Tuesday, January 23, 2018

RIP, Naomi Parker Fraley

We


We lost a historical figure this past weekend. Naomi Parker Fraley, the inspiration for that famous flexing female worker known as "Rosie the Riveter," which motivated women and men alike during America's involvement in World War II, died in Longview, Washington, this past Saturday. She was 96 years old.

She was born on August 21, 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Fraley had been a waitress in California when she began work at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, and eventually became one of the first women  and was among the first women to work at the machine shop in the following the attack of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, and subsequent American involvement in World War II.

In 1942, she posed for a touring photographer at the Naval Air Station, wearing what would become the iconic red-and-white polka-dot bandana. This picture made it's way to the newspapers, and became the inspiration for the now famous poster by J. Howard Miller.

We lost yet another prominent face of the Greatest Generation, the World War II generation. She will be missed.





Naomi Parker Fraley, the Real-Life Rosie the Riveter, Dies at 96 by Karen Mizoguchi, January 22, 2018:


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