Naomi Parker Fraley, the Most Likely Candidate for the Real Rosie the Riveter, Has Died
In DepthNaomi Parker Fraley—who as a young woman took up war work shortly after Pearl Harbor and boasted perhaps the single best case for having inspired the iconic “We Can Do It!” Rosie the Riveter poster—has died at 96.
The New York Times recounted Fraley’s story in her obituary. Really, there were several Rosies. Long Islander Rosalind P. Walter inspired “Rosie the Riveter,” the song where the name first appeared; Vermonter Mary Doyle Keefe was the model for Norman Rockwell’s famous Saturday Evening Post cover. But perhaps the best-known Rosie is the one depicted flexing in a polka-dotted bandanna on a poster by a man named J. Howard Miller, which was displayed at Westinghouse Electric Corporation factories in 1943. Rediscovered in the early 1980s, it quickly became a popular feminist symbol that’s been repurposed countless places.