Inspiration for renowned poster dies
UNITED STATES: For most of her life, a waitress from northern California named Naomi Parker Fraley kept a press photograph of herself working a factory lathe in March 1942. It was only in her final years that this photo became proof that she was part of American mythology, as the probable model for Rosie the Riveter, the can-do World War II image that became a feminist symbol.
Fraley, who died last Sunday at the age of 96, was identified as the likely inspiration for Rosie by James Kimble, a professor of communications, in a 2016 paper.
The spirited riveter had many wartime incarnations, attached to several women. But there was a Rosie who appeared with a polkadotted handkerchief on her head, flexing a bicep and looking resolute in posters that went up on the walls of Westinghouse Electric Corporation plants early in 1943.
The image, by J Howard Miller, an artist from Pittsburgh, was meant only to deter strikes at the plants. It resurfaced in the 1980s and steadily became a feminist symbol.
Geraldine Hoff Doyle, who had worked briefly in a factory in Michigan in 1942, thought she might be the woman standing at a lathe in a press photograph that seemed to have inspired the poster. The photo was widely identified as a shot of Doyle, who died in 2010.
But the picture was actually of Fraley, a retired waitress from California who had worked at a factory in Alameda, California during the war.
In 2011, Fraley and her sister attended a reunion of female wartime workers in Richmond, California, where she was surprised to see a photo of herself bearing the caption ‘‘Geraldine Hoff Doyle’’. She wrote to the US National Park Service, attaching the newspaper clipping bearing the photo, which identified her as its subject.
Kimble found another press clipping, dated March 24, 1942, bearing the caption: ‘‘Pretty Naomi Parker looks like she might catch her nose in the turret lathe she is operating.’’
Kimble visited Fraley in 2015. When he told her of his research, her reaction was ‘‘a sense of relief’’, he said.
‘‘Just imagine walking around with a photo of yourself and everyone else says its someone else. Noone would listen to her.’’