Once Again Congress Has Declared March 21 as ROSIE THE RIVETER DAY!
Throughout March, WomensMemoirs is celebrating Women’s History Month. Today we’re pleased to focus on Rosie the Riveter Day.
The women who worked during World War II became known as Rosie the Riveters. Of course, they worked in many industries and held many jobs. But the name stuck and today that name is a convenient way to focus our attention and to pay our debt (or at least give our thanks) to all those wonderful women who took on the jobs vacated by men who went to war. Without these women working on the Homefront, the war would not have been won.
And An Official Day of Recognition?
A Rosie who now lives in Marin County, California has spent years writing to Congress to get an official Rosie the Riveter Day. Finally, after years of spearheading the effort, Phyllis McKee Gould, now 97, saw the first Rosie the Riveter Day in 2017. She was even invited to Washington, DC for the day and continues to proudly display her photo with President Obama and Vice President Biden commemorating March 21, 2017.
She continues to write letters urging a permanent Rosie the Riveter day. Officials tell her it can’t be done. They tell her it is too hard. They tell her she shouldn’t try. But as you can well imagine, words of discouragement don’t stop a Rosie. Gould is pleased that the Senate passed the first resolution in 2017, followed again in 2018 and 2019 to declare March 21 as Rosie the Riveter Day.
But she still wants it to be permanent. She puts it this way:
“I want to be able to say on my marker ‘Mission accomplished.'”
What can you do?
Write to your Senator and state why you think there should be a permanent Rosie the Riveter Day. After all, the contributions of these women are permanent and so should be their recognition.
What the resolution said…
Interested in the words of the original Senate resolution?
March 21, 2017 has been designated National Rosie the Riveter Day in a “collective national effort to raise awareness of the 16,000,000 women who worked during World War II.”
Let’s continue to raise awareness of the 16 million women who worked to help win WW2.
Want to Wear Your CAN DO Attitude?
We have two great products in our Etsy RosiesLegacyGear and RosieGram stores that are super fun to wear and will let you show your Can Do attitude.
First, we offer a pair of red and white polkadot socks, custom made in our design. We even show a Rosie the Riveter on the back with the message, We Can Do It…Pass It On. We call these our Rock Your Dots Socks.
https://www.etsy.com/RosiesLegacyGear/listing/525492488
Second, we have just added a special three-pack gift set featuring three different Rosie the Riveter sock designs. One is called Rosies and has the silhouette of Rosie in yellow all over a blue background, topped with a red cuff with the word Rosies. (And we hid, in plain sight, a single yellow heart.) The second pair of socks is called Hearts and showcases yellow hearts (and one yellow Rosie silhouette, of course) plus a red cuff. The third pair of socks is our red and white polkadot ones. All three can also be mix-matched so that you have six pairs of socks. We designed them this way by using the same red, blue, and yellow — all taken from the famous Rosie the Riveter poster!
https://www.etsy.com/RosieGram/listing/675475315/
