The Original Girl Power

Rosie the Riveter Lives On

By Geri Dietze | Jan. 29, 2022

The brightly colored WWII poster is an icon of another time: the tenacious, can-do American gal pushing up her sleeves and doing her part to save the world from Fascism. Take that, Adolph!  But, the history of Rosie the Riveter is a living history as well, and some of it is being lived right here in northern Michigan. To wit, Northern Express tracked down a regional Rosie who is still going strong at 96.

Donna Crandall Watkins, of Carp Lake, was a junior at Petoskey High School when World War ll began, and she and her fellow students rallied to do their part for the war effort, including plane spotting and metal collection. For her part, Watkins collected quarters from students during study hall to buy war bonds. (When a stamp book was full it was worth $18.75, or $25.00 upon maturity.)

She also played a role in a significant episode in Petoskey’s wartime history: collecting milkweed to use as buoyant filler for life vests. Before Japan invaded China in 1937, a cotton-like fiber pod, kapok, sourced from Asian rainforests, was used for flotation. But, with that supply cut off, Navy tests determined that milkweed was a comparable substitute, and the plant was designated a wartime strategic material.

Remarkably, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) discovered that the highest producing area for wild milkweed in the entire country was a 12-county area in northwest Michigan, with Petoskey at the epicenter. Also important, Petoskey had the roads, the rail lines, and the shipping capabilities.

The Preston Feather Lumber Company facility was appropriated by the government to be used as the processing center, making it the world’s first factory of its kind. “We kids picked a lot of milkweed,” Watkins remembers, “and my father took it to the collection point in town.” (Even after the program expanded to include other states, it is estimated that the people of Emmet County contributed over 60% of the milkweed used.)

Watkins developed her Rosie the Riveter mechanical know-how when she joined Leonard Murray’s after-school shop class, formed to help girls fill some of the occupations formerly held by men. In that class, she built a small screw jack that she still owns. “My jack started out as a piece of metal. I had to do every step as it went along.” She continues, “It has rarely been used for anything. I just keep it and recall it was once just a piece of metal, and I made it.”

In class, Watkins also learned how to operate and troubleshoot small machines, and her new mechanical skills landed her a position at Lansing’s Nash Kelvinator, previously a refrigerator plant, now retooled to produce war materiel. (Her father was employed there as well, working a different shift.)  There they mass-produced airplane propeller breather nuts, a small but crucial part that equalized internal and external pressure. Watkins enjoyed an advantage in production because when the machines would shut down and require recalibration, she was able to service her own machine. “I [knew] how to keep my machine calibrated properly, and I did not have to wait for the repairman.

Still, Donna Watkins did not think that she was making history, along with the millions of other women who entered into nontraditional work. “I did not feel like a Rosie when I was working there.  I wanted to do what I could for the war effort, and I wanted to earn money to return to college.”

Postwar, Watkins graduated from Central Michigan University in 1947 with an education degree; once her children were of school age, she took a job with Pellston schools, where she taught for 22 years. Today, she is deep into a very active, productive retirement: quilting groups, Tai Chi, swimming, Bliss Bunch, Carp Lake Woman’s Club, her church board, Heritage Village, and the Cheboygan Opera House fill her days.

 Does she see any similarities between the volunteerism and large-scale effort of the World War ll years with civilian life today?  “Times were very different in the 1940s,” she says, “but I think people are basically honest, hard-working, love this country, and would do whatever it takes to protect our democracy.  When people are given the facts about a situation, they will do whatever it takes to reach a satisfactory solution.”

Now, that sounds like a Rosie speaking.

 
 
Chasing History: Time is of the Essence

In Michigan alone, according to the Michigan Labor History Society, more than 60,000 women of all ages and races joined the war production effort. Today, the Rosie the Riveter movement has evolved to include all women — millions of them — who did their part, whether through volunteer work or for a wage, in order to further the war effort.

The Cheboygan and Emmett County Chapter of the American Rosie the Riveter Association is tasked with collecting the stories of the surviving Rosies as well as honoring their service throughout the area. Linda Rogers of Cheboygan and Angie Morthland of Mackinaw City, both granddaughters of Rosies, provide the impetus behind the organization. “I didn’t even know my grandmother was a Rosie, because she never talked about it,” Rogers said. Trula McCurry McIntosh, who passed in 1997, was employed at a small electronics company in Detroit, and Rogers discovered the information after her grandmother’s death. Angie Morthland’s grandmother lived in Indiana and helped process laundry for the soldiers.

This chapter of the ARRA means to keep alive the memory of the women who did their part on the home front. “Our young people don’t even know what the movement is about,” Rogers says.

In addition to collecting oral histories of surviving Rosies, the chapter maintains a Memorial Rose Garden at the Cheboygan County Building; is promoting a group photo-op for National Rosie the Riveter Day on March 21; and has partnered with the Icebreaker Mackinaw Maritime Museum to honor women in the Coast Guard with the exhibit “The Women of the Mackinaw: Those Who Built, Those Who Served.”

And in keeping with the spirit of Rosie the Riveter, Rogers explains of this ARRA chapter, “We’re small but mighty.”

For more information or to share a Rosie history, visit mackinawmemories@gmail.com, or like them on Facebook at Cheboygan and Emmet Counties American Rosie the Riveter Association.