Bertha (“Buddie”) Curnutte was a riveter on P40 and C47 airplanes in Cheetawaga, NY, about 50 miles east of Buffalo at Curtis Wright Manufacturing, for two years during World War II. One of her most vivid memories is that a plane crashed while being test flown from the grounds, which heightened the women’s concerns to do first-quality work. “Every rivet we made was with worry that if we did a bad job, lives would be lost.”

Then, she joined the Coast Guard and chose the medical corps to contribute in a different way. She remembers 100s of women on the train going to the all-male Coast Guard base on Manhattan Beach, Sheep’s Head Bay, Brooklyn, and when they arrived,they were the first women, and guards surrounded the base to keep men out. They marched constantly, it was January and snowy, they did not have uniforms, and women who had only high

Mazie Mullins, from Clendenin, was a Rosie the Riveter. During World War II, she riveted bombers at Goodyear Aircraft in Akron. She actively works with Thanks! Plain and Simple and other Rosies to make the West Virginia Rosie the Riveter Project a model for America .