Mary Keefe, Model for Rockwell’s ‘Rosie the Riveter,’ Dies at 92

NY Times ^ | APRIL 24, 2015 | SAM ROBERTS

[iowamark]

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 on the “Tonight” show in the 1990s).

And as portrayed in the painting, she was considerably bulked up from her petite 110 pounds to embody muscular American can-do spirit — an image inspired by Michelangelo’s Isaiah on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. (It is often confused with J. Howard Miller’s wartime “We Can Do It” poster for Westinghouse Electric, from February 1943, showing a biceps-flexing uniformed woman in a red-and-white polka-dot bandanna.)

[iowamark]

[iowamark]

Earlier thread on this subject:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3282211/posts

[JoeProBono]

[KosmicKitty]

A good friend of mine's mom also posed for Rockwell during the war. She was Miss New York State 1941. She would show us her tiara when we'd go to visit. She passed away just a few years go. Just found an image online of her Rockwell painting.