17 minute read
Reminiscing with a 'Rosie '
By: Kerri Jeter
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Known for her role in breaking down barriers for women in the workplace,K Elinor Otto has become a role model and inspiration for countless women who have heard the telling of her story. What started as a call to service became her legacy—she is the longest serving Rosie the Riveter of all time.
Elinor was sitting at a diner on the boardwalk in Santa Monica, CA, grabbing some breakfast with her mother and stepfather when a special report interrupted their meal.
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan,” began President Franklin Roosevelt. President Roosevelt called the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor a “date which will live in infamy,” in the now-famous address to the nation and asked Congress to declare war. “Mike, my stepfather had served in the Navy told us, ah, don't worry. We're not going to have a war. That is what he said,” recalls Elinor. “But then they start[ed] advertising for women to work so the men could go fight.”
Mike, of course, mispredicted the severity of the attack and by the first week in January 1942, Elinor was on the line working as a ‘Rosie’. By 1943, more than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry— making up 65% of the industry’s total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-war years). While women during World War II worked in a variety of positions that were previously closed to women, the aviation industry saw the greatest increase in female workers.
Elinor was beautiful, with bright blue eyes and dark hair piled high, when she joined a small group of women at Rohr Aircraft Corp. in Chula Vista, Ca., during World War II.
“They say you're going to build airplanes. Well, they just gave us the things to start working. Back in those days, there was a riveting machine that you put your foot in like you do a sewing machine,” said Elinor. “So, I did that for a while until we got the rivet guns.”
Elinor was never asked to be a welder or given any other option in the factory, except to rivet on aircraft. Which she was perfectly content doing alongside her youngest sister, Jean, who also worked as a riveter, while an older sister, Evelyn became a welder.
“I like airplanes and all that stuff,” she began. “My sister Jean and I would go to the movies, cowboys movies, things like that. And then we liked airplane movies, as long as they didn't have women in them. We just wanted to see the men and the airplanes.”
She wasn’t hired for her skill, but they quickly learned how valuable Elinor and women like her were to the process. Most of the men, that didn’t go to war, tried hard to date the girls, even going as far as setting standards in the application process to ask questions about personal features like eye color.
“I was there to build airplanes, some men couldn’t make up their minds if they wanted us there or not,” said Elinor. “At first, they didn’t want us there, then all of a sudden they were very happy. There were a lot of marriages and divorces that happened.”
A single mother, Elinor served as a riveter— quite frankly she needed to work to support herself and her son.
This was a perfect job for someone who loved airplanes, enjoyed a hard day’s work and who had a lot of energy.
Elinor may now be 101-years old but she still is spry and full of life—truly unstoppable.
Elinor quickly earned the respect of her team by proving her skills in all phases of the assembly process.
Building a fuselage requires a high demand for physical labor from the beginning to the final seal, but surprisingly also requires a delicate touch.
“I loved riveting because it kept me busy, drilling was the final part of the work, but all the preliminaries that have to take place before the final part, the seal,” said Elinor. And oh, the seal was the worst part because it had to be perfect.”
Often when we think of riveting, we think of strength needed to perform the work—I know I do.
Building big airplanes requires big nuts and bolts, right?
Well, not quite.
Most factories had the women work in pairs, one as the riveter and another as a bucket.
The riveter used a gun to shoot rivets through the metal and fasten it together.
“When you are working on the fuselage, it requires great skill to ensure you didn’t make a mess of the thin skin. It required that you had a bucker on the inside, to meet the riveter right on time,” Elinor described. “It was known to not let the men have the rivet gun, we were more delicate and precise.”
Elinor happily worked as a riveter until America won the war in 1945, but as the men came home and went back to work, many women were forced out of their jobs.
Everyone was so overjoyed, they celebrated in the streets.
Elinor started her 68-year career, yes you read that right, as a 23-year-old, only taking a short break when the war was over. The men came home and the women were forced out of work.
“I mean, it was exciting, but we didn't know we did anything great then. The men came back! We were so happy that so many did, in fact, come back and got their jobs back. And we didn't resent it at all, not at all,” recalls Elinor.
“So, we just left and said goodbye, and that was it. And nobody paid attention to us or that we did anything big until six generations later.”
In order to continue supporting her son, Elinor needed to find work right away and she needed a job that required energy, something to keep her moving.
She was even a carhop for some time—until they required the gals to wear roller skates.
Elinor Was soon hired by Ryan Aeronautical and worked alongside the same men who built the Spirit of St. Louis for Lindberg. After 14 years of working for Ryan, they were no longer manufacturing aircraft, so the production line was shut down and Elinor, along with her coworkers, were out of a job, again.
Ten months later, she got a call that Douglas Aircraft Company was hiring women again— the first time since the war.
So, she drove up to Long Beach and waited in the hiring line so she could keep riveting.
Douglas guaranteed her ten years of work but luckily for Elinor, she worked there until 2015, when the plant closed down.
The closing of the Long Beach plant was expected but jarring.
For more than seven decades, the 1.1millionsquare-foot plant had been a fixture of the Long Beach landscape and economy.
The Douglas Aircraft Company, later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas, when it then operated as a division of McDonnell Douglas.
McDonnell Douglas later merged with Boeing in 1997. This was the primary location that supplied aircraft to the U.S. Air Force since 1941, just before the U.S. entered World War II.
When McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing, they began to produce the C-17 Globemaster III—a four-engine military cargo jet—every single C-17 that has ever flown in the Air Force to date, Elinor has helped build!
Elinor was one of the 3,800 who were impacted by the closure, being forced to retire at the age of 95, after 6- years of dedicated service.
Although her riveting days are over, her legacy will live forever in each of us who answers the nation’s call to serve.
Photo by: U.S. Air Force photo Airman 1st Class Michelle Ulber)
Elinor in the 40's. Elinor and her sister, Jean. Elinor in the 40's.
Photos provided by Elinor Otto.
Elinor’s Younger Years
Riveting was everything to Elinor—it was a chance to provide and make a life for herself. We know so much about her career and life as a riveter, but she exclusively shares with Freedom Sisters Magazine, much more about her personal life—giving us some never before told stories.
Elionor was born the third youngest of four daughters to teenage parents, Adeline and William, under complicated circumstances.
“My mother was 14 when she got married and my father was 20 or 21, something like that. He was always saying to her, my mother did this, or my mother did it that way. So my mom decided to get a divorce,” recounts Elinor. “So she took the two younger girls and he took the two older girls to his mother on a farm in Oklahoma and we stayed in California.”
When the family was divided it was decided that there would be no contact between the two parties, Elinor’s father was very clear about his expectations.
The girls knew they had sisters, but the girls would never know one another until later in life.
“In fact, my mom was still pregnant with my younger sister, Jean, when my dad left us in California,” said Elinor. “I must have been about three. It was rough, it wasn’t easy. But Jean was my best friend and we were inseparable.”
A childhood dream of being a girl scout was never fulfilled because they didn’t have much money.
In fact, they were so impoverished, their mother had to place the girls in a Catholic orphanage for a while.
“As long as we were together, my younger sister and I didn't care what happened about anything as long as we were together. We were so very close,” recounts Elinor. “We had some good years, my mom got married to Mike, he was in the Navy. She married him because he said he would take both of us as his girls.”
The family moved to Panama when the Navy needed Mike to report for duty there.
Back in those days, there was no air conditioning so Elinor describes her time there as hot and miserable with lots of spiders.
A Young Elinor loved adventure, but didn’t like the tropics—it was just too hot.“I spent a year and a half in Panama. A miserable year.
"The minute I got there, I wanted to come back because there was a big spider going up the wall,” Elinor shares. “It was so hot and miserable, we couldn't sleep with the blanket, not even a sheet until I saw Frankenstein. When I saw that face I had to sleep with a sheet over my head. I was never so scared.”
Elinor loved the movie theater and recalled going to the movies a lot with her kid sister, Jean.
They would pay their dime and go see cowboy movies, airplane movies and more, their favorite being the airplane movies.
But the love of theater goes back to vaudeville days.
Ted Lewis and his longtime shadow Charlie "Snowball" Whittier performing "Me and My Shadow " c. 1940. Photo courtesy of The Ted Lewis Museum, Circleville, Ohio www.tedlewismuseum.org
Vaudeville is a type of entertainment popular chiefly in the US in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance.
During one traveling show featuring Ted Lewis, before his “Me and My Shadow Days,” Elionor and Jean, went to the show each day.
“I don’t know how we made it to the front row, no one paid for that,” smiles Elinor. “They didn't kick us out like they do now. So he's looked down there at us on the one last show and said, are you girls still here? We had a lot of adventures, we were just so happy together.”
Of all the adventures these two youngsters had, Elinor shares with us probably the most daring of all——The time she and Jean ran away.
When Elinor was 11 or 12—years old, money was still tight for the family along with the need to get the girls new shoes, Elinor thought if the girls ran away, then the family would not have to worry about them or any needs they may have. So that is just what they did.
“So we packed up a little bit of things in a suitcase and away we went, we walked out and then we walked over a bridge to the bus station. When we were on the bridge our suitcase opened up and everything including our panties fell over. We were embarrassed because the fishermen were there,” said Elinor. “But we kept going. When we made it to the bus stop, we had no money, I don’t know where we thought we were going.”
With no money of their own and unsure of what was going to happen to them, when they arrived at the bus stop, a young man saw their need and gave the girls a $5 bill.
“So the five dollars bought us two bus tickets and three nights in a hotel, where we ate something fancy every night,” reminisces Elinor. “We were sitting there after our money was gone talking about what we would eat if we had money, when one of my mother’s friends knocked on the door, rescued us, put us back on the bus and told the driver to keep an eye on us.”
Much to their mother’s relief, they made it home safe and sound. The adventures of Elinor and Jean are many, their love and connection ran deep.
When they were growing up they were too young to recall having other sisters, but the older girls knew about them and they would one day set out on their own adventure to find their two little sisters.
In the late 1920s, there was a radio program about missing persons, that the oldest sister, Evelyn, listened to regularly.
So, she went to the station, discussed the situation with the team, they investigated it and found her younger two sisters out in California!
Evelyn, went out west but Edna was not willing to leave Oklahoma until sometime later.
But Evelyn, came out to California off and on, staying with the younger sisters, and eventually found a job.
In fact, when Elinor and Jean went into riveting, Evelyn went to northern California to be a welder during the war.
Eventually, Elinor would go on to meet her other long-lost sister and even her father, who she wasn’t impressed with, later in life.
Although she suffered a broken heart from being abandoned by her father and, later, her ex-husband, two other men healed those broken parts—her son, Ronnie, and grandson, John.
As a divorcee, Elinor was required to work, even before the call for riveters. Her iconic job was ironically a practical need for her to care for her only son.
She never thought much about it other than it was good work and it kept her busy.
Finding an apartment to live with her child was impossible to find, so she ended up boarding her son with a caregiver for $20 a week —on a 65 cent an hour wage.
“I just thought I did the best I could under the circumstances. He had a real nice lady that took care of him,” said Elinor. “She had a couple of kids of her own too. And, you know, I was friends with her for a long time.”
When the whistle blew on Fridays, she would go get her son and they would enjoy the weekend going to ballroom dancing halls with big orchestra bands.
The two really loved music and as Elinor tells the story of her son, she smiles from ear to ear.In all her years of riveting and raising her son, Elinor says that life was an adventure and she valued hard work and making a way for herself.
She was asked by Hollywood producers to leave the riveting world behind, her looks are timeless and her wit, but wasn’t attracted to that kind of lifestyle.
She recalled that no matter the tasks at hand, nothing was too hard to figure out. With a little ingenuity and hard work anything is possible.
I did the best I could under the circumstances.
“Well, I think the women are doing wonderful now. And if you have something that you want to do, do it,” declares Elinor. “It don't matter what anybody says, because a lot of people get jealous and say things like maybe you shouldn't do this or do that. Do it anyway.”
She did just that herself, finding a way to work and raise her only son—eventually became a grandmother. He encouraged her to tell her story, he told her it was a powerful story — one where she was the heroine, saving lives, bringing positive influence for women and the female workforce.
As he grew up, Elinor taught him culture, etiquette and even proper grammar. She would even “red ink” his spelling mistakes in letters he would write to her.
She also passed down to her grandson love of aircraft, which became a common bond between Elinor and John, who loved the C-17. They even shared an incredibly special moment when John and Elinor got to share their first flight in a C-17!
Elinor has outlived everyone she has ever loved—her sisters, her son and even her grandson who passed away in 2019. John was a very special treasure to Elinor.
Elinor and John (courtesy of Elinor)
In December 2017, Elinor Otto, who helped build each of the 279 C-17s in the Air Force inventory, enjoyed her first flight with Grandson John March Air Reserve Base in California. (Photo by: U.S. Air Force photo Airman 1st Class Michelle Ulber)
Elior enjoys a day of fun with girls scouts by celebrating her 99th birthday and becoming an honorary Girl Scout, fulfilling a childhood dream. (Courtesy of Elinor and Madeline LeBeau)
“Well, I lost my son in 2012, he had heart problems and we didn't know John had it too, you know, congestive heart failure. So it's been rough. It's been seven years ago for me, ” said Elinor.
“But you got to survive. They say you gotta keep living and doing the best you can. But he said in a couple of letters, it don't matter what happens. I will always be with you. He's still with me. They both are. ”
As the interview came to an end, I realized that this woman, although a HERstorical treasure, is a woman just like me and just like you—living life, loving hard and serving well.
She is more than her job and the dedication she gave this country but the lasting legacy of her love and the joy in her eyes will always be with me.
I think we often get caught up in the milestones or the impossible feats of life, but it's not about the big moments, it's about the way you live in those moments.
Of all the moments that Elinor could have shared with me, she shared one that she most cherishes —on her 99th birthday, she was named an Honorary Girl Scout in Virginia at the Girl Scout national Campground, fulfilling her childhood dream.
They planted three Rosie the Riveter rose bushes, a ceremonial groundbreaking presentation was planned and Elinor was asked to pose for photos but in true Elinor form, she dug all three holes for the roses.
Proving to all—young and old—no matter where life takes you—you can achieve the possible.
