‘Rosie’ of two wars

SEATTLE – With war spreading across Europe and Asia and able-bodied men in short supply back home, Florence Abrahamson felt it part of her duty to help build American warplanes. Besides, she’d already done it before – more than 20 years earlier, during World War I.

Now, officials at Seattle’s Museum of Flight say Abrahamson is among the last surviving “Rosie the Riveters” from two world wars. They’re honoring the 102-year-old great-grandmother as this year’s “Pioneer of the Year.”

“Here is a gal who worked in two world wars,” a fact that “just blew us away,” said John Larson, director of the Polson Museum in Hoquiam, near Abrahamson’s home of Aberdeen.

On Thursday, Abrahamson plans to join other Rosie the Riveters as guests of the Seattle museum. She plans to sport her Boeing security badge from World War II, and bring four of her six grandchildren for a look at the museum’s B-17G.

It will be a long-awaited treat for her. Despite spending countless hours assembling and inspecting the planes during World War II, Abrahamson never got to see the final product.

As for the recognition, she dismisses her work as “just duty” and “what anyone would have done.”

It began in 1918, when a 15-year-old Abrahamson was hired to help manufacture de Havilland DH-4 biplanes at the Grays Harbor Commercial Co. sawmill in Cosmopolis.

She wore overalls – quite a departure from women’s attire of the day – and walked about a mile from the family home to work each morning.

When duty called again more than two decades later, she was a married mother of three with a son in the Navy. Then working at a small grocery, Abrahamson tied on a red bandanna, slipped into a pair of slacks and started riveting pieces of aluminum to B-17 hulls.

She still recalls her co-workers teasing her speedy work by asking if she were “trying to win the war all by yourself.” Eventually, Abrahamson proved herself capable enough to become an inspector, and later, to help make components for more than 5,000 B-29s.

Her wartime efforts, wrote state Rep. Gigi Talcott, R-Tacoma, are “appreciated by every American who has experienced liberty and freedom.”

“The important title being bestowed on you must fill your heart with fond memories and a warm sense of pride for your enormous wartime contributions,” Talcott wrote.