FORT BENNING, Ga., (Oct. 7, 2015) -- June Tinker had a humble start in life.
The daughter of a World War I veteran, Tinker was raised in mountainous Greenbrier County, West Virginia. There she lived during the Great Depression, in a small cabin on her grandfather's farm with her parents and five brothers and sisters (three other siblings would come after the Depression ended).
Her father, who suffered being gassed in France by the Germans, was a coal miner and his jobs were sporadic.
"My mother took ironing and sewing from some of the people who didn't have as many children and maybe had a little money to pay," she said.
Tinker began her education in a one-room schoolhouse, and she had to walk through the mountains with her brothers and sisters to get there. After her Family moved to a small town, however, she rode the bus to a larger school.
Tinker recalls how nervous she was, being a small girl from the mountains, to attend school in a two-story building, but one of her most vivid memories is of the food.
"I thought, 'I wonder if I'll ever get to eat any of that,' because I can still remember how it smelled. But, we were very poor and we couldn't afford that," she said.
Growing up in an area devastated by the Depression, Tinker learned the value of a dollar.
"Since I have grown up and got away, I have never been penniless," she said. "I'll go to my grave, I guess, thinking I've got to have at least a penny. I've got to have something."
In 1943, to help in the war effort and following in her older sister's footsteps, Tinker joined the National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency that provided work and education for young people in America.
Tinker's two older brothers joined the Marines and were fighting in the South Pacific.
"It was an opportunity to get out of the Depression area that I was living in at home," she said. "It was an opportunity for all of us to get away, not that we wanted to leave home so bad, but to get out of that situation and to make some money, make a better life."
Tinker's work with the NYA during WWII made her a part of history, though she didn't realize at the time the importance of being a Rosie the Riveter.
"I was very young, and it was just a job. It didn't hit me until years later just how close I was to the war," she said.
The NYA sent Tinker to Charleston, West Virginia, to learn how to acetylene weld, though she never used that skill in her work. She was supposed to go to Baltimore to work in the shipyards, but when her six-week training was over they weren't ready to send her to work, so they trained her with typing, filing and other office duties.
"When it came time for them to deploy me, they sent me to Patterson Field, Ohio, which was an airplane factory where they built and repaired airplanes," she said.
Tinker learned new skills at the airplane factory.
"I never did use my welding, but they taught me how to rivet, and how to work in sheet metal, blue prints and office work. The main thing I did was riveting," she said. "They would bring planes back from overseas that were barely able to fly. They had bullet holes in them. They were burned and the old part was taken off and I learned to help cut the sheet metal and form it to go on the planes."
Tinker was a bucker.
"When you're a riveter, there's one who holds a rivet gun on the outside and (the bucker) has to go on the inside and hold a heavy metal thing on the inside so when the rivet comes through it flares out and seals it. I worked on the inside," she said.
Tinker became a Rosie at the age of 17, and at the time, to her, it was just a job.
"At that time, you didn't even think about doing anything that would be remembered," she said.
But Tinker, who recently turned 90, has now seen Rosie the Riveter portrayed as an important asset to the efforts of WWII.
"It's touching. It really does affect me deeply now to know what we did and how important we were to the war effort. Even though it has been 70 years since the war was over, it still makes me proud," she said.
Tinker, a member of the American Rosie the Riveter Association, will share her Rosie story at the Rosie the Riveter Social, an event to honor WWII veterans and Rosie the Riveters during the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Nov. 3 at The Benning Club.
In addition to talking about her experience as a Rosie, she will sing and play her guitar.
One of the songs she will perform is an original that she wrote for her mother, who taught her her to play guitar when she was 13-years-old.
"One night, it was about 12 o'clock, I couldn't sleep and I got to thinking about my brother," she said. "One of my brothers was killed on Iwo Jima and I just had the inspiration that night to honor him. I sat down that night and within 30 minutes I had this song written."
Tinker said she calls the song "Gold Star Mother" because she can remember her mother having a gold star in her window.
"I remember how she grieved over my brother. He was the oldest child," she said.
The song says, "... Mama had a gold star. Her heart was full of pain, for on a foreign battlefield her darling son was slain. He was known by his comrades and commanders all alike, as Katy the well-liked sergeant, but we all called him Ike. Our mother called him Kenneth, that was his given name ..."
"Usually when I sing it somebody cries. It was a long time before I could sing it without crying, because it's touching," she said.
Tinker said events like the Rosie the Riveter Social comfort her.
"I feel a camaraderie with my other Rosies and it is interesting to find out what they did as opposed to the things I did," she said.
She also thinks it is important for today's Soldiers to come these events.
"They're in the service, but they don't know firsthand anything about what we did or what we can still do at our age," she said. "The way they do things in the service has changed so drastically. It's nothing like it was back then."
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