Finding the real Rosie the Riveter
Posted by staff / May 30, 2016
The only woman who might rival Marilyn Monroe when it comes to iconic posters is Rosie the Riveter, and though she was supposedly identified as Geraldine Doyle, one man didn’t think the evidence was convincing enough.
Seton Hall University’s Dr. James Kimble has this to say about Rosie’s history as it’s been written:
“It turns out that almost everything we think about Rosie the Riveter is wrong,” Kimble says. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.”
It was Doyle who claimed she recognized herself back in 1994, and, as time wore on, her identity was accepted as fact. Kimble noticed that no one had fact-checked the story, though.
That’s when he started digging through photo archives and doing exhaustive Google searches to find who the model really was, and the trail led him to a hard of hearing — but still living — Naomi Parker Fraley, aged 94, living with her sister in Alameda, California.
As Omaha.com reported:
…[T]he sisters informed Kimble that Naomi had actually noticed the error nearly a decade ago, when the sisters attended a California reunion of Rosie the Riveters. The reunion organizer had set up an exhibit that displayed a blown-up, familiar-looking photo of a woman at a lathe. The exhibit said that the woman in the photo was Geraldine Doyle, and that the famous “We Can Do It!” poster was modeled off of her face in the photo.
But that’s not Geraldine Doyle, Naomi thought. That’s me!
The sisters have an original newspaper clipping to prove it, saved by Ada all these years as it yellowed and faded inside a shoe box. The headline above that photo says “The Navy Says She’s De-Glamorized” and the caption again lists Alameda as the photo’s location and “Miss Naomi Parker” as its subject.
And Naomi’s reaction when Kimble first contacted her?
“Victory!” Naomi Parker Fraley yells. “Victory! Victory!”
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