Rose will monroe biography

As her daughter remembered, the young Rose was a tomboy who proved to be handy with tools as well.
Www.motorcities.org › Story of the Week › 2020.
The history of Rosie the Riveter begins when Monroe became the nation's poster girl for women joining the labor force during World War II.

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By Bob Sadler, MotorCities Communications Manager
Images Courtesy of the Yankee Air Museum & Ann Arbor Hands On Museum
Published 3.25.2020

Rose Will Monroe

After last week’s Story of the Week was published featuring the story of “Rosie the Riveter,” some additional stories were brought to our attention from right here in the MotorCities National Heritage Area. Many women worked at the Willow Run aircraft factory operated by Ford Motor Company during World War II, and one of those women was an actual “Rosie the Riveter” – her name was Rose Will Monroe.

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Born in Kentucky, Monroe grew up in a family of nine children. As her daughter remembered, the young Rose was a tomboy who proved to be handy with tools as well. When her husband was killed in a car accident, she moved to Michigan with her two young children to take a job building B-24 bombers at Willow Run.

The production line at Willow Run (Yankee Air Museum)

When Monroe started work at Willow Run, the 332-acre facility employed 40,000 workers and was the largest manufacturing operat

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Rose Will Monroe, 77, "Rosie the Riveter' star

Rose Will Monroe, who played "Rosie the Riveter," the nation's poster girl for women joining the work force during World War II, has died. She was 77.

Ms. Monroe, who died Saturday, was working as a riveter building B-29 and B-24 military airplanes at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Mich., when she was asked to star in a promotional film about the war effort. She was also featured in posters.

Her role became synonymous with thousands of women who took defense industry jobs, working factory positions usually held by men.

Unlike many "Rosies" who returned to the kitchen after the war, Ms. Monroe kept working. She drove a taxi, operated a beauty shop and started a construction company in Indiana called Rose Builders. It specialized in high-quality custom homes.

Ms. Monroe was born in Kentucky's Pulaski County and moved to Michigan during the war.

She is survived by two daughters, six sisters, nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

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Rosie the Riveter still inspires women at Lockhead

FORT WORTH, Texas - Fleeing rural poverty in Kentucky, Rose Will Monroe piled her son and daughter into a bus in 1942, not long after her husband was killed in a car wreck.

Monroe was determined to find work at the Willow Run airplane plant in Ypsilanti, Mich. She wanted to fly, but with two kids, the military kept the 22-year-old widow on the ground.

So Monroe, a "tomboy" daughter of a carpenter, went to work wielding a 6.8-pound rivet hammer on the mammoth assembly line devised by Henry Ford to produce B-24 bombers.

Monroe was just one of 6 million American women who entered the workforce during World War II, about half of them in the defense industries.

But she came to represent them all.

Through a confluence of circumstances, Monroe became "Rosie the Riveter," the iconic image of the tough, hardworking American woman who helped win the war.

Vicki Croston of Conroe, Texas, Monroe's surviving child, who was born in 1954, now tells her mother's story. And on March 20, she spoke to a roomful of modern "Rosie the Riveters.