The West Virginia Rosie the Riveter Project is an ongoing effort created by Thanks! Plain and Simple, Inc. (“Thanks!”), a nonprofit organization founded in 2005. “Thanks” developed the project to involve women who worked throughout America during World War II on “men’s jobs” (most notably riveting airplanes and welding ships, but including a broad range of defense industry employment), which was critical to shortening and winning World War II.
“Thanks!” conducts interviews of these “Rosie the Riveters,” now 85–95 years old, to archive in libraries, but more - the project provides opportunities for “Rosies” themselves to participate in the decision making of teaching their own legacy. The methods and tangible tools “Thanks!” has created help American communities find and learn from their “Rosies.
Overview
"Thanks!" interviewed the first woman in the WV Rosie the Riveter Project in 2008. Anne Montague, Executive Director and Founder, first hoped to find 15 living West Virginia women who performed critical “home front” jobs during World War II, but “Rosies” were hard to find. A breakthrough came March 29, 2009, when the Charleston Gazette-Mail ran an advertisement with a picture of Montague’s mother, Jessie Jacobs Frazier, headlined, “Help us find our Rosies.”
By January, 2011, 150 women, mostly West Virginians, had approached “Thanks!” to tell their stories of leaving low-population areas to work in defense jobs, usually in major cities throughout America, and to do highest quality work. Seeing that many “Rosies” wanted to participate beyond being interviewed, “Thanks!” began to involve these women so that the public could know our “Rosies” and “Rosies” could help make decisions about how their legacy is understood and passed on to next generations.
Today, “Thanks!” has: 1) produced a documentary film (funded, in part, by the West Virginia Humanities Council); 2) created the first model Rosie the Riveter Community in America (funded, in part, by the Greater Kanawaha Valley Foundation); 3) created tools such as music, art, curriculum, written procedures for other communities to use to find and honor living “Rosies,” 4) partnered with various groups (arts, labor, history, schools), and 5) held events where emissaries from allied nations (Belgium in 2009 and Britain in 2010) formally thanked American “Rosies” for their contributions.