Vancouver woman recalls ‘Rosie the Riveter’ role at Boeing

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Janice Rickard was a 19-year-old Rosie the Riveter who built B-17 bombers during World War II.

Now 92, she expressed amazement that it has been 74 years since she wielded a riveting gun at Boeing’s Seattle aircraft plant, the Columbian reported.

Rickard joined millions of women who worked in the war effort, producing airplanes, ships, tanks, weapons and more.

“It was a thrill to be part of the women on the homefront,” she said April 5 at her home in Vancouver. “It didn’t pay much, but it was patriotic work, so it was priceless. My best memories,” Rickard said, touching the embroidered Boeing badge on the lapel of her crisp, navy jacket.

“Telling the aircraft riveting story was important to me,” she said. “We mostly hear about the (Kaiser) shipyard workers in this area.”

The small-town girl originally from La Grande, Oregon, graduated from Centralia High School in 1941, about six months before Japan bombed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and catapulted the U.S. into the war. Shortly after her graduation, Rickard read a Boeing advertisement recruiting women to attend an aircraft worker training program in nearby Chehalis.

“I signed up as soon as I saw the ads,” she said. “That was a great opportunity for me.”

Rickard was trained to become a riveter and rivet bucker. Standing inside the plane, a rivet bucker held a small metal bar against the airplane skin so the riveter working outside the plane had a solid surface to work against.

“Women’s small hands are ideal for riveting planes,” Rickard said. “Aircraft rivets can be very tiny.”

After her training, she moved to Seattle and shared an apartment with a co-worker.

Initially, she was paid 62 1/2 cents per hour, but by the time she left the job to start her family, she was paid 93 cents per hour.

Rickard discovered early on that she had an aptitude for mechanical work and using power tools. Her shop did minor assemblies.

“The largest component of the B-17 we assembled in that shop was the camera well. It fits underneath the B-17,” Rickard said. “Otherwise, what we were doing was putting in the big struts that go across the plane that hold the plane together.”

Early in the war, Boeing produced 60 aircraft per month, but monthly production later increased to 362.

Many of the women worked at Boeing for the war’s duration, but many didn’t.

“The gals I worked with – most of us were young,” Rickard said. “They were finding boyfriends. The turnover rate at work was great because of relationships that got started.”

Rickard’s Boeing story followed the same theme. Her roommate set Rickard up on a blind date with “a handsome airman from Texas,” she said.

They started dating and eventually married. She left her job at Boeing about 18 months after she started training.

“I’m a bit sorry about that,” Rickard said. “I really liked the work. But I got involved with this soldier, and that was the end of the run. That was common.”

After the war, she remembered how the mechanical work she’d done at Boeing had suited her. She became a printing press operator, which was another field that was unusual for women. She was a printer for 30 years.

“The printing work I did later in life was also very interesting. It was an art form,” Rickard said. “Boeing was the beginning of it all.”

Rickard kept memorabilia from her time working for Boeing. For wartime security reasons, photos were not allowed at the facility. The only photograph she has from her time as a riveter was a snapshot taken at an arcade. She is wearing her work clothes, and her hair is covered by a scarf.

She learned that the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond, California, was looking for stories and documents, so she sent a copy of her certificate of completion from the riveter/bucker program along with her Rosie snapshot.

Looking back on her time as a riveter, Rickard said, “I don’t know that everyone felt the patriotic thrill out of it, but I got a big charge.”