Written by Sue Tone

Fran Ellis worked two summers installing instruments in the bulkheads of P-38 aircraft. It was 1944-45 and she made 59 cents an hour as a “Rosie the Riveter.”

“As a kid, that was pretty good, you know,” Ellis said in 2017 when she was interviewed by Vision of Vets. She was 16 that first summer at the Boeing plant in Seattle, Washington. With men serving overseas during World War II, women were left to work in factories.

“So many boys were gone, so the women were called in to win the war,” Ellis said. “They had to make the production for the boys overseas. They built everything, from ships to submarines, tanks to cars, even bullets. We were called ‘the soldiers without a gun.’”

Ellis started as a bucker, the person holding a heavy metal bar up against the hole as the riveter nailed 3/8” rivets into the control panel of the fighter planes. Her second summer, she became a riveter. “If you didn’t hold that rivet gun just right and put that rivet in, and she didn’t hold that bucker just right, it would get in crooked and we’d have to drill it out, do it again.”

She was at work when news broke that the war had ended. “Everybody got so excited, went outside and hollered and screamed, hugging each other. I couldn’t believe it. We did it. We did it! I can still hear them. We did it!”