Mary Doyle Keefe, who served as the model for Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter painting while a 19-year-old telephone operator, has died, following a short illness. She was 92.
Keefe grew up in Arlington, Vermont, and met Rockwell, who lived in West Arlington, in 1943. She spent two Saturdays posing for the picture, which was on the cover of the May 29, 1943, Saturday Evening Post, earning $5 each time. She was petite, but Rockwell envisioned Rosie being strong, and modeled her after Michelangelo's Isaiah at the Sistine Chapel, with large arms, hands, and shoulders. More than two decades later, Rockwell wrote Keefe a letter, telling her she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and saying he was sorry for making her so big, writing, "I did have to make you into sort of a giant."
Although she symbolized the millions of American women who went to work during World War II, and the image was later used to sell war bonds, Keefe said she was never treated any differently by her friends in Arlington. "People didn't make a big deal about things back then," she told The Associated Press. The painting is now at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
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