Mae Krier, Bucks County’s very own “Rosie the Riveter,” has been named the 2024 recipient of the Bucks County Women’s History Month Award. In 1987, Congress passed legislation designating the month of March as Women’s History Month.
Additional resolutions were passed to authorize the President to declare March of each year as Women’s History Month. In Bucks County, sponsoring organizations including the Bucks County Commissioners Advisory Council for Women, have been celebrating accomplishments of women and awarding the Annual Bucks County Women’s History Month Award since 1981 to a woman who has shown herself to be an ideal role model and has demonstrated exemplary character and integrity with outstanding leadership.
Women representing about a dozen Bucks County organizations serve on the nominating committee.
“Rosie the Riveter” was the star of a campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for defense industries during World War II.
Rosie became one of the most successful recruitment tools in American history and the most iconic image of working women in World War II. Women who worked to produce tanks, ships, planes, and other weapons during World War II called themselves “Rosies.”
Ms. Krier, an original Rosie the Riveter, worked at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle, producing B-17s and B-29s for the war effort from 1943 to 1945. Krier has spent the last 40+ years advocating for formal recognition of the role women played in supporting the war effort during WWII.
She was instrumental in Congress’s 2017 decision to annually recognize March 21st as National Rosie the Riveter Day and the passing of the 2020 Rosie the Riveter Congressional Gold Medal Act.
The act collectively awards the Congressional Gold Medal to more than 16 million women who built aircraft, vehicles, weaponry, and ammunition during the war. “Though we weren’t in the trenches,” she noted in an interview, “I thought Rosie needed some kind of recognition for what she did during the war. Everything the soldiers needed, we made – planes, Jeeps, ships, tanks, ammunition, parachutes. We were soldiers without guns.”
Krier will be honored at a reception on her 98th birthday and Rosie the Riveter Day, Thursday, March 21st at 5:15pm in the James-Lorah Memorial Home Auditorium at 132 North Main Street in Doylestown.
For more information or to purchase tickets in advance, contact Marilyn.puchalski@gmail.com. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.
PHOTO CAP: Mae Krier