(Tribune News Service) — Seven women met for lunch with friends in Troy, Mich. on Monday to celebrate a rare honor: receiving a Congressional gold medal.

All are considered “Rosie the Riveters” — World War II-era women who worked or volunteered to support the war effort.

Those at Monday’s lunch shared experiences ranging from factory jobs assembling bomber wings or instrument panels to administrative jobs to roles knitting afghans or assembling war ration books for those in the military.

Some had attended the official April 10 ceremony in Washington, D.C. taking home small bronze replicas of the medal.

Organizers of Monday’s luncheon at Shields Pizza in Troy, Jeannette Gutierrez, president of the American Rosie the Riveter Association’s Mich. chapter, and Bette Kenward of Imlay City, vice president of the national ARRA, surprised the few women who couldn’t attend the ceremony with replica medals. ARRA members were key lobbyists for the Medal.

Frances Masters, 102, was working as a market cashier and studying to be a comptometer — an operator of the new mechanical adding machine — at night when the war broke out. A friend of her sister’s said he could get them factory jobs. She went to work at the Willow Run bomber factory in 1941. The work was intense and school got hard. She quit the comptometer classes. After the war, she picked up a job at Chrysler’s Dodge Main in Hamtramck. She spent the rest of her career there, advancing from a job on a factory floor to a quality control position.

Gladys Trimper, 97, was 16 when YWCA officials visited Dearborn High School looking for students to join the Girl Reserves. Trimper joined and learned how to knit squares that were turned into afghans for those in the military. She still knits, but enjoys crocheting more.

One of the youngest Rosies, Joan Finlay, 88, was 6 years old when the war started. She helped her father put together war ration coupons. She still has two books of the tickets.

Delphine Klaput, 99, worked in a factory delivering small parts or transporting blueprints for aircraft instrument panels.

“They’d hand me a blueprint and say ‘No bathroom, no talking, just go bring this blueprint to your desk.’ Sometimes they sent a guard with me,” she said.

Virginia Rusch, 97, of Ypsilanti, is called “the baby” of the group. Her eyes twinkled as she recalled getting a job at 15 — she put on a little lipstick and pretended she was 17 to get hired — to solder metal cones onto bomber wings at Republic Aircraft in Detroit.

“I wanted the money so I could buy pretty clothes,” she said, laughing. When the war was over, she left the workforce for marriage and family.

Audrey Bolton, 98, left rural Port Hope immediately after high school graduation for a job in Detroit. She ended up working with her mom in a Chrysler plant.

“It was scary. Everything was rationed — gas, meat, food,” she said. “And then you were afraid a plane would come and bomb us.”

She’s made new friends since joining the Rosies group, she said, and enjoys their time together.

Jeanne Breese, 99, of Shelby Township, was married when the war started. Her husband left his job at Zenith Carburetor for the military. She took over his job.

“We were needed. After our husbands were gone and there was nobody left to fill in,” she said. After the war, she gave up her job but her husband couldn’t return to it. He developed an aversion to close spaces and switched to construction, “where he could be outside.” They had six children and have countless grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Friends and fans who joined the women for lunch included Robert Webb, whose mom Ruth Pearson Webb rode on a farm truck filled with hay bales from Terre Haute, Ind., to Inkster during the war looking for work. She was the oldest of 16 children and wanted to help keep the family farm going — and she did it while working at the Willow Run plant. Webb choked up talking about how much the Congressional medal means to him as an honor for his late mother.

“A lot of people don’t realize how big a deal this is,” he said.

Fewer than 200 have been issued since 1776. The medal is the highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions. The original gold medal for the Rosies remains on display at the National Museum of American History.

Another Rosie fan, George Leland, 99, a World War II Army Air Force veteran, hitchhiked from Detroit to Selfridge Air Base on his 18th birthday to enlist, leaving for boot camp before his high school graduation ceremony. His mother picked up his diploma.

Leland spent the war based in Italy as a nose gunner in a B-24 Liberator bomber. The only time he ever got close to the ground on missions over Germany, Italy and eastern European countries was a single hard landing in Yugoslavia. War, he said, taught him the importance of survival and camaraderie.

“Ten guys on a ship and you become like brothers,” he said. His wife, Delores, died four years ago.

“You get sort of attached after 70 years,” he said, his eyes watering. The Rosies are wonderful friends, he added.

“They’re the best thing that ever happened to me. They’re terrific, terrific, terrific ladies,” he said.

After a pizza lunch and chocolate cake, Gutierrez and Kenward read speeches made on April 10 and surprised Trimmer and Finlay with their own bronze replicas.

Trimmer brought a scrapbook featuring her brother and uncle, both World War II veterans, to share with those at the luncheon. Others brought a photo album from a 2023 trip to Washington D.C. for the Rosies and one for the gold medal presentation.

Kenward joined the Rosies group to honor her late grandmother who never mentioned working during the war. She found her family’s ration cards, which listed her grandmother, Detroiter Marion Chapin, as a war worker for her job installing fuses on 155mm artillery shells.

“It gave me goosebumps to see those words,” Kenward said, adding that she wants to celebrate all the surviving Rosies in a way that her grandmother never experienced.

She said most women don’t realize they were critical war workers because they didn’t work as riveters.

“Their patriotism for our country was doing what they needed to do at a time when our country needed them,” Kenward said, adding that she hopes to meet more women who filled that role during World War II.

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