Levittown woman, an original Rosie the Riveter, to share a congressional gold medal

Mae Krier of Levittown fought Hitler by building bombers. Next month, Congress will give her a medal for it.

Krier, who will turn 98 next week, is an original “Rosie the Riveter,” a catchall term for the women who flooded factories and shipyards during World War II to build the planes, ships, and bombs needed to vanquish the Nazis and Japan. As it happens, Krier was an actual riveter.

“Hitler once said American women were too interested in makeup to work,” Krier said. “We showed him what American women were made of.”

Rosies are best symbolized by an iconic 1943 poster by graphic artist J. Howard Miller. A woman in a blue work shirt displays her right bicep, on her head a red bandanna with white polka dots. The copy reads “We Can Do It!”

With so many men at war, it fell to women to build up the nation’s arsenal. That opened a previously closed-off opportunity. “Until 1941 [when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor],” Krier said, “It was a man’s world.”

To gain recognition for her sisters in armaments, Krier has been speaking to veterans groups and active-duty service members across the nation as a Rosie ambassador. Her message has been a simple one:

“If we don’t get a medal soon,” she said, “all the Rosies will be gone.” After decades of lobbying, she’ll be accepting the Congressional Gold Medal — the oldest and highest civilian award — for herself, as well as for the estimated 12 million to 18 million other Rosies, the vast majority of whom are no longer alive.

Military people love her, from grunts to generals. Veterans invite her to fly in their planes or march in their parades.

“She’ll go to the Pentagon and be hugged like a celebrity,” said Deb Woolson, who was a community outreach administrator for now-retired State Sen. Andy Dinniman (D., Chester County).

On April 10, when the medal will be conferred in the U.S. Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, Krier will be accompanied by about 30 other Rosies who range in age from their late 90s to 106. Krier credits Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) for pushing through the legislation that’s made the medal a reality.

Born in Dawson, N.D., in 1926, Krier, whose maiden name was Burkett, was the great-granddaughter of Austrian immigrants who pioneered the Dakota Territory in covered wagons in the 1880s.

“They came for the amber waves of grain they’d heard about,” she said. “But no one told them you freeze your butts off up there.”

As a teenager, Krier left home for Seattle, where she got a job at the Boeing Aircraft Co. That’s where Krier first saw the B-17 bomber.

“I’ve had a love affair with that plane,” said Krier, her eyes sparkling behind silver-framed glasses.

Maybe it was the muscular aircraft’s lines, or just how important it was, especially for the D-Day invasion. But the four-engine “Flying Fortress,” bristling with machine guns and laden with bombs, captivated Krier.

To help build B-17s, she drove endless numbers of rivets into the plane’s metal sheathing for 93 cents an hour — half of what men got. She kept at it for two years, helping fill the skies with machines that saved the world.

When the war ended, Krier said, “Men came home to fancy parades but women in the factories got pink slips. Many of them were widows who were put out on the street. This angered me.”

Someone once asked her, “Did you go back to the kitchen?” She responded, “Yeah, and to the bedroom, too. That’s where all the baby boomers came from.”

Krier and her husband, Norm, had two children, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren. Norm died at 93 in 2014 after nearly 70 years of marriage.

The work of Krier and other Rosies serves to “introduce history to inspire the future,” said Sarah Pritchard, executive director of the Rosie the Riveter Trust, nonprofit partner of the Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif.

“When people know that their grandmother was a Rosie, that’s a piece of pride for them. Without Rosies, many say, we could never have won the war.”

While Krier said she’s elated to see the medal awarded to Rosies, it doesn’t mean that her public life is done.

In June, she’ll go to France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. She maintains, with partners, a Facebook page and a podcast about women breaking barriers.

Krier travels to symposia when she can, and speaks to girls and young women about “how we need more of them as astronauts, or in engineering.” Underscoring all of that is a primary message she never fails to convey:

“Don’t give up on your dreams. You won’t know what you can do until you try.”