Vermont Public is independent, community-supported media, serving Vermont with trusted, relevant and essential information. We share stories that bring people together, from every corner of our region. New to Vermont Public? Start here.

© 2024 Vermont Public | 365 Troy Ave. Colchester, VT 05446

Public Files:
WVTI · WOXM · WVBA · WVNK · WVTQ · WVTX
WVPR · WRVT · WOXR · WNCH · WVPA
WVPS · WVXR · WETK · WVTB · WVER
WVER-FM · WVLR-FM · WBTN-FM

For assistance accessing our public files, please contact hello@vermontpublic.org or call 802-655-9451.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

VPR's coverage of arts and culture in the region.

Vermont Model For Rockwell's 'Rosie The Riveter' Dies At 92

Jim Cole
/
AP/file
Mary Doyle Keefe poses in 2002 at her home in Nashua, N.H., with the May 29, 1943 cover of the Saturday Evening Post depicting her face as "Rosie the Riveter." Keefe, who posed for Norman Rockwell when she was 19, died on Tuesday after a brief illness.

Vermont native Mary Doyle Keefe, the model for Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 "Rosie the Riveter" painting that symbolized the millions of American women who went to work on the home front during World War II, has died. She was 92. 

Keefe died Tuesday in Simsbury, Conn., after a brief illness, said her daughter, Mary Ellen Keefe.

Keefe grew up in Arlington, where she met Rockwell — who lived in West Arlington — and posed for his painting when she was a 19-year-old telephone operator. The painting was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943. 

Although Keefe was petite, Rockwell’s “Rosie the Riveter” had large arms, hands and shoulders. The painting shows the red-haired Rosie in blue jean work overalls sitting down, with a sandwich in her left hand, her right arm atop a lunchbox with the name “Rosie” on it, a rivet gun on her lap and her feet resting on a copy of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf.” The entire background is a waving American flag.

Rockwell wanted Rosie to show strength and modeled her body on Michelangelo’s “Isaiah,” which is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Keefe, who never riveted herself, was paid $5 for each of two mornings she posed for Rockwell and his photographer, Gene Pelham, whose pictures Rockwell used when he painted.

Keefe, who never riveted herself, was paid $5 for each of two mornings she posed for Rockwell and his photographer, Gene Pelham, whose pictures Rockwell used when he painted.

“You sit there and he takes all these pictures,” Keefe told The Associated Press in 2002. “They called me again to come back because he wanted me in a blue shirt and asked if I could wear penny loafers.”

Credit Beth J. Harpaz / AP
/
AP
The painting is now part of the permanent collection at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

Twenty-four years after she posed, Rockwell sent her a letter calling her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and apologizing for the hefty body in the painting.

“I did have to make you into a sort of a giant,” he wrote.

The Rosie painting — not to be confused with a poster by a Pittsburgh artist depicting a woman flexing her arm under the words “We Can Do It” — would later be used in a nationwide effort to sell war bonds. 

Keefe said people in Arlington didn’t make too much of a fuss about her being in the Rosie painting, aside from teasing her a little about Rosie’s big arms.

“People didn’t make a big deal about things back then,” she told the AP.

Keefe graduated from Temple University with a degree in dental hygiene, and was working as a dental hygienist in Bennington, when she met her husband of 55 years, Robert Keefe, who died in 2003.

The painting is now part of the permanent collection at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

Keefe spent the last eight years in a retirement community in Simsbury, according to an obituary prepared by her family.

She graduated from Temple University with a degree in dental hygiene, and was working as a dental hygienist in Bennington, when she met her husband of 55 years, Robert Keefe, who died in 2003. They had four children and lived in Whitman, Mass., and later in Nashua, N.H.

Keefe’s family will receive friends and take part in a memorial Mass on Friday at McLean Village in Simsbury. A graveside service is scheduled for Saturday at Park Lawn Cemetery in Bennington.

The Associated Press is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, it's a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members.
Latest Stories