by Stu Marks, Adventure-Crew Outdoors Editor

Adventure-Crew salutes the organizers in Richmond, California who have assembled the workings of a national park whose time is long over due.

A national park honoring the WWII women who closed a severe labor gap during a time when our country needed  help the most, underscores the commitment and sacrifice that these ladies made to their husbands, children, communities and nation.

One has to wonder what the outcome of WWII would have been without the women of the shipyards; the “Rosies”.

I lived and worked in and around the shipyards of Mare Island near Vallejo, California, right across the San Francisco Bay from Richmond for several years as a hydraulic/electrical assembler. There are actually just as many women who are electrical harness assemblers as there are men. I really don't know if this is because of the momentum started by the Rosie the Riveters of WWII fame, but this position that women of industry are filling provides a way for single parents and growing families to fill their financial needs.

The unique electronic and electrical work offered at ship yards in the way of rebuilding of radar and TACAN gear, radio equipment on subs, and mobile airport communications gear allows women to make livable incomes that would otherwise be working at Wal-Mart and the like. Because of this, many benefits are within reach for these families; such as the ability of these families to send their children to private Christian schools which in most cases provide a higher academic excellence and better learning and moral environment that the children would not otherwise experience, safer and more reliable automobiles, more nutritional choices, better living conditions, and in past years, even the ability to actually buy a home (the recent escalation of real estate prices into the ridiculous has greatly reduced even the most affluent's ability to deal in real estate).

Shipyard tours are extremely interesting to children, both girls and boys. I suggest that if you have a chance, expose your children to this great learning experience. A wonderful opportunity to do just that is upcoming in September at the annual Home Front Festival by the Bay. It's a three-day celebration of the new park with arts and crafts, street theater, music, children's activities and lots of food. Festival events begin Sept. 28 and will go right through the weekend. Read the article below for contact info regarding this event. Then, don't forget to leave your comment.

Rosie the Riveter park fires up public imagination
Visitor demand overwhelming for WWII site's first year
By John Geluardi, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 08/20/2007 02:39:57 AM PDT

RICHMOND — The popularity of Richmond's Rosie the Riveter national park was largely unknown until the first-ever summer tours quickly booked up, and the waiting list grew to 300.
Park employees were so overwhelmed with calls from around the Bay Area that they had to scramble to add two additional tours, which also filled up immediately.

"There have been groups calling who want to bring their own buses, and they just want us to supply a guide, which we don't have the personnel for yet," said park interpreter Betty Reid Soskin. "And that's in addition to the family groups of four, five and nine."

Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park consists of numerous official locations, mostly on or near the city's waterfront, and dozens of unofficial sites. The tour takes visitors to Kaiser Shipyard No. 3, with its five historic buildings, a 220-ton wartime whirley crane, the SS Red Oak Victory ship and five dry docks where the Rosies helped build and launch ships.

Park tours offer rich insight into life in Richmond during the war through documents, artwork, welding artifacts and even fashions of the day, which includes a near-mint condition wedding dress worn by a Rosie.

The tours became public for the first time this year, and the response is a clear sign that the park has captured the public's imagination.

The last tour is scheduled for Aug. 31, after which park officials will buckle down to finish planning the Home Front Festival by the Bay, a three-day celebration of the new park with arts and crafts, street theater, music, children's activities and lots of food. Festival events begin Sept. 28 and will go right through the weekend.
Perhaps Rosie the Riveter park looms large in the public imagination because World War II was the incubator of so many of the things taken for granted in our day-to-day lives.

"During the war, we see for the first time women joining the work force in substantial numbers, racially integrated assembly lines, the first prepaid health care system and government-sponsored child care, which was the progenitor of the Head Start program," Park Superintendent Martha Lee said. "These things grew into powerful social movements after the war, and here in Richmond, we have rich examples of how those seeds were planted."

Rosie herself has become a powerful national symbol of strong, independent and competent women. If you have any doubts, consider this: When U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as the first female speaker of the House, she wore the "We Can Do It" button, which depicts a determined Rosie with her denim sleeves rolled up over a well-muscled arm.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is employing the same image, though she has swapped out Rosie's face for hers and emblazoned it on campaign T-shirts, buttons and coffee mugs.

"I'm not sure why the park has become so popular," Soskin said. "I think Rosie has always been a part of Richmond's past, but now it is becoming part of the nation's history."

Contact John Geluardi at 510-262-2787 or at jgeluardi@bayareanewsgroup.com.

Sources; Google, InsideBayArea.com