Pictured above: WWII Rosie the Riveter Mae Krier with Raya Kenney at the Rosie Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in Washington, D.C. April 10, 2024.
The idea of a monument in Washington, D.C. to honor the Rosie the Riveters of WWII began as a fifth-grade project for Raya Kenney, now 22.
Kenney, age 10 at the time, was inspired by the movie, “A League of Their Own,” the story of the women’s baseball league created during World War II because the men were away fighting. She loved the story and wondered, “What else did women do during World War II?” She learned about the working women of WWII, volunteer women, the women who were allowed to join the armed forces for the first time, and of all the ways women helped to achieve Victory.
Then Kenney took a walk around her hometown of Washington, D.C. and noticed that all of the monuments featured men, horses, and more men. Where were the women? With 44 memorials in the National Mall space, there are only two real women, aside from symbolic representations like Freedom and Justice. City park memorials are decorated with female nymphs and sylphs. Kenney felt the Rosie the Riveters, who helped win a war and proved that women have a place in the workforce, deserved a monument.
Kenney connected with American Rosie the Riveter Association members, Phyllis Gould and Mae Krier, who worked in factories during the war, and decided that the Rosie monument needed to become a reality. Gould and Krier were both instrumental in establishing a National Rosie the Riveter Day, and in getting a Congressional Gold Medal to honor the Rosies.
Kenney set to work on a process that took years. She created a foundation, National Memorial to the Women Who Worked on the Home Front, and found sponsors for a bill that would authorize the creation of the monument, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). The passed the House almost unanimously, with 425 members voting for it and only Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) voting no. A year later, it passed the Senate with bipartisan support. In December of 2022, President Biden signed it into law.
A site for the Rosie the Riveter monument must now be chosen, and millions must be raised to build it. Although the women served their country in wartime, government money is not available for their monument, as per the dictates of The Commemorative Works Act.
Raya Kenney, who has been working on this project for more than half her life, recently joined 27 real Rosie the Riveters in Washington for the ceremony that honored them with a Congressional Gold Medal. She was reunited with WWII worker Mae Krier, who lobbied for years to make the Congressional Medal happen. “Sharing the room with 27 of my mentors only helps remind me how paramount the work we’re doing to get these women proper recognition is. Mae likes to say that she is the end of the movement, and that she’s passing the torch to me. So, I can’t let her down. I need to finish what she has started,” says Kenney,
Learn more and help make the Rosie the Riveter National Monument a reality at https://wwiiwomenmemorial.org