All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
Here we are on Veterans Radio and we're bringing on our guest, a good friend of ours here at
Veterans Radio, Larry St. Antoine.
And Larry is a board member out at Camp Liberty here in Michigan.
And Camp Liberty is sort of a retreat for veterans where you can go fishing and hunting
and they hold events and all kinds of things out there.
And so I'm going to have Larry come on here and tell us a little bit about the history
of Camp Liberty and where they see themselves going in the future.
So Larry St. Antoine, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
It's good to be here.
It's good to be anywhere.
Oh, we already said that once before.
So give our audience kind of an idea of Camp Liberty, how it got started and where it is.
Okay.
About 10 years ago, the owners of the property, there was two people owned it, had decided
to set up a hunting place for veterans.
And they got a lady who donated the money to build the buildings, a house or a barn.
It's a lodge type of thing, isn't it?
It's a large lodge with four rooms and then a large barn for equipment.
It's 138 acres and it's all set aside mostly for hunting.
About three years ago, the original president suddenly passed away and the other board members
were lived out of town.
So they decided maybe they had to close down.
And the owner of the land, Alan Lutz, originally was president and he decided to see if he
could get enough board members together to keep going.
And he contacted four people, three veterans and a lady who works for him.
And we decided to see what would happen if we could keep it going.
Alan ended up buying the other half of the land and the two buildings from Camp Liberty,
Inc.
That gave us enough money in our account to keep going.
So three years ago, we had an open house and dedicated the property and the buildings to
keep going with Camp Liberty.
So basically that's what kept us going for the last three years.
So you guys are a 501C3 non-profit organization, correct?
Correct.
Okay.
So people can make donations to you if they wanted to.
Yes.
You can go to camplibertymichigan.org or to campliberty.com, I mean, Inc.
on Facebook.
Okay.
And they can find out about all the activities that we have through the year.
All right.
I know that you've been very busy over the last couple of years with your hunting.
Can you tell us what type of hunting do you do out there?
Well, we have one turkey hunt, two pheasant hunts, and four deer hunts.
The turkey hunt is for veterans.
The first two deer hunts are for veterans with 100% disability.
Then the regular deer hunt for deer season is open to all veterans.
And then we have a muzzle loader hunt, which is open to all veterans.
Okay.
You mentioned that you have special times for 100% disabled veterans.
I know that some of them have difficulty getting around.
Do you have any special equipment that they could use?
We have three tracked wheelchairs that are available to any veterans.
And we have nine blinds set up throughout the 138 acres.
We also have ATVs to bring them around.
Okay.
That's cool.
I like it.
And you have those special wheelchairs, I guess.
Track wheelchairs.
That actually can take the veteran who would normally be sitting in a wheelchair and it
can bring them up to a standing position, right?
Yeah.
No.
I don't think so, but they can go into half of the blinds.
Okay.
They're set up for the track wheelchairs.
Okay.
And what we do is we have four veterans for each hunt.
And the first two hunts are the disabled hunts.
And if they want to find out about them, just go online.
Right.
That's the camplibertymichigan.org, right?
That's right.
Okay.
And we are located in Brooklyn.
We're seven miles west of Manchester, over six miles east of Napoleon.
Got it.
Do you happen to know the address off the top of your head?
It's 7044 Kapler Drive.
Kapler is that with a K?
Yep.
Kapler Drive and that's where Brooklyn?
That's Brooklyn address.
Okay.
I'm doing that because, you know, all of us, all of us technology experts, we just type
stuff into our GPS and it takes us wherever we need to go, hopefully.
And then once a year, we have a fundraiser event.
Last year we had a classic car show.
Mm-hmm.
The 150 cars show up and this year is beyond June 15th and we'll be advertising it.
Yeah.
We'll be more nappy to promote that for you.
I think it's kind of cold June 15th.
We are talking about trying to get a helicopter for helicopter rides.
We had one at the open house.
It did cost money per person, but we had to pay to get it here.
Right.
Well, yeah, I know that's from the Yankee Air Museum, right?
Yes, it was.
Yeah.
It was cool though and it was kind of neat.
I was lucky enough, fortunate enough to be out there when you were doing that and just
kind of seeing the helicopter flying over the fields and farms and farmland and stuff
of the area around Brooklyn.
It was brought back a lot of really interesting memories.
I have to say about that.
It wasn't so bad.
I think it was $100 for a 15-minute ride.
It was $99.
You guys had a special deal.
I think it's $120 now.
Okay.
Yeah, the cost.
The gas is not cheap.
Yeah, JP for aviation fuel is not cheap.
I know that they've got those things right.
So unfortunately, we're airing this program after your big weekend this weekend because
you said you've got stuff going on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
So let's look at it.
Friday we have volunteers of America on suicide prevention, mental health and veteran resources.
Right.
Then Saturday.
And then on Friday we have a pheasant hunt.
I mean Saturday.
Okay.
And then Sunday you have an Easter egg hunt for another organization.
Lincoln.
Warriors and caregivers united.
Right.
And these are all Michigan nonprofit organizations that are out there trying to help veterans
any way that they can.
And I think it's just cool.
The whole concept of camp liberty and I know that there are other camps, you know, similar
to it around the country.
And I just really wanted to promote our local one here, Larry.
And I want to.
Yeah, we plan on opening up like we will have fishing and archery.
Cool.
Once we get everything accomplished that we need to do out here.
So archery is an archery hunting or just archery for fun?
Archery for fun right now.
Okay.
That's still me coming in.
I know that you're planning or hoping to have sort of a vet fest out there in the near
future.
Yeah, we are talking about the same day we have the car show that have a vet fest.
So we can cover everything.
Well, your location is, you know, it's kind of people think it's way out in the middle
of nowhere, but sort of is.
But it's it's centrally located for a lot of veteran communities in the local, you
know, Western Washtenaw County, Jackson County area.
Yeah, it's halfway between Napoleon and Manchester off of Austin Road.
Okay.
So I would encourage people to go out there.
Is there any events coming up before the June 15th?
Something that would now that's open to the public.
The June 15th is the first.
Okay.
So I encourage all of you out there that are listening, you know, if you want to go out
and check it out to get out to Camp Liberty, put June 15th on your calendar and take a
ride out it's a beautiful ride out into the country for those of you city folks.
And I think that you'll enjoy yourself.
It's a beautiful building and you've got some really dedicated veteran supporters that
that show up out there.
It's a it's a it's a great feeling.
I know that's the way I felt when I went out there.
You know, you're really welcomed and they do a great job of helping our fellow brothers
and sisters in the military.
So Larry, I want to thank you very much for your time.
And I guess I'll see you hopefully in the next couple of days.
Yeah, we appreciate veterans radio.
I know you do.
It's a fun.
Thanks Larry, very much.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
You have a great day.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor and combat given a member of the armed
forces of the United States.
There have been over 3400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Private Jacob Parrott was the first person to receive the Medal of Honor details after
this.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact legal help for
veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
Parrott was one of 22 men, including two civilians, whom by direction of Union General Mitchell,
penetrated nearly 200 miles south into enemy territory and captured a railroad station at
Big Shandy, Georgia in an attempt to destroy the bridges and tracks between Chattanooga
and Atlanta.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of veterans radio.
You know you don't have to wear your PT gear anymore, right?
It's comfortable.
So how's civilian life treating you?
It's fine.
When I got out, I didn't want to admit that there was anything wrong because I felt like
a failure.
And then I realized like there's nothing to be ashamed of.
So I started talking to someone.
Maybe you are fine.
But if you're not, it's okay.
Thank you.
If you or a veteran you know needs support, don't wait.
Reach out.
Find resources at va.gov.
We are back here on Veterans Radio and our guest today is Claire Dahl and Claire is a
retired Ann Arbor history teacher, actually AP, but she's really smart.
And she's gotten herself all involved in the Rosies and those of you out there that have
been listening to Veterans Radio over the last 20 years know that we've talked about
Rosies in the past.
So I'm going to bring Claire on right now and we'll get this started.
So Claire Dahl, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Well, thank you, Dale.
I'm glad to have you.
I'm glad that you asked me and particularly March is Women's History Month and you know,
I see March 21st is National Rosy the Riveter Day.
So this is all very exciting.
Everything is all very timely.
Right.
So tell me, how did you get interested in Rosy the Riveter?
Well, I've always been interested in history.
I've always loved powerful, strong women.
And so when I got my masters in women's studies, I did my thesis on Rosy the Riveter because
I was so interested in her.
And so my life has really come full circle at this particular point.
My classrooms have always had posters and slogans and war posters on to show my students
just how powerful Rosy was.
So it's just been one of those things.
I love American history and this was an exciting part of history.
So are you from the local area originally?
I was born in New Jersey and grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
And then my husband and I moved here after college for his job and that's how we ended
up in the Ann Arbor area.
Okay.
The rest is history.
I'm from New Jersey as well.
So I was born on the Jersey Shore down in Spring Lake, Manusquan area.
Okay.
And Point Pleasant, that part of the world.
So yeah, I always talk to people when I say I'm from New Jersey, please don't hold that
against me, especially since I've been here in Michigan for over 50 years now.
Yeah.
Kind of a question.
Well, I've been here for a long time.
I mean, I was born in Trenton, lived in Lambertville for 11 years and then grew up in Kenosha,
Wisconsin.
Okay.
You've lost your accent too.
I miss it sometimes.
All right.
So when you started researching the Rosies and got so interested, especially doing your
master's thesis on it, who were these people?
Where did they come from and how did they get involved?
What was it?
Kind of the history of Rosie.
Well, we have an interesting collection of stories, but for the most part, the women
started entering the factories in May of 1942.
Pearl Harbor was in December of 41, which is the end of 41, which means that we were
kind of moving along with our war industries.
We had been, as Franklin Roosevelt called us, the arsenal of democracy, making weapons
of war for our friends because we were trying not to get into that war, but Pearl Harbor
brought us right into it.
And so by May of 42, that's only five months after Pearl Harbor, so many men were in the
service that something had to be done to have people work in these factories to make the
guns and the bullets and the parachutes and the tanks and the trucks and the airplanes
that were being made on the line.
And the obvious workforce was the American woman.
Most women in 1940, in the 40s, were not working out of the home or if they were, these were
very, very traditional jobs.
But as the government said with a very powerful, very expensive public relations campaign,
you have to get into the factories.
If you want to bring your father, your brother, your son, your boyfriend home, if you want
to get on with the rest of your life, you have to get into the factories.
Don't be intimidated.
We will teach you on the job training or give you a class for a week or take you to the
Ford School for a month, but we will train you to do what you can do.
And the women just responded to that call incredibly.
Almost immediately, six million women went into the factories.
Most of them were very young.
They were unencumbered.
They didn't have children right then.
They weren't married.
They went in, but then over the years, more and more and more, and then we end up with
the parents, the grandmothers, the girlfriends, the wives, women in these factories, and they
all took non-traditional jobs and they did beautifully with it, convinced themselves
they could do it, convinced the country, the industry, everything.
It was fantastic.
Well, I want to let our audience know that here in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti area, Michigan,
that we have Willow Run Airport, which was the factory for the B-24 bombers.
Right, the B-24 Liberator bombers made it Willow Run, right?
Right.
And prior to the war, it was just an open field.
I mean, that type of thing.
And within months, it seemed like they built, I guess I'm assuming Henry Ford was heavily
involved in this.
He was heavily involved.
He was an isolationist.
He didn't want to get involved in that war, but his son convinced him that if Ford didn't
get involved, one of the other car manufacturers would make money on this war.
And so basically, that's what they did.
This was all land owned previously by Henry Ford in Ypsilanti.
It was Washtenaw County.
He had run it as a camp for the sons of World War I veterans.
Oh, okay.
And so Ford had the land.
He had the money.
He had the reputation.
And when Edsel convinced him he had to do it, he jumped.
And you're right.
With the fact that all these construction went up very quickly, all over the country.
Right.
And he was from a consumer economy to a war economy almost immediately.
And so remember very little paperwork, no OSHA.
Just get it done.
As Roosevelt said, time is our enemy.
And Churchill is waiting for everything that we can get them.
So the Willow Run plant had groundbreaking in March of 41.
That's before Pearl Harbor.
Right.
And Roosevelt had his arsenal of democracy speech at the end of 1940.
And so January and February of 41 was planning, Ford sending teams of experts and everybody
out to San Diego, California, where they were making the B-24 one at a time.
Right.
And they took them all apart.
They looked at every single thing, brought their team of experts back to make, to design
the machines that would make the parts that would go into these airplanes for the first
time ever on an assembly line.
And so things got started, you know, before Pearl Harbor.
We were planning January and February.
March 41 was groundbreaking at Willow Run as it was all over the country in bomber plants.
And by, it took only nine months for Willow Run to be the biggest plant in the world.
It only took eight months for Willow Run, Wayne County to become Willow Run Airport,
the biggest airport in the world.
And so everything was done basically, not necessarily working real smoothly, but it
was done by November of 41.
And then bang, December of 41 was Pearl Harbor.
I heard a lot.
Yeah, I know.
I've heard a lot of stories about the building of Willow Run and how there were jurisdictional
arguments and so forth.
And actually the Willow Run bomber factory has a 90 degree turn at one point where the
airplanes would turn because Ford wasn't going to let it go into the next township or something
like that.
He didn't want to go into Wayne County.
It's called the famous, it's the tax turn.
And yes, these airplanes would get down to that part and then just turn on giant railroad
turn tables so that they still finish their construction of the production and then flew
out on in Washtenaw County.
He was mad at Wayne County because every single presidential year they voted for Franklin
Roosevelt.
And he didn't like that.
He didn't like Roosevelt.
He said those good people of Washtenaw County voted for Hoover.
They voted for Alph Landon and they voted for Wendell Wilkie.
So he said, they get my tax money.
Oh, there you go.
We did an interview years ago with Ted Heisel who was a radio phenomenon here in Ann Arbor.
And he had worked at Willow Run as a telephone eavesdropper, he said, because he spoke German,
flew with German.
And he was supposed to listen to the phone conversations, people going out in case they
sent out secret messages and so forth.
And he was so proud of that and I thought that was very humorous when Ted told us that.
For a while they were laughing.
They called it Will It Run rather than Willow Run.
But as with everything that you do over and over and over, you get better, you get faster,
you get more efficient.
And the fact that we were 25 miles away from downtown Detroit where all the car manufacturing
firms converted their lines and made bits and pieces downtown, all over the place in
downtown Detroit.
And then we're put on specially made Ford trucks to be brought to Willow Run for complete
assembly.
And we made loads and loads of parts.
We did all kinds of work there too.
We had workshops all around the assembly lines.
But you had to realize that we were so close to downtown Detroit where they were just doing
this constantly that we were in the perfect location.
So we are the biggest and the most famous bomber.
And as you mentioned earlier on, eventually, you know, when they went out to San Diego
to look at where they were building other B-24 bombers, it would sometimes it would
take them a year to build one.
A month to build one.
Yeah, one month to make a plane.
And then they just sold it to the Army and ferried it to whatever field to ever base.
And then they started all over again.
And so we, it still took Willow Run to make a B-24 in a month.
But because the line was so efficient and really didn't stop, they were off the runway.
They were done every 57 minutes, which is incredible.
But it still took a month to make it.
You cannot make an airplane in 57 minutes.
No.
But finish it so that it continues to go out and then get tested on the ground, tested
in the air and ferried it to wherever it was needed.
Wherever they needed it.
I mean, I think it's just a great story about the determination of not only Henry Ford,
but the whole American society, you know, turning over.
Absolutely.
We've never had teamwork like that before.
There were grumblings.
Of course.
You've got the first, America First movement, which was very isolationist.
Congress was isolationist.
All kinds of people didn't want us to get into this.
But once we got into it, we really bucked up and got it going.
And that means not only women in the factories, but you've also got women who are support
pilots testing these planes, ferrying them all over, shipping or flying supplies to other
plants around the country because we were so close to downtown Detroit.
And then we have to remember the 16 million women who kept their communities running so
that all of these non-traditional community jobs would be held by women so that the men
were free to go into the service.
Right.
Women were in the service.
And so women in World War II just bucked up.
They ran their communities.
They raised their own kids.
They built all this machinery and they flew those planes.
I think it's great.
We're talking with Claire Dahl here and we're talking about, since it's Women's History
Month, we're looking at Rosie the Riveter and what these Rosies did all over the country.
And I was thinking before I got to talk to you, Claire, that my mother-in-law was a Rosie
in New Jersey where she made bomb sites.
And I can't remember what the company was.
She said, yeah, and she said I took, and they were made out of human hair.
These little Xs, I guess, that were on the bomb sites and she said she did that for three
years.
And, you know, but then, you know, when the war was over, everything went off.
So can you think of some of the people that you've talked to that you could share with
our audience that, you know, remembered their stories?
I've done about 27 interviews of these women for the Veterans History Project, which is
wonderful because all of these women are primary documentation of the World War II home front.
And they all have incredibly inspiring, energized stories.
They were all young.
They were all courageous.
They were all ready to roll.
They wanted to get off the farm.
Many times they wanted to get away from mom.
They wanted some independence.
They wanted money in their pockets.
And they just basically went on a train or a bus or if they lived in town of some of
these bigger plants or even if it wasn't a big plant, any kind of a business during the
war, they would convert their line or convert their products to be military.
So women were going every place.
I had particularly two women that I interviewed from Kentucky and they had come up and they
were both riveters on the B-24 at Willow Run.
They didn't know each other.
They came from Kentucky and ended up being roommates.
And they were wonderful and they loved working on the B-24 because they could see the final
product.
And then when the line was going so fast and we were making so many planes, they were
a peak slipped basically and they went back to Kentucky without a job.
They only lasted for about a week before they said, you know, ma, I can't do this no more.
I've been to the big city.
I've been to Ipsi.
So they got in touch with each other.
They got another, they got on a bus.
They had a black banner that didn't even tell you where they were going, but it was guaranteed
war work, guaranteed good pay.
And they ended up working on the bomb in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Oh my.
So these two women have a story that is unbelievable.
It is the B-24 Liberator bomber and the atomic bomb, which of course was being made at the
secret city.
They couldn't talk about it.
They didn't even know what they were doing.
Right.
They sat in a big, a big black tube, a Palliatron all day looking through a baby window, just
turning dials to keep the flames a certain color.
And they couldn't see anything left.
They didn't see anything.
So that's why they said they really liked working at Willow Run more.
They didn't know they were working on the bomb until the day after it was announced that
the bomb had been dropped.
And thank you, Oak Ridge.
Right.
A woman from Tennessee that came up before the war and she worked at the American Lady
Corsic Company in downtown Detroit on Woodruff Avenue.
And she was sewing bras and girdles, bras and girdles, bras and girdles.
And then all of a sudden the war started and within the week she was sewing parachutes,
parachutes, parachutes.
So there she is, a woman who was in North Carolina and she lives in Chelsea right now.
And she took the train to Alexandria, Virginia and worked at the Navy, a submarine yard,
at the Navy yard, working on torpedoes.
Wow.
A woman from South Bend, Indiana who was working, just testing carburetors for white
trucks that were being sent over.
White is a company, a name of a company truck.
And so she was doing carburetors.
I've had women who were connecting the hydraulic tubes for the Bombay door.
We've had, let's see, women who worked, one woman worked in Western Pennsylvania and she
was on an island, on a train island more or less.
And her job was to keep track of the many trains that were bringing and taking chemicals
all over the country.
And they did all this without any kind of computers, any kind of stuff.
They figured out how to do it.
One woman made up a whole kind of a board, like a bulletin board thing to keep everybody
in the office and in the plant kind of organized.
I had one who sat in the crib, she called it, at Willow Run, keeping track of all the
tools.
Somebody had to know where everything was.
Right.
Who's got the blueprints and who's got this?
Stories are incredibly interesting.
One woman had to, you know, the B-24 has a double tail fin in the back, which is made
of fabric.
And so what she did was work in the dope room and they had to dig their hands into great
big vats of glue and smear it on the fabric to stabilize it.
She didn't have any masks, she didn't have any gloves, she didn't have anything.
Our riveters didn't have ear protectors.
They did have hair protectors because nobody wants to be smacked.
But these women did everything.
They were crane drivers, they were welders, they were electricians, they were wire eras,
they were everything you can imagine.
And they could do it.
They did it.
And it gave everybody, I'd say, you know, not only courage, but I don't even know what
I want to say.
It gave everybody a new vision of what America could be.
You know?
Yeah, I would think it would give them confidence as well.
Yes, that's the word I was looking for.
Incredible.
Yeah, because not only were they doing these jobs, they were doing them in all kinds of
cities that they didn't know where they were.
They didn't know anything about them.
They had to learn how to live in a boarding house with a roommate, go get your laundry
done at the, you know, at the laundry mat, take the bus over to Canada to buy shoes.
They frequently have that story of all using some of their money for that or going downtown
and getting on a Friday night convincing themselves I deserve a Saunders hot chop or
hot bud sundae.
I've worked hard through this.
They saved their money.
They bought war bonds.
They sold war bonds.
They handed out ration tickets at their companies.
One woman, that was her whole job.
She just handed out and kept track of who was giving their ration tickets.
But it was unbelievable how much America changed during this time period and how American women
changed.
And then the government realized that they had to help with child care.
We had the best child care we've ever had in this country.
I'm going to stop you right there because we're going to take a real quick break.
So you know, we're talking with Claire Dowell here, retired Ann Arbor AP history teacher
and talking all about the Rosies, especially here in our local area at Willow Run in the
arsenal of democracy in southeast Michigan.
We're going to take a real quick break.
When we come back, I want to talk about kind of the societal effects that Rosie and World
War II had on women and just the population in general.
Okay.
So we'll be right back after this.
We know you don't have to wear your PT gear anymore, right?
It's comfortable.
So how's civilian life treating you?
It's fine.
When I got out, I didn't want to admit that there was anything wrong because I felt like
a failure.
And then I realized like there's nothing to be ashamed of.
So I started talking to someone.
Maybe you are fine.
If you're not, it's okay.
Thank you.
If you or a veteran you know needs support, don't wait.
Reach out.
Hey, we're back here on Veterans Radio and we are talking with Clara Dahl and she's
the kind of the local expert on Rosie the Riveter.
And what I wanted to find out next is, you know, we talked about some of the local people
that were involved.
And that one thing I remember in talking with somebody over at Willow Run is when you did
that, were you the one that organized the most Rosie the Riveter's in one place at
a time or were you just active in that?
No, I didn't organize that.
That was, let me see, that was Allison.
And so as she did it, we'd done it three times.
We tried it in 2014.
We got a record because we did it all in, well, we just, we ended up with more Rosie,
more women, the rest is Rosie than anybody else.
And then we lost it to California and then they did it again in 2015.
We thought for sure no one would take it from us because we did it in Hangar One with a
B17 in the background.
And we said, not only do we have numbers, we have the world's best venue.
California took it away from us again.
And then in 2017, we did it in Eastern Michigan.
We took over the whole basketball arena in 3,375 Rosies.
And it was fantastic.
So I did not organize it.
I was on the committee.
I painted the signs to say 50 to 100 over here, 101 to 150 over here.
And this and that.
But no, I did not organize it.
I just thought it was so cool.
We have a very good friend whose daughter dressed up as Rosie and took her daughter
with her and she was dressed up.
I think she was about seven or something like that.
And I'm sure there was like, I just, I remember seeing the picture and thinking how cool it
was that all of these women, you know, representing so many other women.
Of course, didn't make it.
So when this all occurred, you had this mass migration in America from, you know, from
all over, as you mentioned, you know, coming from different countryside, mostly from the
south to the north or from the south to the west or to the east.
And that one of the things that read.
Right.
And in the article, let me, let me back up and kind of preface this a little bit.
I found out about Claire in a local newspaper that she's been giving these talks all over
the county, all over the state, everywhere now.
And so that's how I got ahold of her.
But the, some of the things in the article I wanted to kind of address were the changes
in it from this, from a sociology standpoint of all of these women moving to these factories
and how things changed, and especially you mentioned that the minority women coming,
you know, and getting these jobs.
And, you know, they paid 85 cents to a dollar an hour.
You mentioned that at least at willow run, they provided training for you.
And then they discovered, oh, we have to house these people.
And the person that got the money for the housing was Harry Truman of all people, like
when he was still a senator.
And there are housing units all around our southeast Michigan area that were built specifically
for willow run.
I'm thinking off the top of my head is a Pittsfield village here in Ann Arbor, which was designed
for not only the workers, but then of course, when all the veterans came home and went back
to school.
So when you, when these people came from all parts of the country, they found that willow
run was not segregated.
Workers were not.
Roosevelt was forced to sign executive order 8802 because he was threatened with it basically
a nationwide strike of black workers because we had segregated units in the army and black
women wanted to have some of these great jobs.
They said, I have a husband, a boyfriend, a father, a son, I want to bring them home.
And so therefore, you know, with the strike, Roosevelt said, I don't have time for a strike.
And everybody said, you're right, you don't.
So sign the executive order.
It was the first equal employment act in this country.
And so yeah, willow run has black and white workers over the country.
I think that's a that's a really important message that we need to get out about what
was going on at the time.
The other thing, of course, is that like everything else, the war ends and now all these women
have to go home.
How did that play out?
A whole bunch said no, forget it, Charlie.
I like this job.
Everybody finds something else.
Many women wanted to go home.
Many were tired of working.
They wanted to go home.
They wanted to raise their kids at home.
Others wanted to keep these jobs.
They were well trained and they were used to working like that.
Many women joined the surface afterwards.
But you know, it was there was tension in our housing because the housing had been for
workers.
Now it's going to be given to returning vets.
And you're going to have met lots of men who have served five years saying, wait, you mean
I've done five years in the service and now I'm going to be unemployed.
I want my job back.
What are we going to do?
Well, that's when the government passed the GI Bill and a whole bunch of men went to college,
which they had never expected to be able to afford.
But the GI Bill did it.
But we also have to remember that that GI Bill was only for white soldiers.
And so it was very unfair.
And it wasn't a wonderful situation when the war was over.
We were survived.
We were glad it was over.
Everybody loved it.
America was changed forever.
America was different.
American women were different.
American families were different.
But we still did not give that GI Bill to our black soldiers.
I was going to say that because even though the war was only what we won and now we've
freed, quote, all of the free world and everything else, we still had our same problems at home
to be addressed.
And in the euphoria of the ending of the war, we kind of forgot about those.
And they just kind of festered for the next 20 years and are still festering in many parts
of it.
And I think that that's what's so fascinating to me, and the first time I use the word fascinating
today, is the, first of all, is the building of this plant and then turning out of over
8,000 B24s in a short amount of time.
As you mentioned, once it got rolling, one was rolling off the line every 57 minutes,
which I can only imagine, as you mentioned in the article, the euphoria of seeing this
work.
It must be like when you first start working in an auto plant and you see, I worked on
that car and it goes all the way through and somebody drives off in it.
I think that would be a great sensation.
But that this all occurred and the role that Rosie has had, not only then, but continuing
on.
And whenever anybody, you're the expert on this, not me, but the idea of when women think
of working, you know, Rosie is the symbol of this whole thing.
Every I go into so many restaurants here in Ann Arbor and there's a there's a Rosie,
the river poster on the wall.
And you find out that the owner of this particular restaurant is a woman and she says, Oh, no,
that's my inspiration.
My mother worked in the, you know, in the plants and so forth.
So I think this is just great.
And we're finding many women who work in the plants and don't think that they're Rosie
because they didn't wear the kerchief.
They weren't holding a rithing gun.
And we have to remember that Rosie the Riveter is an umbrella term for any woman who worked
in any defense plant for any amount of time at any job in any city in World War II is
a Rosie and we're finding them still, you know, they are all between the ages of 98
and 103 today.
I needed to be, you know, Pearl Harbor is 82 years ago.
Pearl Harbor was 82 years ago this December, last December.
If there was 17 to get into the factories, 82 plus 17 is 99.
So unless they cheated and sometimes they did, soldiers needed to get in.
But basically our surviving original Rosies are 98 to 103 years old.
And they all still remember their stories.
They all still have memorabilia.
They show us their lapel pins.
They show us their cards.
They show us their welding certificates.
It's inspiring.
I would think it is, you know, and here at Veterans Radio, we're, you know, we're very
big on the storytelling as you are as well.
And we always tell everybody, you know, if you're a veteran or grandpa's a veteran or
whatever it is, get them into that Veterans History Project and record their stories before
they're gone because now, you know, three generations from now, somebody can go and
tap into the, you know, to my story in the, in the, you know, wherever the Library of
Congress and hear my voice, hear my story and say, Oh, that's what he was up to.
So I would encourage everybody in our audience who's, you know, parents were of that age
or grandparents were of that age, start digging because they may be gone, but there's a box
of stuff somewhere.
In everybody's attic, there's something up there, probably, you know, and it's really
incredible that we are finding so many wonderful, wonderful stories about all this.
You know, people didn't necessarily talk about World War II when those soldiers came home.
A lot of soldiers didn't want to talk about it, but they are willing to now talk about
it because they know this is the end of their story, that they need to get it out.
The same thing with Rosies.
We heard over and over people would say, Oh yeah, grandma worked in a factory, but nobody
asked her what she did.
She just worked in a factory and we didn't know what she was doing.
And then she came home.
And so, you know, if there's any regret, we all have, it's that we didn't ask more questions.
But we didn't.
And right now, if, if the Rosies are a veteran of the military and a veteran of the home
front, their story is in the Library of Congress cataloged.
Otherwise, now they were so overwhelmed with Rosies.
Initially, we were promised that all the Rosies would get their interviews in the Library
of Congress, but they were so overwhelmed with the numbers around the country that now
it's just in archives and libraries and open for researchers and all that.
But Library of Congress is only taking the Rosies who are military and home front.
But we've got them in the archives, they're going to be on YouTube's, they're, they're
around and every family gets CDs and grandma's stories so they can give it to all the children,
the grandchildren, the great grandchildren.
I think that's cool.
You know, everybody can kind of expect that grandpa or our uncle Joe or whatever were involved
in the military and okay, that's cool.
But we forget that grandma and aunt Sue were just as involved in the only way that they
could because at that time, of course, they weren't in the military and but their stories
are still just as compelling and useful and if it hadn't been for them, the guys on the
front line wouldn't have been able to do their jobs.
Absolutely true.
And that's why the government had to come up with, as I said, the Lantamac, the best
childcare we've ever had.
They had to give women no excuse to not come to work.
And so this was beyond belief how much great childcare there was at this point.
As they, as the government said, if grandma can chase toddlers around the house all day
long, grandma should be on the line.
Right.
Yeah.
The goodness, the war was over.
Childcare was ripped up.
Housing changed from workers to vet returning vets.
Jobs, you know, changed.
Women went back to home or they stayed.
Men had to deal with this.
There was a lot of, a lot of juggling of the, of our lives because of World War II.
Oh, absolutely.
They have never disappeared because women bucked up, as I said, and they knew they could
do it and their lives were never the same.
Yeah.
You know, and, you know, people of our generation, you're much younger than I am, but the, you
know, this is, but, you know, our parents, especially our parents, our parents, our
family, my father, never talked about his, his time in his service.
And, you know, it took until the end of his life, unfortunately, it was too short, but
at the end of their lives, World War II veterans put it that way before they opened up, you
know, and in, in, in our generation of Vietnam generation, you know, we're finally getting
our veterans to open up about their stories.
The same thing.
And I think that's, it's, you're at the point in your life where you look back and say,
what did I accomplish?
What did I, what did I do?
You know, what, what, you know, the best of times and the worst of times type of thing.
And these stories are important.
And you know, they, they show that your family, you know, had the guts to, to, to change the
guts to move the guts to go somewhere and try something different or do something different
instead of staying wherever it was, you know, especially, you know, my dad's family is
way back in the hollers of Tennessee and, you know, he'd still be there if he hadn't,
if it hadn't been for World War II.
You know, until they built the housing, every single bed house dormitory, anything you want
to say in all the surrounding areas around Ipsy, we're taken by workers.
I'm sure.
But until they built that housing stuff, people were living in mean twos and in their cars
and going home by the hundreds every week because people expected Henry Ford to give
them a good job, good pay and housing, you know, and when that didn't happen, they went
home, they said, well, at least in Kentucky, I had a house for my kids, right?
Wasn't living in the back of some trailer.
So that's why housing was so unbelievably important to this.
And they did it.
Then they did it.
I think that's so cool.
So is there anything else you'd like to say, Claire?
I don't think so.
I mean, I hope people come out to the wonderful new Rosie exhibit.
Excuse me.
Out at the Yankee Air Museum, we opened it up on Veterans Day last year.
And it's a five room display exhibition of Rosie.
It's fabulous.
So they should come to the Yankee Air Museum, see our airplanes, fly in our warbirds, learn
all about Rosie.
That's okay.
I had to talk it for quite a while.
Yeah, everybody, I would encourage you to get out there and get to our local Yankee Air
Museum, which is out in Willow Run.
I just got notification.
I don't have the dates in front of me, but Thunder over Michigan is coming up.
I think at the end of July, and I'm going to have vipers.
I saw that.
Whoa, that'd be cool.
When you get to go on rides in helicopters, B-17s and all the other stuff, I want to thank
Claire for being here on Veterans Radio.
Let us know if there's anything else that goes on with the Rosie.
We'd love to talk with you again and to talk about what these women did during World War
II.
So thank you very much, Claire.
We'll be right back after this message.
All right.
And we are back here on Veterans Radio.
And we're having just a wonderful time today.
Welcome to Claire Dahl and her story of the Rosie of the Riveters.
One of the things that motivated me to reach out to Claire was a couple of years ago, we
saw a play out at the Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea, Michigan that was called Willow
Run.
And it was all about the four women who were working at the airplane factory there.
And it was really great play.
I don't know where it's playing now or where it might be, but it's a great play if you
get the opportunity to see it.
It's really interesting.
It showed a lot of the stories of these four women.
There were single women, married women, women with kids, and so forth.
So if you get an opportunity, I think it probably is up on YouTube too.
It's called Willow Run.
So I would encourage you to look at it.
And also want to remind you, Larry San Antoine was talking about Camp Liberty.
Camp Liberty is just an amazing place out in Brooklyn, Michigan, and it's designed to
help disabled veterans to go hunting, fishing, and all kinds of things.
So I really encourage you to support them.
Their website again is camplibertymichigan.org.
Camplibertymichigan.org.
And they've got some great events coming up.
I think it's in June.
I think it's in June when they have their car show.
I think we mentioned that in the interview.
This year, all of you old car enthusiasts, some great things were out there.
And there were helicopter rides.
So they're trying to get that again this year.
I'm really pleased with the way that things are working.
When we get a chance to promote these local nonprofit organizations that are helping veterans.
So if you have one out there that you would like us to promote for you or to tell your
story, please just give us a contact.
It's a Dale at veteransradio.org.
And I will try everything I can to get you on the air.
So it's a Dale at veteransradio.org.
The other thing is to remind you that we've got almost 600 programs in our archives.
And so if you go to veteransradio.org, you can just type in World War II, Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan, women veterans benefits, whatever it is.
And I'll bet you that there's going to be a program there that talks about that.
So we encourage you to go to our website and listen to those older programs.
And also we have podcasts going out now.
So most of those sites that carry podcasts, you can listen to them there.
So I want you to get involved.
If you'd like to get involved, that's the other thing.
If you would like to support veterans radio, you can go to veteransradio.org.
Click on the donate button.
Very simple.
And we would greatly appreciate it right now.
We're just asking for $20 for 20 years.
And we're hoping that you can do that.
We've got about a minute to go.
So I want to make sure that we thank our sponsors.
I didn't get a chance to do that at the beginning.
That's legal help for veterans specializing in veteran disability claims.
Give them a call 800-693-4800, National Veterans Business Development Council,
or better known as NBBDC.
You can give them a call at 888-237-8433.
And the Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center here in Ann Arbor.
For more information, go to their website.
That's va.gov.
Ann Arbor Healthcare.
And as I mentioned before, if you'd like to become a sponsor, just go to our website.
There's a button there for you to find out what we are looking for.
So we're going to be going out again with a God bless America version.
I love this song.
I love what it stands for.
So I want to make sure that you get to hear it.
So stick around.
And until next week, this is Dale Thronebray.
For all of us here at Veterans Radio, you are dismissed.
God bless America.
It's land that I love.
Stand beside her, hand guide her through the night with your life from above.
From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, white for more.
God bless America.
My home, sweet home.
God bless America.
It's land that I love.
Stand beside her, hand guide her through the night with your life from above.
From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, white for more.
God bless America.
My home, sweet home.
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