When I worked as a reporter in California, a woman named Irmgard would frequently call the newsroom.
“I’m one of the last Rosie the Riveters,” she’d say. “You know her? That one flexing her muscle. I’m one of those.”
One day, after talking with Irmgard a couple of times over the phone, I agreed to go visit her house in rural Mountain Ranch. We needed a feature story, and she sounded so passionate. What was there to lose?
Visiting a Rosie
After driving the 30 minutes to her town, and then another 30 minutes along potholed dirt roads, I arrived to a tilted wooden gate that listed her address. Just beyond, two cars sat buried beneath layers of dirt and leaves. Further down the driveway, a sloped log cabin.
“Um, Irmgard?” I asked into the trees, and then a bit louder, “Irmgard?”
Down the dirt pathway came a woman in her 90s, back curved, hand clutching a walking stick.
“Hi, dear. Welcome,” she rattled. “I was just working on some things. Come inside.”
We walked side-by-side to her cabin, passing branches bundled neatly. “I was putting together some firewood,” she told me. I nodded.
Inside, we walked through the narrow passageway of her kitchen to the small dining space. I paused, not knowing where to sit. Other than where we stood, every surface of the room housed stacks of knickknacks, moth-eaten clothing and woodsy collections, like the orderly piled pinecones on the counter. Irmgard moved aside some papers on a stool.
“Take a seat. I want to tell you my story.”
Irmgard’s story
My eyes fill with tears now at the memory of that day, when this brittle old woman recalled in crisp detail her years laboring in the San Francisco Bay Area during World War II. She showed me copies of her certified worker’s documentation. Described her first husband, and the ones that followed. Told me about her upbringing with a stern German mother, whom she fled as a teenage runaway.
For more than an hour, she talked and I typed and together we pulled out the threads of her life story. Toward the end of the interview, I asked what I always want to know of older people: What’s your secret, Irmgard?
“Flaxseed, wheat germ and lecithin,” she told me without missing a beat. “I sprinkle it on my toast every day. I’m fairly healthy for my age. I was pretty young starting in the shipyard and there aren’t many of us left.”
Yet there in her timber cabin, she stood. Independently. Defiantly. As I wrote back in 2014:
Irmgard Louise Temple, 92, moves around her property with a rope system she looped together. She stores goods in the sheds she built and the shelving units she installed. And with blue eyes alight, she shares tales from the three years she spent as an electrician at the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards in the early 1940s.
After guiding me back to the gated entryway, she wrapped her arms around me. “Thank you for coming to visit,” she said.
Reflections on International Women’s Day
And now four years later, when I have no idea where she is — but like to think she’s in her cabin, arranging collections and eating flaxseed — I want to thank Irmgard.
Thank you for learning and laboring for our country, even though as a woman you were among the first to be discharged. Thank you for living vibrantly on your own terms and yoking yourself to adventure, even while meeting and loving many people. Thanks for being persistent in sharing your story.
When Irmgard was part of the labor force, she accepted as fact that women worked hard but were let go before their male counterparts. When I asked if that bothered her, she simply shrugged.
But now, some 80 years after Irmgard forged her own path, we can continue to advance gender parity. Today on #INWD2018, I vow to celebrate the achievements of other women, whether they’re my colleagues, friends or strangers. I pledge to commend my nieces for being brave and my nephews for being sweet, just as much as I would naturally do the reverse. When I disagree with someone about the meaning of feminism, I commit to speaking up and also listening. And I promise to pay attention and share stories about women like Irmgard in the press for progress.
Great story!