Rosies at Work to Preserve their Legacy

June started life in 1926 in poverty during the Great Depression, and she often had to move in with various relatives. She did well in school, was editor of her high school paper, and met her husband-to-be, Melvin Robbins, when she was 15 and he was 17. She convinced a drafting teacher to accept her as the first and only girl in class, so that she could go to work in the Philadelphia Navy Yard where her mother worked on ship barriers, parachutes, and in the War Room.

Many boys in June’s high school volunteered for the military, which is what Melvin did, instead of waiting to be drafted. Everyone knew someone who had been killed or wounded. Melvin came back, and they had a full and rewarding life together.

“I was thrilled to work at the Navy Yard at 17 to help the war effort and to help my mother, who was then single. I helped to draft paravanes, which were strung out along the sides of the ship, to prevent mines from destroying the ship. One day after working a long time designing them, I got to see one. I still have some of my drafting equipment.”

June worked mostly with men, who treated her respectfully, though they sometimes clowned around and teased her. She recalled the officers playing the war game where they moved model ships about on a large board to test their tactical skills, eating lunch with the sailors and officers, and the stress on getting back to work and doing it well, no matter what was going on in the yard.

June and her mother listened to a radio station that played Bluebird of Happiness every hour, and they knew it was time to leave for work when it played that song in the mornings. Along with working, June volunteered with the Red Cross and became a hostess at the USO.

She and Mel married in 1947. She worked as a hairdresser, helped Mel start his business as a store owner, became a mother of seven children, and joined B’nai Brith Women, to fulfill the Jewish ideal of “Tikun Olam,” to “Repair the World.” June lived in Israel with her family for a year and eventually volunteered there on an archeological dig of Roman artifacts in Beit Shean. Her sons taught her to ride a motorcycle, which was her transportation for several years.

She was a “humorologist” at Children’s Hospital for many years. 

Eventually, she became a professional clown after extended training, and she now goes to veterans’ hospitals, women’s shelters, and other places, “to lighten their lives.” She won first place for her “Hungry Hobo” skit at the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Clown Association (MACA) convention in Pennsylvania. She says the key to improvising is to listen.

Months after being named in the press as “The Cutest Couple in Marple-Newtown,” having been married over 65 years, June lost her beloved Melvin in August 2013. Their seven children, 18 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren are devoted, and many are nearby.

As a social worker with clients over the age of 60, and an Area Agency on Aging, her daughter, Gloria Joffe proudly says that she knows an 88-year-old, professional clown, who found the many things she has tried and has accomplished in her life.

If asked what she is proudest of in her life, June will say her family, but she is also proud of her clowning, getting people to laugh, and, of course, what she and other women accomplished in the war effort. She always has a sense of the importance of pulling together, just as Rosie the Riveter was known for.

Rose (Vartouhi) was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts to Haroutune and Armenouhi (Der Avedisian) Basmajian, who had arrived the year prior from Constantinople with her sister Madeline. Her mother was a survivor of the Armenian genocide and her father was a freedom fighter who had returned to Turkey from America in 1915 to fight in General Antranik’s army and protect his homeland. Rose and her sister grew up in Bridgewater’s small community of Armenians, where they attended Saturday Armenian school and had adventures with the town's other Armenian children. They also experienced discrimination as their classmates referred to them as “foreigners”. Bridgewater’s factories closed during the Great Depression and so in 1935 the family moved to Philadelphia where they had relatives. It was quite an adjustment for Rose to adapt to city life after growing up in a rural town, but over the years she joined the Armenian Youth Federation, in which she later served as treasurer, got to know fellow young Armenians, and performed in plays put on at her church. Rose’s dream was to go to college and become a teacher, however her mother’s premature death when Rose was 13 in 1938 set her and her sister on a course to support their father at home instead.

Rose graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1942 and the following year with the men away at war she took a job at a defense plant in Westinghouse’s turbine division in Essington near the city. Her main job was working on a surface grinder to cut stock down to the required dimensions. The work was top secret and the women in the plant, now famously known by the moniker “Rosie the Riveter”, didn’t even know precisely what their work was used for. Even though she had no prior experience, Rose quickly learned how to use these dangerous technical tools, how to read blueprints, and even wore pants for the first time as they were strictly men’s clothing. She was even the only woman in the plant asked to work a huge machine called a lathe reserved for men. She described her time in the plant by saying “it was a lot of heavy work, lots of noise and dust, so we were exposed to a great deal, but I felt that it was the least we could do – especially considering what the boys were going through on the battlefield.” She didn’t know any other Armenian girls who did such a job and didn’t tell others about what she did since a woman working in that way was so unusual in the community.

               After the war, the boys returned from service and she began seeing one of them, Martin Shelengian. They married on November 1, 1947 and had three children. They moved to Broomall in 1958 where they were joined by many other Armenians over the years. Perhaps encouraged by her previous experiences in the workforce, after Marty temporarily lost his job with General Electric in 1960, Rose went out and found a job, and continued to work as a secretary for the next 35 years. She only retired at age 70 because she figured it was time, but felt she could have continued on for many more years. This is not surprising from a woman who couldn’t be stopped from shoveling her driveway into her mid-80s. Her biggest role in later life was that of grandmother of 5 and a support to Marty until his death in 2011. Recently Rose became a great-grandmother as well, one of which was named for her. Fiercely independent, Rose took care of the house and remained at home until turning 95. 

               A beautiful closing act for her has been the re-appreciation of her service as a “Rosie”. While she had never thought she had done anything extraordinary, the importance of these women has come to be recognized in recent years. She became involved in the Rosie the Riveter Movement, spreading awareness about its spirit of unity and working together, something much needed today. A special memory for her was being honored as a Rosie by the Mayor of Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell in 2017. She also was featured in a radio podcast last year telling the story of her service.

Rose passed away in December of 2020. Her obituary can be found here: https://www.inquirer.com/obituaries/rose-shelengian-obit-obituary-20210113.html

Buddie Curnutte is outstanding because she is one of an estimated six million women who worked on the home front during World War II, and she has survived with well-functioning mind and body, and she lives a life of caring, and she has shown consistent commitment to helping our nonprofit organization develop model Rosie the Riveter Project.

Buddie Curnutte is outstanding because she is one of an estimated six million women who worked on the home front during World War II, and she has survived with well-functioning mind and body, and she lives a life of caring, and she has shown consistent commitment to helping our nonprofit organization develop model Rosie the Riveter Project.

She grew up poor in Apalachin, New York during the depression. She and her brother were raised by their father who was not around. In adolescence her aunt took her to clean, then her uncle had her watch an empty building which she still worries may have been, something illegal. While working at a five and dime store, friends Fran and Betty, found an ad for defense plant work in Cheektowaga, NY. She says Curtis Wright's riveter training was four weeks unpaid, with no guaranteed job for poor performers.

She describes how women worked in pairs on the Kitty Hawk airplanes, one a riveter and one a bucker, and says she can still drill today. She worked on one part of the wing assembly. “It was hard, and you worried, lives were in your hands.”

After two years of riveting, she joined the coast guard to travel the west and the world. Her unit trained at Sheepshead’s Bay, NY, in hard winter, without uniforms, or proper shoes. She became a medic, and at a Philadelphia hospital, she met Earl Curnutte, who had lost a leg and injured his foot at Okinawa. He was released after the war. They wrote but never heard each other’s voices.

On July 3, 1946, at 11:00 p.m., he climbed three flights of stairs of a Catholic hospital, entered the nurses’ station, and said, “I’ve come to marry Buddie.” They drove nonstop to Charleston, WV, found a minister from the phonebook who, on their arrival, was a mortician who married them at the funeral home.

On July 3, 1946, at 11:00 p.m., he climbed three flights of stairs of a Catholic hospital, entered the nurses’ station, and said, “I’ve come to marry Buddie.” They drove nonstop to Charleston, WV, found a minister from the phonebook who, on their arrival, was a mortician who married them at the funeral home.

In 2010, we interviewed Buddie (see a documentary film). Buddie is an example that Rosies are precious illustrations of largely-ignored women critical to a phenomenal human effort. In 2011, she joined our Board of Directors. Soon after, Nancy Sneed-Sample, another Rosie board member, died, leaving Buddie as the daily link to help us find, interview, include, and educate with (not just about) Rosies. We believe our work is a model for America. We know that Buddie is a model for people.

“Dotty” Foster was born Dorothy Johnson in Lanchester, England, moved to Cheshire County at 10 years old, and worked in Manchester County during the war, in northwest England. Manchester had a strong industrial history, had the first railway station, hosted the first meeting of the Trades Union Congress, and is where scientists first split the atom and developed the first programmable computer.

She worked at Broadheath, in a factory that had converted from making linotype to munitions when she was 14. She says, “I was glad to sweep the floor for the war effort. I became pretty skilled. I learned to run a drill and a lathe, to do milling and filing.”

Dot’s father fought in WWI, after being orphaned when his father, a coal miner, died of black lung disease and his mother died soon after. Her brother was killed on the Hurricane, a ship that chased German submarines.

She says, “There were no dances or ball games or things kids do today.”

She fell in love with an American. On their wedding day, since there was no nylon hose, she did what many women did, painted her legs with makeup, then took eyebrow pencil and drew a line up the back of her leg to look like the seam in “nylons.”

Her memories of coming to rural America are vivid, and she often talks about the inherent strength of women to see things through. Her first husband died when they had three children. She says, ”By the grace of God, I had wonderful neighbors. In his life, we have to be there for one another. I had no family. You have to make your notch in life, but no one can do it alone. People who haven’t experienced things can’t imagine. It takes tough times to soften you. Particularly women. We can put ourselves in others’ shoes because we have had to endure so much, and often silently.”

Bertha was born in 1926 in Dorchester, MA (a section of Boston), and had four brothers and one sister. She started kindergarten in 1930 and graduated from the 8th grade in 1939, which was the 300th anniversary of the school, which was the first tax-supported school in the Country. Several months before she graduated from high school in 1943, the school gave her an address and told her to go there to work.

The factory made raincoats for the U.S. Navy, and she was to make out the payroll for the stitchers, who did piece work, which meant they were paid for each piece they sewed. She collected tickets from their baskets, gave them credit for each piece they had finished, and added 5% to their paycheck under the instruction of the Navy.

She married Martin Glavin, a Navy veteran in 1949, and they raised seven children, all of whom attended her historic school. She became president of the Home and School Association, was the school monitor for 22 years, and retired in 1992. In the meantime, she was vice president of the Dorchester Historical Society (Martin was president) and volunteered in the Quincy Library for several years.

Incidentally, her daughter, Martha, is an art teacher at her old school.

She was at the embassy when Rosies were honored there, and she has done a great job ringing bells for Rosies at the President’s Church on several Labor Days. She says, “I just keep hoping that I can do a good job for us Rosies.”

Neva grew up on a dairy farm near Fairmont. She was one of twelve children, 6’2’ tall, and captain of her basketball team. After graduation from Fairmont High School, she went to Akron, Ohio where she built the control room for Goodyear Blimps, which were important in the war effort for surveillance and to direct ships and troops in silence.   She still has some of her tools, which she bought to work at Goodyear, and she painted purple to recognize them easily on the workplace, which was often on scaffolds. 



Her fiancé was sent to the Pacific, where he was in significant danger in the jungles of Guam.   After the war, she nurtured him, and he had a premature death from malaria and other diseases he contracted from the war. 

She had two sons, one died as a young adult, and one lives near her now in Marietta, Ohio. 

Neva is known for her intelligence, her depth, and her lemon cookies. She is a writer, often telling about what life was like during the depression when she was a child and the family lost their farm. 

ROSE SHELENGIAN PASSES AWAY AT 95

Rose Shelengian passed away in December 2020, after contracting COVID-19. The Rosies are fading fast, and COVID-19 is a contributing factor. We need to connect with these women while we still can, and Rosies can be found in every community. Find a Rosie, talk to her, and know her story.

The link for Rose's obituary can be found here: https://www.inquirer.com/obituaries/rose-shelengian-obit-obituary-20210113.html