He Helped Train Rosie the Riveter

Post #56 – Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story by Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

We have a story, and the person behind the story, that we’d like to share today. As we all know, women entered the workforce during World War II as men joined the military. Sometimes they were hired a few at a time and sometimes in large numbers and that varied by year and by industry. They came to factories from farms and from the city. But few, if any, already had the training needed for their new wartime jobs. So an interesting question to ask is: Who trained them?

Fortunately, one of our readers emailed us his story and with his permission, we are publishing it.

BILL THOMAS: It may interest you to know I was one of the trainers of Rosie the Riveter. I worked at a plant in Detroit during 1942. There was only the foreman, 40 women, and me. And only being 18-19, I took a lot of “teasing” from the older women at my expense.

ROSIE’S DAUGHTERS: We’re really interested to know that you helped train Rosies. I bet you actually liked the teasing.

BILL THOMAS: I neglected to mention we worked at Fisher Body, a division of General Motors. The Rosies placed the rivets into the “nacelles” (the big aluminum ring) that covers the engines of the B-25 bombers. Our Rosies were the women who helped build that part of the bombers.

As to the teasing, that was fun; but OH some of the stories they told… wow! would make sailors blush…
And I blushed a lot when the so-called “cougars” came after a shy, naive teenager that I was. I’d say, “I’ve grown up a lot since then.”

ROSIE’S DAUGHTERS: Thanks for the additional note. I love knowing the details of what the Rosies were doing.

BILL THOMAS: I looked at the film where “the modern Rosie” is riding in a P-47. What a relic now, but that plane, plus many others, were very important and crucial in winning World War II.

Here’s a little more of the back story. After a few weeks as a riveter at Fisher Body, I became the rivet repairman for anything that didn’t pass “inspection.” It was my job to drill out the failed rivet(s) and replace them. That means I understood what it took to have a good rivet.

That’s what led to my job as the “Rosie Trainer.” We had new women employees constantly coming to work to replace the men as they left to enter the military services.

And why wasn’t I in the military? The company kept getting military deferments for me without my knowledge because they wanted to keep me training new Rosies. But when my two closest buddies draft numbers came up, I decided to enlist so the three of us could serve together.

The “brass” had other ideas. My friend Perry was sent to the Air Transport Command. He has died. My second friend, Bud, became an infantryman. He died in the “Battle of the Bulge.” I became a “forward observer” in an artillery battalion in N. Africa and western Europe.

We racked up 565 days of combat time.

ROSIE’S DAUGHTERS: At the end of our email exchange Bill wrote: “Sorry for the war story It just came out.” We hope that Bill will continue to tell his story just as we urge Rosie’s to tell theirs. We all need to hear them and appreciate them and pass them on to the younger generations. Thanks Bill.

ROSIE’S DAUGHTERS: Happy Birthday, Bill. Congratulations on turning 90 today — November 12, 2013