American wartime icon dies aged 86
Source: Agencies |
January 1, 2011, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A WOMAN whose photo was said to be the inspiration for an iconic poster that lauded the efforts of working -American women during World War II has died, it was announced yesterday.
Geraldine Doyle died on Sunday, aged 86.
A photograph of Doyle as a 17-year-old factory worker was the model for the well-known poster of a woman wearing a head scarf and flexing a well-formed bicep, the Lansing State Journal reported.
Entitled "We Can Do It!" the image inspired daughters, sisters and mothers to trade in the tools of housework and take jobs in plants across the country while their men were away fighting the war.
"She was definitely one of the Rosies," said Sandy Soifer, executive director of the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame, in reference to the fictional "Rosie the Riveter" - the name given to women working in plants during WWII.
"It's our belief that she is the model for the drawing that is most commonly used in the posters and on the products," Soifer said.
"Rosie the Riveter" was also the title of a popular 1940s song, and the title of a painting by Norman Rockwell of a woman factory worker holding a rivet gun.
Doyle told the Lansing State Journal in 2002 that she didn't realize the illustrated face on the poster commissioned by the US War Production Coordinating Committee was her own until 1984 - four decades later - when she saw it in a magazine.
Geraldine Doyle died on Sunday, aged 86.
A photograph of Doyle as a 17-year-old factory worker was the model for the well-known poster of a woman wearing a head scarf and flexing a well-formed bicep, the Lansing State Journal reported.
Entitled "We Can Do It!" the image inspired daughters, sisters and mothers to trade in the tools of housework and take jobs in plants across the country while their men were away fighting the war.
"She was definitely one of the Rosies," said Sandy Soifer, executive director of the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame, in reference to the fictional "Rosie the Riveter" - the name given to women working in plants during WWII.
"It's our belief that she is the model for the drawing that is most commonly used in the posters and on the products," Soifer said.
"Rosie the Riveter" was also the title of a popular 1940s song, and the title of a painting by Norman Rockwell of a woman factory worker holding a rivet gun.
Doyle told the Lansing State Journal in 2002 that she didn't realize the illustrated face on the poster commissioned by the US War Production Coordinating Committee was her own until 1984 - four decades later - when she saw it in a magazine.
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