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"I had said in that research that almost everything we know about that poster is wrong," Mr Kimble told the BBC in a telephone interview. "So when Doyle died in 2010, and there were all these obituaries, I of course thought, how do we know she's really the model? What's the proof? It was the rabbit hole calling to me." One thing is for certain, after all these years: the woman at the lathe in Alameda, California was Naomi Parker Fraley.

After 68 years in the aerospace industry, and having a hand in producing every single C-17 in the Air Force’s inventory, an original Rosie the Riveter got her first flight in one on Monday. Elinor Otto, 98, took to the skies in a C-17 she riveted at March ARB, Calif., in a ceremonial flight flown by Air Mobility Command head Gen. Carlton Everhart. “You are a true inspiration,” Everhart said. “In the day and age where quicker, faster, more is the goal, and job hopping is the norm, it’s inspiring to hear a story about hard work and dedication that...

Mary Keefe, a 19-year-old Vermont telephone operator whom her neighbor Norman Rockwell immortalized as his model for the heroine of “Rosie the Riveter,” the World War II feminist anthem that empowered women to leave home and pinch-hit in military plants, died on Tuesday at her home in Simsbury, Conn. She was 92. Her death was confirmed by her daughter Mary Ellen Keefe. Mrs. Keefe was a redhead, like the Rosie who appeared on the cover of the Memorial Day issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine in 1943, but she had never wielded a rivet gun (not until an appearance...

Mary Doyle Keefe, the model for Norman Rockwell’s Rosie The Riveter painting, which was used to help inspire American women to work on U.S. soil throughout World War II, has died at the age of 92. Mary Ellen Keefe, Mary Doyle’s daughter, confirmed that her mother died after a brief illness in Simsbury, Connecticut, on Tuesday. Keefe, who grew up in Arlington, Vermont, which is where she first met Rockwell, posed for the image when she was just 19 years old. At the time of the painting, she was working as a telephone operator. However she became immortalized when the...

They are the images usually only seen in black and white - a fitting hue for the gloom of a 1940s America engaged in World War II and having just experienced the Great Depression. But these vivid photographs in glorious colour show better than ever what life on the United States home front was really like as war raged in Europe and the Pacific. From a Californian female aircraft worker focused on checking electrical wiring, to children rolling potatoes into a barrel on a farmyard in Maine - the pictures illustrate the significant role of those not on the battle...

Geraldine Doyle, Iconic Face of World War II, Dies at 86By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS Published: December 29, 2010 Geraldine Hoff Doyle, who was believed to be the unwitting model for the “We Can Do It!” poster of a woman flexing her biceps in a factory during World War II — an image that later became a symbol for the American feminist movement — died on Sunday in Lansing, Mich. She was 86. **SNIP** Mrs. Doyle was unaware of the poster’s existence until 1982, when, while thumbing through a magazine, she saw a photograph of it and recognized herself. Her daughter said...

The Inspiration For Rosie The Riveter Dies at 86 Geraldine Hoff Boyle, the woman who was the inspiration of the iconic Rosie the Riveter poster, died in her home state of Michigan from severe arthritis. She was 86, but will keep telling us "We Can Do It" for eternity.

During the Second World War, in the midst of the ongoing economic fallout of the Great Depression and the horror of tyranny spreading across Europe, women returned to work in record numbers. Rosie the Riveter became the symbol of American feminine ingenuity. Over six million women helped build necessary war machines like planes, bombs, tanks and other weapons. Others drove streetcars and operated heavy machinery or worked in lumber mills and steel mills. Some even unloaded freight. No job too big. Or too tough. So it is in the spirit of Rosie, in the midst of what the President has...

Hi all, I've posted this graphic on several threads, and a few people said they'd like to print it and stick it up somewhere. The original version wasn't high enough resolution to print at a decent size, so I've cobbled together a high-res version. Feel free to print, post, and share, especially if you're affiliated with the McCain/Palin campaign. Have at it! High-res version here: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FzbQlTrfln8/SL3KoGM1XMI/AAAAAAAAADA/C5YrxzXELKU/s1600-h/Sarah300.jpg

Rosie O'Donnell isn't giving up on her Price Is Right dreams, reports E!Online. The former View cohost says she's still talking to the game show's higher-ups about replacing Bob Barker as host. While speaking with Ross ''The Intern'' Mathews in a video posted on her blog, O'Donnell says she's ``begging on a daily basis.'' ''I still send them e-mails every day,'' O'Donnell says. If she gets the job, O'Donnell wants Mathews to be the announcer. ''This would make The Price Is Right a very big show again,'' she says. Mathews jumped on the idea. ''For free, I would do it,''...

Just when you thought things were getting a bit tame on "The View," here comes the bitchfight! On today's edition of the crack-like ABC gabfest, Rosie O'Donnell got Elisabeth Hasselbeck's conservative knickers into a big twist when Ro argued with her usual vehemence against the Patriot Act, concluding by hitting Liz with the ageist remark, "You're very young, and you're very wrong," (E is 30, Ro is 45). This, of course, just wound Elisabeth right up, prompting a strange pointy hand-dance of rage. Rosie then really stuck it to Elisabeth, suggesting that resorting to ageism is the only way she...