Rosie the Riveter Can Take Well-Earned Break: Fundraisers ‘In Spitting Distance’ of Saving Her Factory

Rosie the Riveter, the personification of thousands of World War II era woman who kept the homefires burning and the factories running, can take a short breather now.

Her plant is safe from a wrecking ball that would have turned one of the most enduring chapters of U.S. history into a pile of dust.

Fundraising came down to the wire for the Save the Willow Run Bomber Plant group, which had a deadline of Thursday to raise $8 million to turn the historic factory into a museum. The group was $1 million shy of meeting the goal on Tuesday, but closed the gap at the 11th hour, Detroit Free Press reports.

Fundraisers scrambling to secure enough money to buy the 150,000-square-foot factory – part of a larger property – for the Yankee Air Museum project “closed a big one” Tuesday and came “within striking distance” of the $8 million needed, consultant Michael Montgomery said.

Fundraisers are close enough to the goal that they could enter into a purchase agreement, which Montgomery said should be finalized within the next two weeks. During that time, he and others will go back to work to raise the full $8 million.

The Willow Run Plant in Ypsilanti Township, built by Ford Motor Co., is considered historically significant because the B-24 bomber planes were churned out at the astonishing rate of one every hour. The 40,000 workers included many pioneering women on the assembly line, who were nicknamed “Rosie the Riveter,” according to the Save Willow Run Bomber Plant web site.

Willow Run produced more aircraft every month than japan did in a year, earning it – and southeast Michigan as a whole– worldwide recognition as “The Arsenal of Democracy.”

“Rosie the Riveter” will be prominent in the museum, but so will exhibits focusing on the vintage aircraft produced there.

The original “Rosie” was Rose Will Monroe, a Kentuckian who moved to Michigan during the war. She caught the eye of a Hollywood producer who was filming a government propaganda documentary encouraging women to take jobs during World War II and fill positions men left vacant when they joined the armed forces.

Her image was used in film and print campaigns to represent the thousands of women who took factory jobs during the war.

Rosie’s break will be a short one.

“Over this next weekend, we’re all going to veg out and take a break,” Montgomery said. “We’ll be back at it on Monday.”