Janine Parry, professor
of political science in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, teaches Arkansas politics, American national
government and courses related to gender, politics and policy. This is her story
of how academic research can sometimes take a surprising, personal turn.
Bessie the Riveter
In
the spring of 2014, Janine Parry was working on final edits to the fifth
edition of Women’s Rights in the U.S.A.,
a scholarly text about gender and how it has
shaped U.S. public policy. Though she was on deadline, she had an idea she
couldn’t resist.
On the wall in front of her was a large, framed print of
Rosie the Riveter, a gift from her mother-in-law. On
different wall downstairs was another Rosie, an oil painting of Parry herself,
posing as the famous riveter. This was a gift too, from her own mother, who
also painted it, based on a photograph taken several years ago when Parry and
her daughter Kate dressed up as the World War II icon for Halloween.
While
going through the edits, Parry was inspired to find a photograph of a real-life
Rosie, an image that she and co-author Dorothy McBride could insert into the
text where they discuss the flood of women into factories and shipyards during
World War II. Adding such an image would align with Parry’s recent efforts to
incorporate more photographs and other media into her classroom presentations.
Parry
wanted a high-quality, aesthetic photograph with good composition, preferably
a whole-body shot of a woman toiling in one of these facilities. A quick
internet search yielded a promising candidate, a thumbnail image credited to
the Library of Congress and embedded in an article about mass production. Parry
liked the photograph, but she needed assurance that it wasn’t copyright protected,
and she wanted more choices.
She
was also in a hurry. The publisher was demanding chapters, and Parry was buried
in copy. So she delegated. She asked Autumn Lewis, BA ’14, a recent honors
graduate and research assistant, to go online and see what she could find. As an
example of what she was looking for, Parry forwarded the article with the
photograph.
By
that time, Lewis was living in Washington D.C., where she had moved only days
after graduating to begin working full-time for then Sen. Mark Pryor, B.A. ’85,
J.D. ’88. Living in a new city, she worked evenings and weekends to complete
tasks for her former professor.
Not
only did she find an entire collection of Rosie images Parry could use, Lewis
tracked down the photograph that
appeared in the article Parry sent her. She found it among a series of similar
images at the Library of Congress’ website, as part of a Farm Security
Administration/Office of War Information collection.
“When
I found the photo from the article, I was extremely excited,” said Lewis, who
now works as assistant director of development in the College of Engineering. “It
had such dynamic composition and color that I thought it would make a great
addition to the book.”
Lewis
downloaded the image, along with several files from the series, and sent them
to Parry. In the same e-mail, she included a link to the entire collection and information
about reprinting Library of Congress photos.
Though
any of the photographs Lewis sent would have worked, she and Parry preferred
the original image, the one that appeared in the industrialization article,
mainly because it showed the riveter’s entire body. But Parry was fond of the
photograph for another reason: She suspected the woman in it was her
grandmother.
For
many years, Bessie Mae Webb Gorman talked about the day a professional
photographer visited Consolidated Vultee Aircraft in Fort Worth, Texas, and took
pictures of her riveting the wing of a Liberator Bomber. Gorman had left tiny
Baird, Texas, to live with her sister and brother-in-law in Fort Worth, while
her husband, J.D., by that time a corporal in the Army Air Corps, was stationed
outside London. Though she enjoyed the work – in a letter to her in-laws back
home, she described it as “hard but really interesting” and “a man size job but
I guess we women ask for it” – Gorman stayed at Consolidated for less than a
year. Her husband was re-assigned and sent back to the United States. Now on
the move as a military spouse, eventually settling in Spokane, Washington, Bess
Gorman did not find out how or if the photographs were used.
Bessie Webb Gorman in 1943 dressed for work at Consolidated Vultee
Lynda Webb Parry and her Mother Bessie Webb Gorman in 1990
Bessie Webb Gorman and granddaughter Janine
In
1992, the Fort Worth Times published
a story about the women who worked at Consolidated during the war. The story
included a photograph, in which Bess appeared, but she was in the background,
among several other women.
“My
mother loved seeing the newspaper article,” said Lynda Parry, Janine Parry’s
mother, “but she was a little disappointed that it was not the ‘special’
picture. She was sure there were more out there.”
The
Times story motivated Lynda Parry and
Bess Gorman to search for the special photograph. Lynda wrote letters to LIFE, Saturday Evening Post and the Fort Worth paper. The internet was
new then, and Lynda searched various magazine websites. “We tried all these
things,” she said, “and we got nowhere.” After her mother died in 2000, Lynda
Parry continued to hunt for the photograph. She was unsuccessful.
“Of
course, I knew about this when I was growing up,” said Janine Parry. “I was
very close to my grandmother. When she and my mom talked about this, my sisters
and I listened carefully.”
Decades
of listening informed Parry that her grandmother had worked at Consolidated, a
detail she included in her internet search for a real-life Rosie.
Pressured
to send content to the publisher, Parry included the photograph in the fifth
edition of Women’s Rights in the U.S.A.
It appears in black and white, on page 8, accompanied by this caption, which
Parry wrote: “… Here, an unidentified employee of the Consolidated Aircraft
Corporation in Fort Worth, Texas, works on a Liberator Bomber in October 1942.”
Though
they talked about it, Lynda Parry did not see the photograph until it appeared
in her daughter’s book. Initially, she was incredulous. There was no question
that the woman looked like her mother, but the black and white image did not
reveal enough features for Lynda to know for sure.
She scanned the photograph and posted it on Facebook, which led to discussions with family members back in Texas. (Bess Gorman had 13 siblings, and Lynda Parry has had more than 50 cousins.) One family member dug further into the Library of Congress collection and shared the original, color image, which Lynda had not yet seen.
She scanned the photograph and posted it on Facebook, which led to discussions with family members back in Texas. (Bess Gorman had 13 siblings, and Lynda Parry has had more than 50 cousins.) One family member dug further into the Library of Congress collection and shared the original, color image, which Lynda had not yet seen.
“With the color photo, I felt like we had
really found mom,” said Lynda Parry. “That picture, in my mind, became less of
a question mark and more of… yeah, that’s mom… that’s my mom.”
A
photographer herself, Lynda Parry studied the color, digital file. She used a
magnifying glass and zoomed in on various areas, including the subject’s
hairline and hands.
“Both mom and I did not have nice
fingernails,” she said. “We were always sewing and knitting and crocheting, you
know, so our fingernails weren’t pristine like some of these other women. In
that photo, it’s my mother hands; I’d bet money on that. In fact, I have the
same finger. If I match it up to the forefinger in that photo, the one holding
the tool, um… yeah.”
And then there are the white shoes. Lynda
Parry subsequently matched those worn by her mother in the photograph to the
same shoes on Bess Gorman in a different photograph from the same era.
Lynda Parry then discovered another clue, a
feature that had not been visible in the black and white photograph: a button
near her mother’s left shirt lapel. Even in the color version, a shadow makes
it difficult to see what’s on the button. Zooming in, Lynda Parry found small
lettering and a number – 19.
Inspired
by communication with her cousins, and now curious about this mysterious
number, Lynda Parry returned to a scrapbook of her mother’s papers. This
collection contained scores of primary documents, including letters Bess had
written to family and friends and miscellaneous forms from her time at
Consolidated. One of these forms was a work log of sorts, a training record
that included information about the type and number of parts Bess Gorman had processed
over a specific period of time. At the top of this document, next to the Bess
Gorman’s name, was the number 19.
“The
most rewarding research projects often feel like solving a puzzle,” said Janine
Parry. “But it’s not usually a puzzle that has baffled your own family for
generations. Finally, the efforts of four generations of women – all captivated
by that iconic image – converged to connect Rosie and Bess.”
Janine
Parry plans to identify the worker as Bess Gorman in the next edition of Women’s Rights in the U.S.A.
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Here is a link to some information about Consolidated Vultee from my favorite Texas resource, The Handbook of Texas. It has anything and everything (almost) you wonder about Texas.
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dlc05
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This completely amazing story reminded me of a quote by fellow TCU graduate Sue Kidd Monk in her book The Secret Life of Bees, which I am sharing with my grandson for his summer reading assignment for high school freshman English. She wrote, "I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.”
See if you don't agree: we can call it coincidence, serendipity, or see at the mystery behind our lives.
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