Being our best: We Can Do It

Saturday, February 26, 2011

We Can Do It

I recently finished reading the book "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. It is the true story of Louis Zamperini....a 1936 Olympic runner, a WWII B-24 bombardier who survived a crash in the Pacific and 47 days adrift at sea on a raft surrounded by sharks; he was captured by the Japanese navy and spent the rest of WWII being tortured and starved in Japanese prison camps; an amazing story of grit and survival.
This reminded me of Dean's Mom, Ruby. She was a "Rosie the Riveter" in WWII. She worked at the Glenn L. Martin bomber plant near Omaha, NE at what is now Offutt AFB. She worked in the gunner's turrets installing potentiometers. Her sister, Mabel, worked nights in the cable department making and splicing cable. Ruby's husband-to-be, Vic, worked on the line where the planes were actually assembled. The Glenn L. Martin plant made the B-26 Marauder and the B-29 Superfortress, (not the B-24 Liberator which Zamperini crewed). The Enola Gay, which dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was a B-29 Superfortress built at this plant. Vic may have helped in it's assembly. Ruby and Vic were there when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt toured the factory.

B-26 Marauder

                                          The Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress

     Rosie the Riveter's motto was "We Can Do It." She is a feminist icon in the United States.
    I've always thought of Ruby as being a very strong woman, the Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It" kind of woman. She survived the depression, WWII, several surgeries, and being widowed at the young age of 55. She was a self-supporting widow for 37 years. I don't think she necessarily thought of herself as being strong, but she was. She was a survivor.

                                                        Ruby, taken in the years she worked at Glenn L. Martin

     We are all fortunate that we come from such strong stock.

Quote of the day: "You are the hero of your own story."     Mary McCarthy