Unit X: The Age of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Question/Problem 3: How did World War II affect people's lives?

I was one of the first women hired at Convair [aircraft factory]....Convair had a motto on their plant which said that anything short of right was wrong, and that stuck with me. I went to work in the riveting group in metal bench assembly. The mechanics would bring us the jobs they had put together, and we would take the blueprints and rivet what they brought us....

I tackled everything. I had a daring mother who was afraid of nothing, horses, farm implements, anything, so maybe I inherited a little bit of that from her. I remember my brother, who was in the air force at the time, and his friends laughed at me one day, thinking I couldn't learn this mechanical stuff. I can still see them, but it only made me more determined. I think it probably hurt their pride a little bit that I was capable of doing this.

Pretty soon I was promoted to bench mechanic work, which was detailed hand riveting. Then I was given a bench with nothing to do but repair what other people had ruined. I visited a man recently who's seventy-four years old, and he said to my daughter, 'All we had to do was foul up a job and take it to her and she'd fix it.'

I loved working at Convair. I loved the challenge of getting dirty and getting into the work. I did one special riveting job, hand riveting that could not be done by machine. I worked on that job for three months, ten hours a day, six days a week, and slapped three-eighths- or three-quarter-inch rivets by hand that no one else would do. I didn't have that kind of confidence as a kid growing up, because I didn't have that opportunity. Convair was the first time in my life that I had the chance to prove that I could do something, and I did. They finally made me a group leader to help break the new women in.