There was a war on, after all.
On the eighty-second anniversary of D-Day, more than thirty surviving women who once built the machinery of Allied victory gathered in New Orleans to receive long-overdue recognition for work that helped turn the tide of history. These were the Rosies — women who entered American factories during World War II not as symbols, but as workers, learning to weld and rivet and assemble bombers while the world burned around them. Their honoring at The National WWII Museum is less a celebration than a reckoning: a society pausing, at the last possible moment, to acknowledge what women made possible before the last witnesses are gone.
- Time is running out — each year the circle of surviving Rosies grows smaller, and the museum's own words carry the quiet alarm of a closing window on living memory.
- More than thirty women, some over a century old, traveled to New Orleans to be seen not as footnotes but as central figures in one of history's most consequential military operations.
- Women like 104-year-old Francesca Masters and 101-year-old Delphine Klaput carried the weight of wartime production on assembly lines, earning a dollar an hour and sending brothers off to battles some would not survive.
- The tension at the heart of the ceremony was the women's own modesty — they did not believe they had done anything extraordinary, even as the world they helped save gathered to insist otherwise.
- The museum is working to anchor these stories before they vanish, pairing the Rosies with cultural honorees like John Williams and Steve Gleason to signal that their contribution belongs in the same register as any celebrated American legacy.
On a Saturday in early June, as the nation marked eighty-two years since the invasion of Normandy, more than thirty surviving women gathered at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans to be honored for work that reshaped American life — and helped win a war. These were the Rosies: women who had walked into defense factories during World War II and learned to weld, rivet, and assemble the machinery of conflict while the men who would use that machinery fought overseas.
The museum's annual D-Day commemoration has become, in recent years, a ceremony shadowed by loss. Each year there are fewer of them. This year, the surviving women were not merely attendees but honorees, receiving the museum's highest distinction, the American Spirit Award, alongside composer John Williams and former Saints player Steve Gleason.
Delphine Klaput, 101, remembered her first days at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft factory in Baltimore — a Pennsylvania coal-mining town girl standing on a sprawling factory floor, wondering what she had gotten into. Her job was to guard the aircraft blueprints. Francesca Masters, 104, had operated heavy machinery at the Willow Run plant in Michigan, Ford's massive B-24 Liberator assembly facility, earning a dollar an hour and sending most of it home. Her brother Salvatore was later killed in the Battle of the Bulge. 'It was our duty,' she said simply.
Virginia Rusch soldered airplane parts on an assembly line from 1942 to 1944, the same motion repeated day after day. Her daughter reflected on what struck her most: 'They truly didn't think they had done anything special.' That modesty — the assumption that they were simply doing what needed to be done — seemed to run through all of them.
As the ceremony closed, Klaput reached for the hands of the women around her and spoke the phrase that had defined their generation's approach to impossible work: 'We can do it.' It was not aspiration. It was memory. They had done it — and they were still here to say so.
On a Saturday in early June, as the nation marked eighty-two years since the invasion of Normandy, more than thirty women gathered in New Orleans at The National WWII Museum to be recognized for work that few remember and fewer still understand. These were the surviving Rosies—the women who had walked into American factories during World War II and learned to weld, rivet, and assemble the machinery of war while the men who would use those machines were fighting overseas.
The museum's annual D-Day commemoration had become, in recent years, a ceremony of diminishment. Each year there are fewer of them. The institution's statement on its website carried an undertone of urgency: "Every day, memories of World War II—its sights and sounds, its terrors and triumphs—disappear." This year's gathering was different. The women were not merely attendees; they were the honorees, recipients of the museum's highest distinction, the American Spirit Award, alongside composer John Williams and former Saints player Steve Gleason.
When the war began, labor shortages in defense industries created an opening that had never existed before. Millions of women entered the workforce for the first time in their lives, many of them leaving behind lives that had offered them little choice about their futures. They learned skills that had been considered exclusively male domain. They built bombers and assembled aircraft. They manufactured munitions. They kept the supply lines flowing to the beaches of Normandy, where on June 6, 1944, more than 150,000 troops landed in what would become one of the largest amphibious operations in history.
Delphine Klaput was one of them. At 101 years old, she remembered the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft factory in Baltimore, where she had worked in the final years of the war. She had grown up in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town, and when she first walked through the sprawling factory floor, she asked herself what she had gotten into. Her job was to guard the aircraft blueprints—to keep them close because, as she put it plainly, there was a war on. Francesca Masters, now 104, had worked at the Willow Run plant in Michigan, the largest war factory in the world at the time, built by Ford Motor Company. She operated heavy machinery assembling B-24 Liberator bombers, earning a dollar an hour and sending most of it home to support her family. Her brother Salvatore would later be killed in the Battle of the Bulge. "It was our duty," she told a reporter.
Virginia Rusch had dropped out of school because she wanted to work, wanted to contribute. From 1942 to 1944, she soldered airplane parts on an assembly line, the same motion repeated day after day, while the men who would fly those planes fought in Europe. Her daughter, Lisa Brown, reflected on something that struck her about her mother and the others: "They truly didn't think they had done anything special." That modesty, that assumption that they were simply doing what needed to be done, seemed to be a common thread among them.
The museum's assessment of their legacy extended beyond the wartime production numbers. These women, it said, had "reshaped women's place in American society and continue to inspire women and girls around the world today." But the women themselves seemed less interested in legacy than in presence. As the ceremony concluded, Klaput reached for the hands of the other honorees gathered around her. Then she spoke the phrase that had become their anthem, the one that defined their generation's approach to impossible work: "We can do it." It was a statement of fact, not aspiration. They had done it. They were still here to say so.
Citas Notables
It was our duty.— Francesca Masters, on her work building bombers during the war
We can do it.— Delphine Klaput, repeating the phrase that became synonymous with the Rosies
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a museum choose to honor these women now, eighty-two years after D-Day, rather than during the war itself or in the decades immediately after?
Because the war itself was about the men on the beaches. The women were infrastructure—essential, but invisible. Now that there are so few of them left, we're finally looking back and seeing what was actually there.
Delphine Klaput guarded blueprints. Francesca Masters built bombers. Virginia Rusch soldered parts. These are very specific, skilled jobs. Did the factories treat them as skilled workers, or as temporary labor?
The pay tells you something. A dollar an hour in 1942 was real money, but it wasn't equal. And the moment the men came home, most of these women were expected to leave. They had proven they could do the work. The question was never whether they were capable. It was whether society wanted to admit it.
What strikes you most about what these women say about their own experience?
Their refusal to claim it as remarkable. Klaput asks herself what she got into when she sees the factory. Masters says it was duty. Rusch's daughter has to tell us they didn't think they'd done anything special. That's not false modesty—that's the voice of people who understood they were doing what the moment required, nothing more.
The museum says their work "reshaped women's place in American society." Did it? Or did society just forget about it?
Both, maybe. The door opened. Women proved they could do skilled industrial work. But the door closed again when the war ended. It took decades for that reshaping to actually take hold. These women were pioneers who didn't get to see the full consequence of what they'd started.
Why gather them now, specifically on D-Day's anniversary?
Because D-Day is when we remember the invasion, the troops, the sacrifice. But none of that happens without the factories running. The museum is saying: you can't tell the story of Normandy without telling the story of the women who built the planes that flew over it.