[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 141 (Thursday, October 10, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1477-E1478]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ROSIE THE RIVETER

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CORY GARDNER

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 10, 2013

  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. Speaker, seventy years ago this year, an iconic 
image of American strength, perseverance and sacrifice splashed across 
the front page of The Saturday Evening Post. The cover soon found its 
way to immortality, embedded by Norman Rockwell into the spirit of 
America. As much message as art, it featured a strong armed, can-do, 
hard working warrior in laborers clothes. It was the symbol of a 
nation's fierce determination, a reminder that every ounce of American 
life and family was mobilized in war. Seventy years ago, America met 
Rosie the Riveter.
  But the introduction wasn't really needed. We already knew her. The 
cover was at long last recognition of what had happened all around 
America. A showing of homefront strength that had already sent so many 
sons and daughters to war.
  When I was growing up, my Grandma told stories of how, in the early 
1940's, she and her husband left Colorado in desparate search of work. 
Leaving the landlocked high plains and heading west to the shipyards of 
Oregon in a beat up old car, she and Grandpa left behind generations of 
family and familiarity. To pay for the trip's final-stretch tank of gas 
they sold the headlight off the car somewhere in Idaho, eventually 
finding work in Portland. There, Grandma became a welder, building 
liberty ships and making the machines of war and commerce.
  They lived in a one room apartment above a grocery store, their only 
meal a daily serving of Dinty-Moore stew prepared in a kitchen that 
consisted of an electric burner. Grandma cannot look at that red stew 
can to this day.
  In Oregon, a lady from the plains of Colorado learned to weld on the 
deck of a ship in drydock. There, drawing a bead with sparks flying, 
heat and sweat, smoke and steel filling the air, she went off to war. 
Nearly dying after falling from the top deck of a ship to the deck 
below, she became an equal partner in the fight for our nation's 
freedom. She and her co-workers never sought recognition, but a future. 
And Rosie the Riveter spoke for them all.
  Decades later, she would share her welding skills with her astonished 
grandson's, staring wide-eyed as Grandma showed us up.
  Everyday we come face to face with the blessings of our great nation, 
made possible not by men, but by all. Seventy years ago, Rosie helped 
America welcome my Grandma, and women across the country, in the fight 
for freedom.
  So to let us give thanks to her, Rosie, and everyone like her who 
pioneered the way.

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