23 March 1917- 16 July 2002
This is for you, Virginia Ruth.
Thanks, Mother for never, ever saying,
“You can’t do that because you’re a girl.”
The majority of the stories told me by my mom of her past in fact involved some type of work—in the fields on her in-laws farm, at the grocery stores that she and my dad owned, at Woolworth’s during the depression and the beginning of the war. However it was obvious to me that her favorite had been working at Consolidated Aircraft in Ft. Worth, Texas, as a draftsman during WW II.
Consolidated Aircraft in Ft. Worth manufactured the B-24 Liberator, the B-32 Dominator, the C-87 Liberator Express, the PB4Y, and the XB-3. She went from being the only woman in her drafting program at the University of Texas to being the only woman in her department at Consolidated Aircraft. Her eyes sparkled when she told me about being the only female in her drafting class at the University of Texas and making one of the highest grades. She became visibly proud to report that her boss at Consolidated refused to even provide her a drafting table or chair in the beginning. She said that she knew she had done well the morning she came to work to find her own chair and drafting table.
When I came on the scene, shortly after the war, my dad was working as a draftsman, a career they had both trained for, but for which a woman was no longer considered suited. I can only imagine how painful that must have been for my mother.
Over her lifetime my mom had many very successful careers, but I am convinced that her time as a draftsman was her favorite, and that had she been allowed, one in which she would have excelled. She maintained that draftsman’s penchant for exactness the rest of her life. It used to drive me crazy when I was a kid and my mom discovered I had to draw or make something for school, because she was always there with her ruler, eraser, T-square, and expertly sharpened pencil to make certain that I got all the dimensions right and had absolutely no erasure marks visible.
Instead life moves on and so did my mom as a business owner, bookkeeper, hotel manager, and real estate agent, each career more successful than the one before. I’ve heard many “Rosie the Riveters” speak of the surge of pride and independence they acquired when they began to get paychecks large enough to make a difference in their families’ lives, and when they realized that women were just as capable as men in jobs that had previously been presented to them as “not ladies’ work.” It was like discovering a big secret that the culture had tried desperately to hide from them. Well, the secret was out of the box, and for most women who held these jobs, there was no going back. Even though the propaganda that encouraged them to get out and work for their men and country suddenly made a 180° turn trying to push them back into their “place” after the war, they weren’t buying it. My mom’s many successes after the war, I believe, were a direct result of the discovery of this knowledge.
The women, who did reluctantly obey the message to give up their jobs “so that a returning soldier may go back to work,” now had this “secret” in their DNA, and passed this important information down to their daughters, who in turn created the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 60s and 70s.
Generously submitted by the family of Virginia Ruth.