Historic Bay Area shipyard hosts celebration as two of World War II’s legendary ‘Rosies’ turn 100

RICHMOND — Dozens of well-wishers turned the S.S. Red Oak Victory, a floating World War II museum in Richmond’s historic Kaiser Shipyard, into a party on Jan. 31, celebrating the 100 years of life lived by Jeanne Gibson and Marian Sousa.

They popped bottles of sparkling wine, swapped stories and heaped the kind of praise that Gibson remarked is usually reserved for funerals onto the women, even with Sousa missing from the festivities as she recovered from a back injury.

As teenagers, Gibson and Sousa threw themselves into serving their country during World War II. Sousa’s steady hands helped finalize blue prints for warships in Richmond, while Gibson put flame to medal to bring those drawings to life.

A word routinely used to describe the two women was “inspiring.” But neither knew they were helping make history. Like the millions of other women known today as Rosie the Riveters, who took on roles in wartime manufacturing that were previously reserved for men, they were doing their part to fight fascism, end the war and bring the troops home.

“I didn’t do anything great, but I participated in something great. I think that’s how we all felt,” she said, reiterating words memorialized on the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond’s Marina Bay.

Born on Jan. 6, 1926, Sousa was 16 when she moved to the Bay Area from Oregon for the summer to babysit her nephew while her sister worked in the Kaiser Shipyard. A year later, she began working in the same yard as a draftsman. She spent her days editing ship blueprints, after graduating high school and completing an engineering drawing course at UC Berkeley that her art teacher encouraged her to take.

The job required Sousa be 18 years old. The determined and still 17-year-old Sousa Sousa took the job anyway with support from her mother, who helped lie about her age.

In the grand scheme of Sousa’s life, her time at the shipyard was brief. She left after a year of work, expecting her first child. She would go on to have six, four girls and two boys.

“She went into a different kind of production,” joked Tammy Brumley, a museum volunteer affectionately known as the “Rosie Wrangler” for her ongoing work with the surviving women.

Possibly her most impactful work would come later on in life.

Sousa, alongside her sister and fellow Rosie the Riveter Phyllis Gould, worked unrelentingly to memorialize the work women did for the U.S. war effort. Gould, who died in 2021 at 99 years old, spent decades of her life petitioning U.S. presidents to honor the historic impact of working women during World War II. It was former President Barack Obama who ultimately invited the women to the White House.

Their advocacy and that of others, including former Richmond Councilmember Donna Powers, led to the creation of the city’s Rosie the Riveter Memorial in the late ’90s. The monument was the first in the nation to honor the work of women on the home front. Sousa also credits her sister with the formation of National Rosie the Riveter Day, celebrated every March 21, their mother’s birthday.

The creation of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park followed shortly after. A bill passed by Congress and signed by former President Bill Clinton in 2000 formally established the park in partnership with Richmond, the Rosie the Riveter Trust, which was formed a year earlier, and other private property owners.

Much of this local history has been catalogued by Sousa, who has filled binder after binder with newspaper clippings, photos and other documents. Kathy Taylor, a friend of both Sousa and Gibson, said elements of the Rosie story would have been lost if not for Sousa’s dedication to cataloging it all.

It’s work Sousa said she did out of her own personal interest. Now 100 years old, Sousa said she’s content with all she’s accomplished. After spending countless Fridays at the park, telling her story, Sousa finally put down the mic this January as she steps away from volunteering.

“I’ve served not only my family, but my country, my community,” Sousa said.

Outside of a life of service, Sousa is an artist and world traveler. She studied art in London and earned her Associates of Arts in her 60s, and scratched visits to New Zealand, the Panama Canal and the Nile River off her bucket list with her “jewel” of a husband while in their 80s.

Gibson lived a similarly full life.

She was born Feb. 22, 1926, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Interested in serving in some way, she pursued nursing but quickly realized the career wasn’t for her. Despite her father declining to help pay off the semester course tuition so Gibson could quit, she found another way, borrowing money from a friend.

At 18 years old, Gibson and a lifelong friend bought one-way tickets to Seattle where they donned heavy leather protective gear and helmets to protect themselves from the fierce sparks of medal they created as they welded warships.

Gibson would go on to make manifests and hatch lists for the Army Transportation Corps’ Embarkation Center in Juneau, Alaska, before decided to relocate to the Bay Area.

Gibson takes pride in quitting two jobs in San Francisco after learning a lower-ranked colleague was being paid $5 more a month than her.  simply because he was a man or being told she’d hit a career glass ceiling at a job she loved because she was a woman who would probably end up getting married, having babies and leaving the workplace.

The slammed doors motivated Gibson, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and a master’s and Ph.D. in educational psychology from UC Berkeley. Though she never had children of her own, Gibson said in an interview she has hundreds of children after teaching kindergarten through sixth grade for 30 years.

Outside of her career, Gibson traveled, picked up hobbies like weaving and baking, and earned her pilot license, joining a local chapter of the Ninety-Nines, a group for women pilots started by famed flyer Amelia Earhart and 98 others. About 80 years after first getting her driver’s license, Gibson finally hung up her keys this past December.

Whether in the classroom or speaking to a group of curious museum visitors, Gibson’s message has long been the same: girls and women should never let themselves be pushed around simply for their gender.

“Stand up for yourself,” Gibson said. “It feels like that message is more important now than ever in a lot of ways.”