American Spirit – Geraldine Doyle: Rosie the Riveter

I’m starting a new series to re-introduce unknown or forgotten American men and women from our past who, have, in some way, epitomized the American spirit. It is my hope that by focusing on the patriotic spirit that these individuals embodied we can breathe new life into that same spirit. I’m not suggesting that the American spirit is dead, it just needs to be dusted off and more openly displayed.

As we Americans spend more and more of our waking moments engaged in the struggle to survive, as we learn to live with what now passes for morality and ethics in today’s society, as our American Dream slips further and further out of reach, there is a tendency to become disillusioned over what it means to be American.

The steady erosion of personal freedoms, the wholesale loss of once high paying jobs to foreigners, the crumbling condition of our infrastructure, and the realization that we have become disenfranchised by our political representatives in favor of the corporate dollar, it is no wonder our future is looking more dismal by the day.

Hardships for Americans are nothing new, our grandparents and their grandparents before them faced similar trials, and they managed to turn things around. In every case, when times went sour there was someone, through some sacrifice or rally cry, who acted as a lightning rod to spark the American spirit and helped pull this country together as one.

This is what is needed today. Until that person or persons come forward to speak for all Americans, I want to share the lives of those individuals who helped turn things around for previous generations.

I believe our American spirit can be revived, let’s hope it will happen soon.

First, allow me to introduce to a woman who became an icon during World War II.

Geraldine Doyle

Before World War II, 12 million American women worked outside the home. Typically, these ‘occupations’ were service oriented, poorly paid and reserved for females. The remainder of the female population generally married, raised children and, if they were 'allowed' to, they ventured outside the home to do volunteer work for social and religious organizations.

When fighting in Europe and Japan called men away from their jobs, 6 million additional women left the home and supported the war effort by entering the work force.

One woman who answered the call was Geraldine Hoff Doyle of Lansing, Mich. After graduating from high school, the 17-year-old cellist took a job at the American Broach & Machine Co., a metal-processing plant in Ann Arbor, and is still in business today. Doyle was wearing a red and white polka-dot bandanna and leaning over a piece of machinery one day when a United Press International photographer took her picture. That image inspired J. Howard Miller, a graphic artist at the U.S. War Production Coordinating Committee, to illustrate a poster featuring a woman wearing a similar bandanna and the motto: "We Can Do It!".

The woman in the poster became known as a "Rosie the Riveter," after a 1942 song of the same name, and she helped to encourage women to find jobs and achieve their economic independence. When the war ended and the men returned home, women were generally expected to return to their domestic lives, but Doyle's famous poster empowered some to buck tradition and take control of their own destiny.

Doyle actually left her factory job shortly after the photograph was taken because a co-worker had badly injured her hands while toiling at the machines. Fearing a similar fate, Doyle took safer jobs, like working at a soda fountain and a book store. She wed Leo Doyle, a young dental school student, and together they raised six children. Over the course of their 66-year marriage, the couple also ran a successful dental practice in Lansing. He died in February 2010.

Doyle didn't realize her place in women's history until the early 1980s when she saw an article in Modern Maturity magazine, and connected the UPI photo of her younger self with the iconic "We Can Do It!" poster. The image also appeared on the cover of the Time-Life book "The Patriotic Tide: 1940-1950." The "We Can Do It!" poster was later used by the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s and appeared on a 33-cent stamp issued in 1999 by the U.S. Postal Service.

Doyle died on Dec. 26 from complications of severe arthritis. She was 86.