Trending
ELKINS -- Our Town Inc. will host its fourth annual Rosie the Riveter Celebration on Saturday at the Randolph County Community Arts Center.
The event will run from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and will honor 15 local women who are being inducted into the organization's Rosie the Riveter Honor Roll. The celebration will feature music from the Rosie era, educational displays, youth participation, refreshments, and an opportunity to meet Rosies and their family members.
"We are excited to be inducting 15 new women into our Rosie Honor Roll," Our Town volunteer Bobbi Trimboli told The Inter-Mountain. "We will hand out certificates to the Rosies or the family members representing them during the event. We will also have a little bit of entertainment, refreshments, and guests from the community."
Raymond Godwin will play gathering music at the event on the piano and will perform the Rosie the Riveter Song. Elkins Mayor Jerry Marco will take part in the event, as will bagpiper Sany Tice, professional storyTeller Becky Ashburn, and Girl Scout Group 10142.
A Rosie the Riveter Exhibit will be on display at the Arts Center and will remain up for the public to enjoy until Sept. 25.
"We have collected a lot of items over the last couple of years that I think people will find very interesting," said Trimboli. "We have a lot of pictorial things and many other interesting things that will be part of the display."
Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of World War II that represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during the war. Any woman who received pay for any essential work during WWII is considered a Rosie.
This year's inductees into the Rosie the Riveter Honor Roll include: Edith Catherine Scott Gould, Eleanor Fahrner Mailloux, Lena Irene Hofer Mealey, Wilma Georgia Hofer, Vera Maxine Trickett Taylor, Josie Tharyn Harman Mullennex, Phoebe J. Weese, Ethel Mouse Woolwine, June Woolwine Hyson, Eileen Woolwine Young, Lorranie Poling Moran, Irene McNeal Hartford, Mary Frances McNeal Hicks, E. Loretta Bohon Murphy and Ruby Helen Gibson.
Profiles of each inductee follow:
Edith Catherine Scott Gould was born in Czar and later resided in Beverly. She taught in various schools throughout Randolph County. During WWII she was trained as a riveter and then worked at the Fisher Aircraft Plant 2 next to the Cleveland Hopkins Airport operated by General Motors. She riveted tail assemblies of B-29 bombers.
Eleanor Fahrner Mailloux was born to a Swiss father and English-American mother and was born in Helvetia. During WWII she moved to Akron, Ohio to work at Goodyear Tire Company from 1941 to 1944, supplying military and civilian tires to troops battling overseas. She was recruited to a supervisory position training woman in that plant. In 1944 she joined the American Red Cross and served in Germany and the Pacific for four years.
Lena Irene Hofer Mealey was from Helvetia and was born in 1919 to Ernest and Henrietta Hofer. She graduated from Pickens High School in 1938 and in 1940 she worked in Akron (Barberton), Ohio. She worked in the Sun Rubber factory with her sister, Wilma, and reported she worked on fuel bladders. After the war she lived in Washington, D.C. and married her husband Orville Mealey and retired near Parkersburg. After her husband's death, she moved back to the Elkins area to be near family and passed away at the age of 101.
Wilma Georgia Hofer was born in Pickens in 1914, older sister to Lena Irene Hofer. After attending Pickens School, she graduated from Elkins High School because Pickens was not a four-year school. She later graduated from beauty school and was a beautician in Clarksburg before leaving to join her sister, Lena, in the war effort in the Ohio rubber factory. After WWII she returned to Nutter Fort as a beautician and later returned to live with family in Dailey.
Vera Maxine Trickett Taylor worked at the Glenn L. Martin plant in Baltimore, Maryland during WWII. She was involved in building aircrafts and repairing those damaged in battle. She worked on the Martin PBM Mariner and the Martin B-26 Marauder.
Josie Tharyn Harman Mullennex was from Harman and at the age of 18 she and her mother listened to the radio with heavy hearts to President's Roosevelt's declaration of war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon after soldiers poured into her community to train at Dolly Sods and Seneca Rocks. The soldiers frequented her father's store where music was played and spirits were high and solidarity ran deep. Josie soon joined several other ladies at the Glenn L Martin Airplane Factory in Baltimore to take on her Rosie role.
Phoebe J. Weese was born to sharecroppers who worked on the Baker property in Beverly. Growing up on a farm she knew hard work and at an early age could use a crosscut saw. In the 1940s she left her three children with their grandparents and went to work in the Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland where she became a tack welder. To do her work she had to hang down the side of ships and throughout life she bore scars from sparks and slag that fell from the welders above her. She later returned to Elkins where she had other employment and bore her fourth child.
While sisters often left Randolph County to work for the war effort, so did mothers and daughters together. Ethel Mouse Woolwine and daughter June Woolwine Hyson worked at the Goodyear plant in Akron, Ohio where they were engaged in making aircraft and blimps. Their particular jobs were to be knowledgeable of the tools that were used in the plant. They returned to Elkins to work with their husband and father in a restaurant called Jacks on Davis Avenue. Sister and daughter, Eileen Woolwine Young, was also a Rosie the Riveter and worked at Wrights Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio and continued to live in Dayton after the war.
Lorranie Poling Moran was born to William and Lavinia Poling and grew up with a family of two sisters and two brothers during the depression. Lorraine began serving meals to U.S. soldiers training in the area who were housed at Halliehurst Hall at Davis and Elkins College. She later married John H. Moran, Jr. and had three daughters. Lorraine recently turned 102 years.
Irene McNeal Hartford was born in Helvetia in 1915 and was the daughter of Anna Merkli and James McNeal. A graduate of Davis and Elkins College, she taught school before leaving for California to visit her brother and work in the San Diego Shipyards where she copied blueprints for building ships. After the war she taught school in California and married Al Hartford. She later returned to Helvetia to care for her mother. She helped organize the Helvetia Swiss Dancers.
Mary Frances McNeal Hicks was born in 1911 in Helvetia to Anna Merkli and James W. McNeal. In 1941 she went to Cleveland and worked in a defense plant as a file clerk. The factory made airplane landing gears until WWII ended. She returned to Helvetia where she taught Swiss traditions of cooking, sewing, needlework, spinning and weaving. She married Thomas Hicks at age 65. Her primary address remained in Helvetia until she died at the age of 104.
E. Loretta Bohon Murphy was a civilian employee of the U.S. Ammunition Depot at Hastings, Nebraska where she worked in the munitions department assembling depth charges which was an anti-submarine warfare weapon to destroy submarines. When her artistic talents were discovered she was given an art studio adjacent to the main building and became a munitions artist, painting art work on the depth charges. In 1945, Loretta attended Bliss Business College in Columbus, Ohio in preparation for her future job as a clerk and typist at HDQ Air Technical Service Command USAF Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Ruby Helen Gibson was born on September 15, 1909 in Elkwater. She was one of 10 children of Charles and Celeste Elizabeth Hogan Gibson. Even though her family lived in Huttonsville she had to move in with her sister Mary in Simpson to attend high school since there were none in her area. In 1943, when WWII was being fought, she traveled to Hammond, Indiana, east of Chicago to live with another sister, Eva. It was there she became employed at the Stanford Forging Company where she worked on the production line fabricating bomb percussion caps. After the war she returned to a life of farming in Huttonsville. She passed away at the age of 99.