On Dec. 7, 1998 — 57 years to the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor — the American Rosie the Riveter Association formed to honor and preserve the history of the 16 million daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers who worked in jobs left vacant by men fighting overseas.
Immortalized by the national hit song entitled "Rosie the Riveter" (written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb in 1942) and J. Howard Miller's "We Can Do It!" poster (commissioned by Westinghouse in 1943), "Rosies" are the civilian counterparts of World War II military veterans.
Their daughters are known as Rosebuds, and their sons, Rivets.
On Saturday, the Laurel Chapter of the American Rosie the Riveters Association and members of the American Legion will meet at the Mission BBQ at Towne Centre at Laurel to commemorate "Rosie the Riveter Day" at 11:30 a.m.
"Rosie" Wilma Ferrebee Foster, 90, who's lived on the Howard County side of Laurel for 65 years, will attend with her daughter, Ann Marie Miller, who serves as president of the Laurel chapter.
Foster was 16, attending high school and living on her family's farm in Berryville, Va., when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor was broadcast on the radio.
As a stunned nation pulled together to support the war effort at home and abroad, Foster dropped out of school to help distribute ration books, which held stamps that could be used to purchase goods in short supply.
Two of her brothers went to fight with the Navy and her fiancé (who would be killed in Italy) enlisted in the Army.
Another brother lived with his family in Hagerstown, where the Fairchild Aircraft plant was located. Foster left home in 1942 to live with her brother and work on an assembly line manufacturing the wings of PT-19 trainer aircraft for 96 cents an hour.
The work was not difficult because the Rosies were well trained and supervised. But Foster said times were hard; a curfew was in effect, no lights were allowed outside after dark and military police patrolled the streets.
"Everything was rationed," said Foster, who missed her mother terribly. "You couldn't drive very far and foodstuffs were rationed."
One Christmas, Foster said the boys in the paint shop asked the Rosies to bring them a pair of their shoes and then painted them yellow and blue (the colors of the PT-19) as a gift.
A tight-knit group by necessity, Foster said the Rosies were ecstatic to give up their jobs and resume their pre-war lives when victory was declared. Their men were coming home.
"After the war was over, there was so much celebration going on. We all just disbanded and celebrated," she said.
Foster said things had loosened up enough by December that she could buy shoes with her stamps. In anticipation of a family gathering, she went shopping in Washington with her sisters to buy a pair of black pumps.
It was snowing, and Emily and Wilma were walking behind her. Foster said when she turned to see why they were laughing, she saw that her work shoes had left a green trail in the snow.
Foster met the man she would marry when she and a group of friends went "masquerading" – caroling in disguise – that Christmas.
"I kept being clumsy, so he [literally] picked me up," Foster said.
After a two-month courtship, they were married.
Foster and her husband, Abe, a civilian worker at Fort Meade, were married for 47 years until he died in 1996.
Foster has two daughters, four grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren, and is a member of the First United Methodist Church of Laurel on Main Street.
Fellow church member, 91-year-old World War II veteran Laudis Turney Sr., of Laurel, said he remembers that a lot of women worked at the Navy yard.
He said he had difficulty enlisting in 1942 as an 18-year-old. His father, James Harley Turney, refused to sign the permission papers. When Congress lowered the draft age in September, the elder Turney decided his son should go where he wanted before he was drafted.
Turney signed up for the Navy at a Baltimore Post Office and reported to Camden Station, but "they'd met the day's quota" and sent him home. When he was recalled two weeks later, he said the same thing happened.
Finally, in December 1942, Turney reported to the United States Naval Training Center, Bainbridge in Port Deposit, for boot camp; and went on to serve on the USS Oceanus (ARB-2), a World War II battle damage repair ship that departed for Guam to join the Iwo Jima invasion in February.
Sold for scrapping in 1962, Oceanus won a battle star in World War II service. Turney came home with three bronze stars awarded during the Asiatic-Pacific Islands Operation at the West Caroline Islands, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Turney said he "buried a lot of sailors over there" and saw quite a bit of action at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Tokyo Rose, an American-born Japanese woman, used to broadcast propaganda from Japan to his ship out of a big radio tower in Peleliu in the Western Caroline Islands "all the time," and Turney chuckled when he said the Marines bombed that tower every day until it was demolished.
Turney's battle station was the engine room, and he served as the engineer on one of the ship's two motor launches.
The men were occasionally rationed beer chits (although never more than two at a time) but couldn't drink on the ship. When they couldn't go to shore, sometimes 30 or 40 sailors would board the motor launches and be lowered to the sea to drink their two beers.
"It was pretty clever, but that was the only way we could drink," he said.
Sometimes natives would row alongside the Oceanus in dugout canoes to trade beads and grass skirts for cigarettes. Most of his memorabilia has been lost, but Turney still has a handful of those beads.
On his first day home, Turney met his wife of 69 years — Sara Harris Turney, 90 — at the Laurel Bowling Alley that used to stand on Route 1 across from Prince George Street.
Today, he lives around the corner from the house he grew up in on Ninth Street. He and Sara survive two of their three children and have two grandchildren.
Turney said he plans to go to church and visit Ivory Hill Cemetery on Memorial Day.
"It's good to see old friends and all," Turney said. "You've just about outlived everyone."
Foster and Turney were very young when they served during World War II. Miller said that many of the older Rosies (as well as the older veterans) have passed away; there are not many left to honor.
Soon, she said, it will be left to the Rosebuds and Rivets to tell their stories.
"I'll tell my mom's story when she can't tell her story any more," Miller said.