Mary Doyle Keefe, the model that served as the basis for Norman Rockwell’s iconic “Rosie the Riveter” has died this week at her home in Simsbury, Connecticut at the age of 92, CNN reports:
As a 19-year-old telephone operator, Keefe posed for the famous painting that would become the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943.
Although she was petite, Keefe was transformed into the iconic — and burly — embodiment of the character by Rockwell.
“Other than the red hair and my face, Norman Rockwell embellished Rosie’s body,” Keefe said in a 2012 interview with the Hartford Currant. “I was much smaller than that and did not know how he was going to make me look like that until I saw the finished painting.”
Keefe pocked $10 for the two mornings of modeling work she did in Arlington, Vermont. Rockwell lived in neighboring West Arlington at the time.
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