(Tribune News Service) — Rita Uhl Consolvo’s aged hands trembled as she signed a 1943 Norman Rockwell poster of a brawny woman, donning work clothes and goggles atop her head, and a riveter on her lap.

Titled “Rosie,” the painted woman is an icon that symbolizes the “can do” strength of women across generations, and so is the 97-year-old woman who sheepishly signed the artwork.

“Are you sure you want me to sign it?” Consolvo asked.

“Yes!” rang out from several museum staff and guests before her marker met the artwork.

Consolvo, an original “Rosie the Riveter,” was one of the more than 5 million women who took up factory jobs to free a man to fight in World War II.

She celebrated “Rosie the Riveter Day” with the Hampton Roads community Saturday at the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach. The annual celebration featured riveting demonstrations, hands-on history lessons, and a presentation by Consolvo.

At just 18 years of age, Consolvo followed her sister Marguerite to a factory job in June 1944, traveling from Sioux City, Iowa to Long Beach, California. She worked as a welder at the Harvey Machine Company, which was converted from manufacturing washing machines to producing the P-38 Lightning. The twin-engine fighter aircraft was widely used by U.S. forces during World War II. Consolvo’s job was acetylene welding, which conjoined the two aluminum halves of oxygen tanks for P-38 pilots.

“Oh, it had to be a perfect line,” Consolvo said of her welding.

The women worked a typical workday, 8 hours a day, five days a week, Consolvo said. But the setting was anything but typical. Aircraft factories were the target of air raids. She recalls factories were disguised as suburban neighborhoods, with camouflage netting stretched across several building tops and fake trees strategically positioned.

Much of her memories have faded with time, Consolvo said, but she remembers the group of women she worked with as always “happy and willing” to work in the factories.

“We loved it. We loved what we were doing, and were happy to work,” Consolvo said.

Saturday marked the third annual Rosie the Riveter Day at the Virginia Beach museum.  It typically draws 200-300 guests, according to Keegan Chetwynd, museum director.

The event is meant to celebrate the contributions of women during World War II, as well as recognize the cultural shift that occurred as a result, Chetwynd said. The timing coincides with a national effort to recognize March 21 as a “Rosie the Riveter Day of Remembrance.”

“It forevermore opened up a huge portion of the workforce, and it proved the notion that women could work in a factory. Women can do those jobs,” Chetwynd said.

Around the museum, young girls and older women, spanning all ages, sported red and white polka-dot bandanas matching that of the iconic “We Can Do It” Rosie the Riveter poster.

Noel Stokes, a Virginia Beach resident, brought her 5-year-old, Eliza, to the event as a “mommy-daughter day” activity. The mother-daughter duo, wearing matching denim outfits and red bandanas, went from station to station, making factory badges, coloring Rosie posters and learning how to do their hair like a Rosie.

“I always tell her ‘girl power.’ I want her to be strong and know she can do anything she wants to do and she can join whatever she wants to join,” Stokes said of her daughter. “I want her to be tough like a Rosie.”

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