Melissa Lanning, 91, sits in her living room surrounded by envelopes scattered across the coffee table and sofa. They contain letters, photos and documents tracking the life of a woman who’s traveled the world many times over.
Asked about a specific time in her life, she turns, gaze settling on the walls inside her Canton home. There is a lengthy pause — long enough to make one wonder whether she’s forgotten the question or doesn’t know how to answer it. But, then, rather abruptly, she begins.
When Lanning talks about her time building B-29s during World War II, it’s as if she’s right there, describing what she sees. In 1944, as a real-life Rosie the Riveter at the age of 19 — one of countless American women who were employed in factories during World War II — she worked in the tooling department at the now-defunct Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta.
Her job title was senior clerk, and she made 85 cents an hour.
Whether to take a job building the four-engine bombers wasn’t even a question, she said. Lanning and everybody she knew wanted to pitch in for the cause.
“During the war, everybody was eager to do their part,” Lanning said. “Everybody was so excited about what we were going to do to Germany and Japan. We were highly incensed, because we felt that we had been wronged.”
Lanning said the women working at the aircraft manufacturing facility were required to wear long pants, which was apparently a big enough deal that the memory stuck with her 72 years later. Her mother, who installed wiring in the aircraft wings, had to wear them, too.
Lanning and fellow employees caught a ride to and from work every day, commuting from Holly Springs — about 20 miles north of Marietta.
On Friday nights, Lanning recalled, she and a coworker would gather the little money they could afford to spend and take a bus to Atlanta to go shopping. Then, they’d catch the last bus of the day back to Holly Springs.
Women like Lanning tracked news of the war by tuning in to radio updates. Throughout the war, like many other Americans, she and her family made sacrifices.
“(Items) like sugar, meat and gas were rationed,” Lanning said. “We were also short on things like butter … but, we took it in stride, because we felt like we were doing our part. People didn’t complain about having to do without. They made a lot of adjustments, and were happy to do so.”
Aside from rationing, another way Lanning pitched in was by corresponding with U.S. soldiers stationed abroad.
“Being in the service, the men were very eager to get correspondence,” Lanning said, recalling one specific soldier she kept in touch with weekly during the war. He was stationed near Paris.
“He would write to me and tell me all about how he had seen Napoleon’s tomb and described all the sights and sounds,” Lanning said, adding that, when the soldier returned safely to his home state of Pennsylvania, he wrote her again, thanking her for the correspondence.
“I kept all of his letters,” Lanning said, touching a manila envelope at her side.
She also kept the U.S. ration cards — stamps that were issued by the government to allow citizens to obtain food or other commodities in short supply during wartime.
When she looks back on that time, measures such as rationing were a small price to pay, she said. Many of those she knew were, after all, headed to the battlefield — whether drafted or volunteering.
Being a Rosie was her own way — and that of many other women — of fighting the Axis powers of World War II.
“We were all very anti-Axis, and it was a wonderful feeling to be able to do something to help,” Lanning said.
Another advantage for women like herself who became Rosies was that it put them in the workplace.
“Generations before us, women didn’t even have these kinds of opportunities,” Lanning said. “They did not have the opportunity to be educated. They didn’t have the opportunity to participate in something like this.”
Added Lanning: “Most of the women had a head full of recipes and a prayer book, and that was about all they had. Now, women were beginning to infiltrate the businesses.”
Jean Ousley, president of the American Rosie the Riveter Association — which has about 5,500 members nationwide — said it’s because of people like Lanning that women started “getting out of the home, taking off the aprons and putting on jumpsuits during World War II.”
Ousley said that when women today hear the term “Rosie the Riveter” or see the symbolic artwork depicting a female with red bandana and flexed bicep, it “strikes a chord.”
“When you look at that iconic picture … and think about the contribution they made … wow, it was a total breakthrough,” Ousley said. “These women did something amazing.”
It was a lifetime ago for Lanning, but she remembers that historic period just like it was yesterday.
Much like the many envelopes and folders filled with mementos and pictures in her home, her mind still brims with the details of an important time for America and a groundbreaking era for women of the United States.
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