Art on Sunday #25

Rosie the Riveter, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,
Bentonville, Arkansas, May 19, 2012

Mary Doyle (later Keefe) was a 19-year-old telephone operator – operated out of her mother’s home – in Arlington, Vermont, when she posed for neighbor Norman Rockwell’s iconic “Rosie the Riveter” painting that was published on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 and came to symbolize the millions of American women who worked on the home front in the dark days of World War II.  The painting was subsequently loaned to the U.S. Treasury Department for the duration of the war for use in war bond drives.

While Doyle was a petite 110-pound woman, Rockwell wanted Rosie to show strength and based the pose of Rosie on Michelangelo’s 1509 Sistine Chapel ceiling image of the prophet Isaiah, giving her broad shoulders, and large arms and hands. Twenty-four years after she posed for the painting, Rockwell wrote to her apologizing for the large body he gave her in the painting.¹

Doyle posed two mornings for Rockwell and his photographer, Gene Pelham, as Rockwell preferred to work from still images rather than live models. She was paid $5 for each sitting. “You sit there and he takes all these pictures,” she told the Associated Press in 2002. “They called me again to come back because he wanted me in a blue shirt and asked if I could wear penny loafers.” Doyle was a redhead, like the Rosie Rockwell painted and who appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on Memorial Day weekend, 1943.

In the painting, above her head a halo, Rosie is holding a ham sandwich in her left hand, her feet are resting on a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and her blue overalls are adorned with badges and buttons: a Red Cross blood donor button, a white “V for Victory” button, a Blue Star Mothers pin, an Army-Navy E Service production award pin, two bronze civilian service awards, and her personal identity badge. In a pocket of her overalls is a lace-fringed handkerchief and a white-trimmed gold compact. In an interview, Doyle explained that she was actually holding a sandwich while posing for the painting, that the rivet-gun she was holding was fake,  she never saw a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and she did have a white handkerchief in her pocket like the picture depicts.

“Except for the red hair I had at the time, and my face, the rest I don’t think is me at all,” Mrs. Keefe said in a 2002 interview for the Norman Rockwell Museum.²

The painting³ is part of the permanent collection⁴ at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Mary Doyle graduated with a degree in dental hygiene from Temple University.  She married Robert J. Keefe in 1949. Born on July 30, 1922 in Bennington, Vermont, Mary Doyle Keefe died in Connecticut on April 21, 2015, at the age of 92.

Bennington Banner (Vermont) May 1943

Painting of Rosie, a Riveter, Starts Tempest in Teapot⁴

Norman Rockwell of Arlington, veteran Saturday Evening Post cover artist, has another cover in this week’s issue and it hits the rivet right on the head. There’s nothing new in that, since all his covers have been knockouts. But this one came very near causing the Curtis Publishing Company, a lot of trouble.

The cover, posed for by Miss Mary Doyle, Arlington’s attractive telephone operator, shows a husky gal, perched on a timber with a riveting gun lying on her lap, one arm over her lunch box, and a ham sandwich (1) point per pound held in a strictly feminine manner between carmine-tipped fingers.

Beneath one moccasined foot is a smudged copy of “Mein Kampf”, pagan bible of the Hitler regime. Across her bosom is a row of buttons, including a service button, a red cross emblem, a “V” button, a “E” insignia, and a few others.

Feminine Touch

From the pocket of her soiled blue dungarees protrudes a lace-edged handkerchief, and a gold trimmed white compact, in pleasing contrast to the double—buckle leather wrist strap.

Lettered in white paint across the top of her lunch box is the name “ROSIE”, and thereby hangs a tale.

News dealers from coast to coast, including Evans of Main street, received “blow-ups” of the Rockwell cover last week. A “blowup” is an enlargement in colors of a cover picture. It is tacked up to tip off news stand customers of what to expect in the coming Post issue. But this one had a title over it, to wit: “Rosie the Riveter.”

This, it is said, is the name of a new and popular war song. The name “Rosie” on the lunch box isn’t copy-righted, but presumably the title of the song is.

Hurry Call

A couple of days ago Evans and a hundred thousand other news dealers received urgent instructions from the Curtis Publishing Co. to ditch the “blow-up”, and to sign a solemn statement certifying that they had done so, presumably to indicate the good faith of the company and adduce proof that there had been no intention on their part to plaglarize. The Curtis Co. is too smart for that, too long established and certainly knows better, but someone in their promotion department, it is to be supposed, didn’t know about “Rosie.”

Norman Rockwell, when interviewed by The Banner this noon said that “this is the first I’ve heard of it.” Of course he had nothing to do with the promotion anyway, and the use of the word Rosie was quite safe.

She’s Really Beautiful

“It’s Miss Doyle, our telephone operator, who should sue me,” laughed Rockwell, or at least grinned, judging from the sound of his voice over the telephone. “She is really a beautiful girl, but since I wanted to portray a girl of husky proportions, I had to distort the picture.

“I made a mistake in detail that people will be calling me down for,” he concluded. “The cover shows ‘Rosie’ with goggles and an isinglass protective shield. I don’t think riveters use both. It was silly of me.”

The reporter hadn’t noticed that slip, but a few thousand riveters who read the Post regularly undoubtedly will.

Endnotes:

1. “He called me one day and he said, ‘Mary, I apologize, but I made you very large,’ ” Mrs. Keefe recalled before the Sotheby’s sale. “Of course, as a young girl, I said, ‘Oh, that’s all right.’ But when I saw it, that was a different story.”

   She was mollified a bit in 1967, however, when she received a letter from Rockwell. “The kidding you took was all my fault,” he wrote, “because I really thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”  – Mary Keefe Obit, New York Times.

2. Mary Keefe, Model for Rockwell’s ‘Rosie the Riveter,’ Dies at 92 – obit, New York Times, April 24, 2015
3. The painting was eventually donated to the Treasury Department’s War Loan Drive, which raffled it off. The winner was identified as Mrs. P. R. Eichenberg of Mount Lebanon, Pa. Art dealers said it was later owned by Chicago Pneumatic and Dresser Industries, makers of rivet guns and drills, and S. B. Lewis, a New York arbitrageur, who auctioned it off at Sotheby’s to the Elliott Yeary Gallery of Aspen, Colo., in 2002 for $4.9 million, which was believed to be the highest price fetched for a Rockwell at public auction at that time. – Mary Keefe Obit, New York Times.
4. Title: Rosie the Riveter

Artist: Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978)
Date: 1943
Dimensions: 52 x 40 in. (132.1 x 101.6 cm)
Framed: 62 in. × 50 in. × 3 1/4 in.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Credit Line: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, (Accession Number) 2007.178

Label Text:

Rosie the Riveter stands as a powerful reminder of American women’s critical contributions to victory during World War II. Posed before a waving American flag and dressed in red, white, and blue, Rosie proudly displays a series of patriotic badges across the bib of her overalls. A tattered copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf lies underfoot.

The image emblazoned the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943, in the midst of the wartime labor boom which helped to ease unemployment experienced during the Great Depression. Closer examination reveals the art historical inspiration for Norman Rockwell’s statuesque figure: Michelangelo’s depiction of the prophet Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

5. Transcribed by Penny Colman, author of Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II in a blog post, Rosie the Riveter and Mary Doyle Keefe

Post-processing¹ #1

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – Homestead Overlook, elevation 9,387 ft. (2861m), Point Lookout Road off Utah Highway 12, October 6, 2015, 26 miles south of Torry, Utah.

1. Image editing to enhance the photo closer to what the eye “saw.”

Our Itasca Navion IQ motorhome is 9 years old now.  The original lighting was 12v incandescent automotive bulbs.

A few years ago, I replaced much, but not all, of the incandescent lighting in the camper with the new LED lights that were available at the time. Most of the energy used in incandescent lights to make them glow is lost as heat. For the same brightness, today’s LED lighting uses less than 1/8 as much energy. This can make a difference on battery drain when you are boondocking away from utility connections.

Technological and manufacturing advances have resulted in LEDs that can produce brighter lights in a smaller package.

The 3 generations of lights used in our motorhome

I replaced the old LEDs with 12 volt Efoxcity White LED automotive bulbs. The lights are intended for use in “backup light, tail light, stop light, parking light, side marker light, ect. and are a replacements for bulbs commonly used in cars, trucks, trailers, RVs, etc.”

The first set of LEDs that we used in the camper seemed a bit less bright than the original incandescent lights.  The newest LEDs are definitely brighter.  All of the photos below were taken with my camera in manual mode so that changes in light would not trigger an adjustment in the camera’s automatic settings. All four photos are unedited.

(above) Lighting, looking forward, before new LEDs installed. There was one incandescent reading light on over the chair. It showed up in the mirror on the left as well. There was also an incandescent light on in the shower.

(below) After new LED was installed.  The lighting in the bathroom was changed out, including the incandescent bulb in the shower. The incandescent light over the chair is off.

Looking to the rear. (above) Before new LEDs installed in the motorhome.  (below) After new LEDs installed.

The cost of the ten bulbs when I bought them was $13.99 with no cost for shipping and handling as we are Amazon Prime members.

I liked these so well that I will be ordering additional LED lights to replace most of the rest of the lights inside the motorhome.

It’s not my usual fare in books, but…

From my review on Amazon:

Raymond Winters is an ordinary man in a loveless marriage – a grocery store manager who has to deal with life altering events after a Black Friday dalliance. A first-time-ever, one-time fling puts his life on a track far different – and more terrifying – than he ever dreamed.

I’ve been reading Nick Russell’s blog on his Gypsy Journal website for several years and, before today, I had read a couple of his other books.

Nick’s post today, How Do You Holiday? – about how RVers celebrate holidays – was followed by a pitch for a mystery with a title that fits the season:

What would you do if you braved the crowds of shoppers on Black Friday and suddenly your whole world had changed? Read Black Friday and find out how a simple shopping trip changed one man’s life forever.

What the heck, why not at least check it out? – I clicked on the link and, then, clicked on the “Read Inside” link for the book preview.

The preview was engrossing enough that I decided to go ahead and buy the book to see how it ended.

(One of the great things about having a Kindle is I was able to page forward right away to where the preview left off – no need to wait for the book to be shipped.)

I pretty much read through the whole book in one sitting – an interesting and gripping read!

Black Friday – Book Description on Amazon

We all know a person like Raymond Winters. He is Everyman. You see him daily on your commute to work. He sits in the cubicle next to yours. He’s the guy plodding through life, just going through the motions. He’s not happy. His work is not fulfilling. But he never expected anything more. At 41, he’s stuck in a rut, without the energy to climb out. Sure, he dreams of a different life. He dreams about it a lot. But Raymond knows the difference between dreams and reality.

Then Raymond’s life takes an unexpected sharp turn after a chance encounter with a strange woman. Overnight he finds himself alienated from his family, shunned by his neighbors, and questioning his own sanity. Raymond is in over his head, and if he survives, life will never be the same.

In Black Friday, Nick Russell, New York Times bestselling author of the Big Lake mystery series, weaves a tale of betrayal, lust, and broken dreams that you will remember long after you finish the last page.

The book is well laid out, with plenty of suspense, well developed, compelling characters and background details, with plenty of twists and turns. I definitely recommend the book – and I’ve shared it with Karen through our Amazon Family Library.

The book also introduced me to something I had never heard of before – the Impromotu Tactical Pen, by Gerber.

• • Rugged, machined steel body and stainless steel pocket clip keeps this pen handy
  • Rite in the Rain ink cartridge works in all conditions, inside and outdoors
  • Reliable push-button mechanism deploys ball point mechanism
  • Integrated glass-breaker tip features tempered steel and is designed to get you out of trouble
  • Made in the USA

The pen does play a role in the book.

I’ve noticed that some people don’t seem to know how to edit a Facebook post or comment.

In this blog post, I’ll demonstrate how to do a simple edit of a Facebook post.

Earlier today, I noticed I misspelled a word – puppie instead of puppy –  after I shared a web page on Facebook.

I decided to edit the post to correct the misspelling. To edit the post, you click on the 3 dots on the upper right side of the post.  This will open an option menu.

I selected “Edit Post,” which opens the post to allow editing.

When a post like this is in edit mode, you can do two things. (1) Edit the text, and/or (2) delete the article reference by clicking on the x in a circle on the upper right.

I edited the text…

… and saved it.

Clicking on any of the pictures will take you to the page with the Boston Dynamics Robo Dog.

We’ve never had any inclination or desire to “camp” overnight in a Walmart or any other commercial campground.  We feel the same about stopping overnight in rest areas. We’re uncomfortable with even the idea of it.

There are a lot of people who do, however.  Some of them put in long hours on the road and, when its time to stop, pull in to an available parking lot and spend the night. Some even go so far as to extend their slides, set up their lawn chairs and pull out the barbecue.

We stayed once for a few hours in a rest area in the Texas panhandle in the mid-eighties. It was our first trip towing a camper, a small Play-Mor travel trailer, and we had put in a fairly long drive, stopping well after dark.  With only  two weeks vacation we wanted to spend as much time as possible where we were going to be exploring and as little time as needed to get there.

Thirty plus years later, I can still remember how hard it was to get any sleep.  The rest area, of course, was right on Interstate 40, with its traffic noise.  On top of that were the trucks that pulled in and parked for the night, most of them, it seemed, with their diesel engines left idling through the night. The parking area was well lit all night long, compounding the difficulty in getting to sleep.

We were back on the road heading toward New Mexico by dawn.

A 2016 RV Life Magazine article, Is Walmart Camping Dangerous for RVers, by Rene Agredano, says, “Every day thousands of RVers across America go ‘Walmart Camping.’” Agredono then goes on to talk about crime around Walmarts and Walmart Supercenters, citing Charles Fishman, author of The Walmart Effect.

In Time magazine’s Low Prices, High Crime: Inside Walmart’s Plan to Crack Down on Shoplifting, Fishman says that through the 1990s and 2000s, 80% of Walmart’s crime was happening in the parking lots. Today, with increased surveillance cameras and better light, crime has moved mostly into store isles. “At night, they’re the only place that’s open, and where Walmart is the dominant retailer, they’re pulling in visitors from all over. They can easily generate more traffic than the whole town. By pure numbers, the crime is going to be where the people are.”

Most commenters on the RV Life article who used Walmart  for camping indicated that they had never had experienced or seen any problems and that they would continue to do it. Only one stated any actual problems he encountered, catching someone slashing tires on his 5th wheel – and he wasn’t even stopping overnight.

• A retired police chief commented, from his experience in four different jurisdictions, that 85% of crime at Walmart is shoplifting offenses and that there are increased incidents of vehicle burglaries during the Christmas shopping season.  Other than that, though, Walmarts are not “typically any more crime prone than other large retailers.”
• Another commenter said that a police officer in Cleveland suggested they find another location as the crime rate where they were was pretty bad.
• A retired police records administrator took exception to the RV Life article’s implications on crime at Walmart.
• One family stayed 5 nights at their local Walmart because of fires blocking them from returning home.
• Another commenter said he had stayed in a few campgrounds where he didn’t feel safe – run-down with too many long-term residents in broken-down campers, glad to move on the next morning and would have felt MUCH safer in a Walmart parking lot.
• One local Walmart was mentioned as no longer allowing overnight parking because of homeless people in vans, ratty motorhomes, pickups with campershells, etc.  “The trash these people left was terrible.”

On their Walmart Locator site, Walmart says:

While we do not offer electrical service or accommodations typically necessary for RV customers, Walmart values RV travelers and considers them among our best customers. Consequently, we do permit RV parking on our store lots as we are able. Permission to park is extended by individual store managers, based on availability of parking space and local laws. Please contact management in each store to ensure accommodations before parking your RV.

There is a new 2017 edition of  Walmart Locator.

Being retired, we usually limit our travel days to 4 to 6 hours actual travel time. That leaves a lot of time left in the day that we do not want to spend sitting in a Walmart parking lot. We usually find a state park, Corps of Engineers park, forest service campground or private campground.

We do utilize Walmart a lot in our travels. In fact, it is probably the #1 single item I search for on our GPS.

We use them for restroom and exercise breaks. We park far out in the lot, get a good stretch walk on our way in to use the restroom and then take a walk around the circumference of the store. We may walk just one time around, but usually it’s twice and sometimes even three times.

Sometimes we even buy something.

More on RV “Camping” at Walmart

• Try Walmart – El Monte RV
• Walmart Overnight RV Parking Resources

There’s even a video:

Art on Sunday #24

Remember… Returning is Secondary¹ – from painting by Roy Grinnel. 

On her first combat mission, badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire, Hell’s Wench – Consolidated B-24D Liberator 42-40994², flown by Lt. Col. Addison Baker, commander of the 93rd Bomb Group – continues toward its target in a low-level bombing run against Axis oil refineries at Ploieşti, Romania, in Operation Tidal Wave.

Duane Schultz, in Into the Fire: Ploesti, the Most Fateful Mission of World War II, writes:

They were an estimated three minutes from the target when Lt. Stewart’s copilot shouted, “Look at that!” Hell’s Wench, Colonel Baker’s ship, was on fire. The plane had hit the cable of a barrage balloon and snapped it in two, but part of a wing was left shredded. A shell exploded in the nose, killing the bombardier, and at least three more explosions rocked the plane. One shell hit a bomb-bay gas tank. The flames enveloped the cockpit and spread quickly…

Colonel Baker, who had vowed to his men that he would lead them over the target, even if his plane fell apart, was doing just that. He kept Hell’s Wench flying, ignoring the flat field below on which he could have tried a crash landing…

The two men [Baker (pilot) and Jerstad (copilot)] held the plane on course even after they jettisoned the bombs. There was no need to go onto the target then, except to lead the formation there. And for that, somehow they kept Hell’s Wench going. A crewman on a nearby plane remembered:

Baker had been burning for about three minutes. The right wing began to drop. I don’t see how anyone could have been alive in that cockpit, but someone kept her leading the force on between the refinery stacks. Baker was a powerful man, but one man could not have held that ship on the climb she took beyond the stacks. 

Baker and Jerstad pulled their plane up in a climb to about 300 feet. At that point, a few men – variously reported as three or four – jumped out, their bodies afire, flames spreading out in the wind. The plane slued over on its right wing and plummeted to the ground, missing a bomber in the second element by a mere six feet. That pilot saw Hell’s Wench flash by, a flaming torch. “Flames hid everything in the cockpit. Baker went down after he flew his ship to pieces to get us over the target.”

Despite the damage and resulting flames, Baker had led the formation to their targets, after which he broke formation to avoid collision with bombers from the lead group arriving from the opposite direction.  Baker and Jerstad tried to gain altitude so the crew could parachute to safety, but, despite their efforts, Hell’s Wench crashed and exploded, killing all ten aboard.

Baker Medal of Honor citation:

BAKER, ADDISON E.

Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Air Corps, 93d Heavy Bombardment Group
Place and date: Ploesti Raid, Rumania, 1 August 1943
Entered service at: Akron, Ohio

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy on 1 August 1943. On this date he led his command, the 93d Heavy Bombardment Group, on a daring low-level attack against enemy oil refineries and installations at Ploesti, Rumania. Approaching the target, his aircraft was hit by a large caliber antiaircraft shell, seriously damaged and set on fire. Ignoring the fact he was flying over terrain suitable for safe landing, he refused to jeopardize the mission by breaking up the lead formation and continued unswervingly to lead his group to the target upon which he dropped his bombs with devastating effect. Only then did he leave formation, but his valiant attempts to gain sufficient altitude for the crew to escape by parachute were unavailing and his aircraft crashed in flames after his successful efforts to avoid other planes in formation. By extraordinary flying skill, gallant leadership and intrepidity, Lt. Col. Baker rendered outstanding, distinguished, and valorous service to our Nation.

Jerstad Medal of Honor citation

JERSTAD, JOHN L.

Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Army Air Corps, 9th Air Force
Place and date: Ploesti Raid, Rumania, 1 August 1943 (Air Mission)
Entered service at: Racine, Wis.
G.O. No.: 72, 28 October 1943

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. On 1 August 1943, he served as pilot of the lead aircraft in his group in a daring low-level attack against enemy oil refineries and installations at Ploesti, Rumania. Although he had completed more than his share of missions and was no longer connected with this group, so high was his conception of duty that he volunteered to lead the formation in the correct belief that his participation would contribute materially to success in this attack. Maj. Jerstad led the formation into attack with full realization of the extreme hazards involved and despite withering fire from heavy and light antiaircraft guns. Three miles from the target his airplane was hit, badly damaged, and set on fire. Ignoring the fact that he was flying over a field suitable for a forced landing, he kept on the course. After the bombs of his aircraft were released on the target, the fire in his ship became so intense as to make further progress impossible and he crashed into the target area. By his voluntary acceptance of a mission he knew was extremely hazardous, and his assumption of an intrepid course of action at the risk of life over and above the call of duty, Maj. Jerstad set an example of heroism which will be an inspiration to the U.S. Armed Forces.

Operation Tidal Wave (Wikipedia)

Operation Tidal Wave was an air attack by bombers of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) based in Libya and Southern Italy on nine oil refineries around Ploiești, Romania on 1 August 1943, during World War II. It was a strategic bombing mission and part of the “oil campaign” to deny petroleum-based fuel to the Axis. The mission resulted in “no curtailment of overall product output”.

This mission was one of the costliest for the USAAF in the European Theater, with 53 aircraft and 660 aircrewmen lost. It was the second-worst loss ever suffered by the USAAF on a single mission and its date was later referred to as “Black Sunday”. Five Medals of Honor and numerous Distinguished Service Crosses were awarded to Operation Tidal Wave crew members.

Hell’s Wench (Attacks)

Lt. Col. Baker and his co-pilot Maj. John L. Jerstad, who had already flown a full tour of duty while stationed in England, would now succumb to the effects of the extensive air defense array. Continuing through the intense defensive barrage, damage to their aircraft forced Baker and Jerstad to jettison their bomb load in order to maintain lead of the formation over their target at the Columbia Aquila refinery. Despite heavy losses by the 93rd, Baker and Jerstad maintained course and, once clear, began to climb away. Realizing the aircraft was no longer controllable, both men maintained the climb in order to gain time for the crew to abandon the aircraft. Although none survived, both Baker and Jerstad would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for maintaining their successful approach to Columbia Aquila and their efforts to save the crew of Hell’s Wench.

1. 1. “They gave pep talks about getting to the target, not about getting back. A lot of talk was about “…if the target was wiped out and none returned, the mission would still be a success. Remember, returning is secondary.” – Aviation Art Hanger
      Before the mission, Maj Gen Lewis H. Brereton assessed, “We expect our losses to be 50 per cent, but even if we lose everything we’ve sent but hit the target, it will be worth it.” – B-24 Liberator Units of the Eighth Air Force, by Robert F. Dorr
   2. I wonder if Grace Jonata, machinist at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, Texas, might have machined some of the parts for Hell’s Wench.

I’ve been using an old hardback journal for jotting down blogging ideas.  It’s not very big, but it’s too big to carry around all of the time.

Recently, I’ve had some really good blogging ideas, but, by the time I get to the computer where I keep my idea journal, I’ve forgotten what the heck it was that I wanted jot down for many of them.  Sometime I’m able to dredge up a memory and get it written down, but, more often than not, it’s lost.

Then a few days ago, I thought of a solution.  I know that I could “jot” it down as a note on my iPhone, but I’ve not yet used the phone as an overpowered PDA.  Even when I had a PDA, I really didn’t utilize it well.  However, I’ve been using a little spiral bound note book for jotting down lists and reminders before trips to the home improvement store.  Now that would be a great place to jot down ideas that I could later transfer to the blog idea journal – except I didn’t remember where it was.

I really didn’t look for it.  It was still just an idea – and I knew it would show up at some point.

Yesterday, I came home and there it was.

It had apparently been in a pocket of a pair of shorts I had worn on a warm day last week.  The shorts got thrown into the wash, made it through the washing machine, and this is what Karen found in the dryer.

It looked like that was almost all of the note book, but we didn’t want to chance a dryer fire.  With the help of YouTube videos, I took off the front of the dryer and a cover plate on the suction to the dryer exhaust to remove anything that gotten past the lint screen.  Fortunately, there was very little, but it was better to be sure.

As far as I know, there was nothing important jotted down in the notebook.

I think…. but I could have forgotten.

Faces out of time #2

In these images, Grace Ann Janota¹, a 21-year-old lathe operator, is shown at a lathe used for machining parts for bomber and transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, Texas. Grace had previously worked at the University of Texas Tea Room until shortly after the war started, when the tea room was converted into a mess hall.

Grace Janota at a lathe²

Without a job and wondering what to do, Grace signed up with the National Youth Administration for training as a machinist at a school in Waco for eight hours a day for about six months.  The students got room and board, ten dollars a month, and uniforms to wear to class. At the end of the school, June was hired by Consolidated Aircraft to operate a turret lathe in the machine shop, making various parts for the planes. The only men were supervisors – older men who didn’t qualify for the draft.  For a time, she had a job as a parts inspector, but that was “boring,” so she took an engineering course to learn how to design cams for an automatic screw machine.  She “got the job of designing cams and setting up the machines and did this until the war was coming to an end and we girls were sent home.”

Photographed October 1942 by Howard R. Hollem (photos at Wikimedia)

Grace Janota working at lathe³

Consolidated Aircraft Corporation was founded in 1923 in Buffalo, New York.  During the 1920s and 1930s, Consolidated became famous for its line of flying boats, the most successful of which was the PBY Catalina flying patrol boat, produced throughout World War II and used extensively by the allies.

C-87 Liberator Express⁴

Consolidated’s Liberator B-24 bomber and C-87 transport plane construction in Fort Worth resulted from the city’s 1940 campaign to lure aircraft manufacturers to the city to build an aircraft assembly plant to support the pre-World War II massive expansion of the Army Air Corps.  To meet the blackout requirements of the war, the government built and owned Consolidated plant was constructed without windows, required an immense amount of lighting and air conditioning.

B-24 Liberator “Diamond Lil”⁵

The groundbreaking for the plant took place on April 18, 1941 with construction of the immense facility finished in less than a year. B-24 Liberator production started in February 1942 while parts of the plant were still being built. The plant was operated around the clock with 3 shifts, women making up 23% of the workforce in 1942.

The plant is still in operation 75 years later as Air Force Plant 4. Operated by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, workers today build the F-35 Lightning II single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole fighter.

Edging out the B-17 on most performance criteria – speed, range, bomb load – more B-24s were built than any other world War II American aircraft. The B-24s were more than bombers.  B-24 crewmen claimed over 2600 enemy downed.  Its great range enable it to perform anti-sub work in the Atlantic and heavy bomber support in the pacific.

Originally published July 23, 2012, this 2017 revision adds background and additional pictures.  The original post of an unnamed war worker only included the head close-up at the top of the page and the larger image it was taken from, along with some of the information in endnote 2 below.  Use of Google image search that picture yielded a second color image at the Library of Congress and a black and white image on Wikimedia and the National Archives site.  The image was the same as the color image originally used, but the caption at National Archives yielded a name, Grace Janota.

Grace Janota at a lathe⁶

Searching on the name resulted in finding another Library of Congress  and National Archives image which included Grace Janota and Rudolph Dolkas, and instructor at the plant. It also yielded a post, Remembering the Woman Machinists of World War 2, which includes a letter by Grace Jonata Brown that provides some background for the images.

Rudolph Dolkas and Grace Janota, 1942⁷

Endnotes:

1. Letter from Grace Jonota Brown, shared in a post,  Remembering the Woman Machinists of World War 2 on CNC Cookbook website, accessed November 11, 2017. (Also found on Internet Archive here).
2. Hollem, Howard R, photographer. Lathe operator machining parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, Texas. 1942. Oct. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017878313/. (Accessed November 07, 2017.) [Image on Flickr]
3. Hollem, Howard R, photographer. A lathe operator machining parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, Texas. 1942. Oct. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017878306/. (Accessed November 08, 2017.)[Image on Flickr]
4. The Consolidated C-87 Liberator Express was a transport derivative of the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber built during World War II for the United States Army Air Forces. A total of 287 C-87s were built alongside the B-24 at the Consolidated Aircraft plant in Fort Worth, Texas. – Wikipedia
5. The Consolidated B-24 Liberator is an American heavy bomber, designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. While aircrews tended to prefer the B-17, General Staff favored the B-24, and procured it in huge numbers for a wide variety of roles. At nearly 19,000 units, it holds records as the world’s most produced: bomber; heavy bomber; multi-engine aircraft; and American military aircraft in history. – Wikipedia; Wikimedia Commons image; Flickr image
6. Grace Janota, former department store clerk, is now a lathe operator at a Western aircraft plant producing B-24 bombers and C-87 transports. October 1942; National Archives and Records Administration; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (NLFDR), 4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, NY, 12538-1999. catalog.archives.gov/id/196370; Accessed 11/8/2017
7. United States Office Of War Information, Hollem, Howard R, photographer. Production. B-24 bombers and C-87 transports. Grace Janota, former department store clerk, was trained as a lathe operator by Rudolph Dolkas, who deserted the Austrian Army as a sergeant in 1913 and came to this country. He worked on the production of military equipment in World War I. He instructs women workers in a Western plant in the various tasks necessary to the production of Consolidated B-24 bombers and transports. Fort Worth Tarrant County Texas, 1942. Oct.
   • Photograph
     • accessed from National Archives catalog.archives.gov/id/196371, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs, 1882 – 1962 (Accessed November 9, 2017
     • accessed from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017694253/. (Accessed November 9, 2017.)