father worked with her uncle on a farm and when the depression came, he went to work on one of the WPA projects. He later became the manager of a grain elevators. She remembers living though the stock market crash of ’29, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Times were tough but her family was loving and giving. If someone needed help the Burkett’s would extend a hand. “It was probably the worst decade in American history. The only good thing to come out of it was my mother got the right to vote.” “It was a terrible way of living….A roof over our head and food on the table, that’s all we got.”
“At that time the rail roads were run by coal and water.” Dawson was a town where the train stopped to refill the water and coal. “One of the things I remember so well is, as they would stop, these men would get off the train. They called them hobos or bums back then, but these were just professional men traveling just to find a job.” The forgotten men of the Great Depression would get off the train, come by the local homes and knock on doors asking if there was something they could do to earn some money for something to eat. “We had chickens, so my mother always made them sandwiches.” Mae remembers them being very appreciative of any help they received.
Mae’s uncle was a rural mail carrier and “he took the mail out into the country. There was no electric in the country at that time.” When he was called into the service Mae’s mother took over his mail route. “The women just had to step in when the men left.” Mae recalled the severe winters of the northern plains and how hazardous it was. “I think my mother was probably one of the first Rosie’s.” When Mae was in Seattle she learned her mother got snowed in…”and my father didn’t know if she was dead or alive until they could plow out and get her back into town.”
“Even though it was sad times it was a good time. We learned to respect our parents, we honored our flags, and we honored our country. We honored and appreciated everything.”
“It was very difficult times and up until Roosevelt started putting in the programs to bring us out of the Great Depression.”
Mae learned a very important lesson that would serve her and the USA well in later years. “During the Great Depression it was everyone’s job to help each other.” Everyone worked for the greater good.
The World at War
On December 7th 1941 Mae and her sister returned home from a movie to learn that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. “When Pearl Harbor was bombed all of our young men enlisted immediately” including her brother who served on a battleship in the Philippines. “It just took the heart out of our town. My father was such a happy man. When we put my brother on the train that day, when I came home, I saw my father crying. I’ve never forgotten what that was like because we had never seen that before. But don’t forget all across our country mothers and fathers were putting their sons and daughters on the trains saying goodbye. So many of them never returned.”
After Mae graduated from high school in May of ’43, she and her older sister and a friend boarded a train and headed to Seattle to work for Boeing building the B-17 Flying Fortress. “We thought it would be a lark. We would just spend the summer there.” But the ladies would stay through the duration of the war churning out B-17s and B-29s.
Mae and the Rosie’s were doing their part for the war effort, but they were just teenagers, and their thoughts were no different than any other teenager. “I was a good riveter, but I spent my time thinking about what I was going to wear to the dance tonight.” Mae met her future husband Norm while working at Boeing in 1944. Norm, who was in the Navy, was attending a military dance at the Serviceman’s Center in Seattle. Mae was at the dance and they both loved to do the Jitterbug. After a brief courtship they were married “right after Roosevelt died.”
Mae recalled completing the 5,000th B-17 in May of 1944 and all of the workers got to paint their name on the plane. After the workers were all assembled in front of the plane for a photo, the workers pushed the plane onto the tarmac. The plane went on to complete 78 missions over Europe.
Mae was a riveter and worked in the wing section of the plane. To keep the women’s hair from getting caught in their machinery or tools, the women put their hair into Victory Rolls or bandanas. “When we were working with machinery we had to wear the bandanas.” Much like the GI’s, the Rosie’s developed strong bonds between them.
“It was a time when every man, woman and child did what they could to help win the war. It wasn’t your job or my job, it was our job. I remember working with Gold Star mothers. If they lost a son, they didn’t quit working. They didn’t want another mother to lose a son because he didn’t have the equipment.” The widows had the same view. Mae doesn’t recall there being any doubt that the US and it’s Allies would prevail.
The War ends and the Men Return
When the war in the Pacific ended, Mae recalled Boeing dramatically scaling back production and that meant a lot of Rosie’s were out of a job. These women had to go home with no idea of their future. The widows now had to worry about a source of income. “That was a sad time for women.” The men were returning home and reclaiming their jobs. “Which they deserved; I’m not taking that away from them.” Mae recalled that the men were given parades, the GI Bill and other benefits. “But Rosie the Riveter got nothing.”
When the war finally ended, Norm was discharged from the Naval Air Station in Pasco, Washington. Mae found a job on the base working with the Army Engineers. There was a group of Italian POW’s that worked with Mae to send equipment to the South Pacific to aid with the reconstruction. “You know, they were no different than you or I. They just wanted to go home to their families.” Several months later Norm was discharged and the couple headed to Pennsylvania where Norm had a job as a machinist with Westinghouse.
When the Korea War came along, Mae and Norm needed extra money and Mae went to work at the Kaiser aircraft factory in Bristol, PA where she worked on the tail section of the aircraft as Rosie the Riveter.
Mae recalls being asked what the Rosie’s did after the war and if they simply went back to the kitchen. Mae replied, “Yes, and the bedroom. That’s where all of these baby boomers came from.” Mae and Norm had two baby boomers of their own, a son and a daughter. They also have several grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. “We’ve been lucky….”. Norm lived to the age of 93 and passed away just before their 70th wedding anniversary.
Recognition for the Rosie’s
Mae was a proud Rosie and over the years it galled her that the Rosie’s never received the recognition she felt they deserved. One day she decided to take the Rosie’s ‘can do’ attitude and put it to work to get the Rosie’s the recognition they deserved. “I would write to everyone that would listen to me.” Some wrote back and some didn’t, but Mae was undeterred. “One thing I worked really hard on was making the women realize they were Rosie. So many of them thought because they didn’t put a weld on a battleship or a rivet on a plane, they weren’t considered a Rosie. Their job was just as important as mine. We couldn’t have gotten that plane off the ground if it wasn’t for the part they made.”
Traveling the road to success is not straight, nor easy. There were many setbacks and the progress slow. “But I never gave up and one day the papers picked up on it.” Mae asked why, after all of the years of her waving the Rosie banner, did they decide to write her story. ‘Your story just happened to be the one we needed today.’ Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but of course, you make your own luck. “From that point on it went viral.” Mae had the good fortune to run into Deb Woolson at a WWII reenactment where they struck up a friendship. Deb and her friend Will Robinson helped Mae developed a Facebook page which help increase awareness along with Mae’s many speaking appearances. Today the Facebook page has over 6,000 followers.
The first step in getting public recognition was to get a ‘Rosie the Riveter Day’. Mae headed to Washington, DC to walk the halls, plead her case and twist some arms. When a Rosie the Riveter Day was declared in 2017, the next step was to get the Congressional Gold Medal for the Rosie’s. Around the time of the pandemic in 2020, Mae decided she would sew (of course she sews!) face masks made of the red and white polka dotted material made famous by the Rosie’s bandanas. Soon friends and other groups donated material and elastic. Mae was contacted by her former employer, Boeing, who volunteered to help with the mailing. Mae and Deb, fulfilled over 6,000 orders.
By now Mae and several other Rosie’s were driving the effort to get more recognition. Jacki Speier, a Congresswoman from California, had agreed to Sponsor the Rosie the Riveter Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2019 which would authorize the Congressional Gold Medal. Mae and the Rosie’s actively lobbied for passage of the bill. Once it passed in the House of Representatives, Bob Casey, one of Mae’s Senators from Pennsylvania, pushed it through the Senate in December of 2020. Mae accepted the award on behalf of all of the Rosie’s in April of 2024. “Believe me, we had a lot of people help us.”
Mae’s former employer, Boeing, contacted her to request a bandana and a mask to put on the robot flying the space shuttle to the space station. They named the robot Rosie the Rocketeer.
These days Mae and Deb have a podcast, Breaking Barriers with Mae Krier. It is focused on women and their accomplishments. Mae continues to talk about the Rosie’s at schools, she talks to young women about not limiting themselves, she was invited to the 4th of July celebration at the U.S. Capitol, and she was invited to Normandy for the 80th anniversary. Mae was invited to Uvalde, TX, presented the key to the city and given the opportunity to drive a Sherman tank. She was invited to parachute from a plane, but she drew the line there. And the list goes on. “Whoever imagined it would come to this?”
With all of the speaking Mae has done she says she still gets nervous. “I only tell my story as I lived it. It’s easier to do that way.” Mae has had an incredible life to say the least and the chapters are still being written.
Mae, thank you for shining a light on the history of Rosie the Riveters and all of the Rosie’s who helped power the Allies to victory in World War II. Good things come to those who wait.