Geraldine Doyle
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Geraldine Doyle (born Geraldine Hoff, July 31, 1924, Inkster, Michigan) was the real-life model for the World War II era We Can Do It posters featuring the image of Rosie the Riveter. As of 2005, she lives in Lansing, Michigan.
Doyle's father, Cornelious Hoff, was an electrical contractor who died of pneumonia when she was 10 years old. Her mother, Augusta Hoff, was a composer stricken with scoliosis. After graduating from high school in Ann Arbor, Doyle helped the American effort in World War II by working at a local factory in 1942. It was there that she met graphic artist J. Howard Miller, who used her portrait on his iconic poster.
In 1942, 17 year-old Geraldine Doyle spent a week working in a Michigan factory pressing metal as an early replacement worker for men who had gone off to war. During her brief tenure a wire photographer would take a picture of her she'd soon forget. That image -- re-imagined by J. Howard Miller while working for the Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee -- would soon become iconic both for the war effort and for the forever changed society it fostered.
Geraldine didn't know she was Rosie until 1984, when she came across the 1942 photograph in Modern Maturity Magazine. By 1944, a lot of women were working in factories and plants, instead of homes. Geraldine is proud of Rosie the Riveter when she appears on a postage stamp, part of a World War II series produced by the U.S. Postal Service in 1992.
[edit] References
- UAW Local 602 Newsletter - March 24, 2003 (PDF file)
- Michigan History for Kids magazine - Spring 2003 (PDF file)
- Everyday People
- We Can Do It -- the tale of an iconic image
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