June Robbins spent her teenage years at a drafting table, preparing plans for ship components during World War II. Now the Delaware County woman is turning 100, and her wartime work is being remembered as part of the broader story symbolized by Rosie the Riveter.
The milestone birthday was reported by CBS News Philadelphia, which noted that Robbins is being honored for her role as a woman in the skilled trades. Robbins was hired at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1943 after completing mechanical-drafting classes, according to Main Line Media News. She also worked at the now-defunct Cramp Shipbuilding Co. from 1943 to 1945, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A Teenager Drafting Warships
Robbins was born in 1926 and grew up in poverty during the Great Depression, according to the American Rosie Movement. In her late teens, she used her mechanical-drafting training in wartime shipbuilding. The Inquirer's account says she helped build 53 ships and repair 574 more for U.S. and Allied forces.
One specialized assignment involved drafting paravanes, which Robbins told the American Rosie Movement were “strung out along the sides of the ship, to prevent mines from destroying the ship.” Paravanes were towed devices intended to deflect underwater mines away from a ship's hull.
Life After the Shipyard
After marrying Melvin Robbins in 1947, she raised seven children and later devoted herself to service work. The American Rosie Movement says she trained as a professional clown and visited veterans' hospitals and other sites, while Marple-Newtown Patch reported that she co-founded the Humor Cart program at Children's Hospital and volunteered there weekly for more than a dozen years.
In later years, Robbins focused on finding women whose wartime work had gone largely unrecognized. The Inquirer reports that she helped locate other Philadelphia-area Rosie the Riveters and recruit them into the American Rosie the Riveter Association. In 2020, Main Line Media News identified Robbins, of Media, as one of the Main Line women expected to receive a Rosie the Riveter medal as Congress moved to honor the group.
Part of a Broader Wartime Story
Robbins's work fits into a much larger pattern from the era. As men enlisted in the armed forces, women joined the industrial workforce to fill labor shortages in shipbuilding, aviation and other trades, according to the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. By the end of the war, nearly one in four married women worked outside the home, and more than 310,000 women were employed in the aircraft industry alone in 1943, Main Line Media News reported in its coverage of the Congressional Gold Medal effort.
As FOX40 has noted in its own coverage of a Rosie the Riveter centennial, “Rosie the Riveter” is not one specific person but a symbol representing the women who stepped into male-dominated industries during the war. The centennial milestone is part of the broader recognition of women associated with the Rosie the Riveter tradition.
Who qualifies as a Rosie the Riveter?
The term “Rosie the Riveter” is used broadly to describe women who supported the World War II effort. Robbins's drafting work represents one part of that larger group of women who supported the war effort.
Congress took up formal recognition through the Rosie the Riveter Congressional Gold Medal Act. The Senate version, S.892, was introduced in March 2019, according to records from Congress.gov. The effort sought to attach names and individual stories to the history of women once identified mainly by a wartime nickname.
