Style Blog
By Elahe Izadi April 22



Mary Doyle Keefe in 2002, posing with the May 29, 1943, cover of the Saturday Evening Post, which featured Norman Rockwell’s”Rosie the Riveter.” Keefe was the model for Rosie. (Jim Cole/AP)

You know Mary Doyle Keefe, but maybe not by that name. In 1943, the then-19-year-old telephone operator had been called upon to provide a unique kind of service during the war effort: Become the face of dedicated patriotism from the home front.

Norman Rockwell painted Keefe as “Rosie the Riveter,” an image that graced an iconic Saturday Evening Post cover and “became a symbol for millions of American women who went to work during World War II,” according to the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Keefe, 92, died in Connecticut this week after a brief illness, her family told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

How Keefe’s likeness came to be immortalized — and turned into a symbol of female independence — happened rather serendipitously. Rockwell and Keefe were neighbors in Arlington, Vt., and he often asked folks in the community to pose for his work.