Yes, we’re a little in posting this…. but a belated CONGRATS to Carissa!

I thought you all might find this interesting — what were the original Rosies recommended to wear to work?  Well, now you know!

College isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  In fact, if you’re looking for a career in welding, a technical school might just be the place to go.

Technical schools give students a leg up on a career

By FARAH TAMIZUDDIN/VOICE CORRESPONDENT
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Jan 25, 2010 @ 11:00 PM

Seventeen-year-old Konner Fenwick doesn’t want to go to college.

She isn’t taking any more history or English classes.

The Springfield High School senior doesn’t want to get a job after she graduates in June, either.

Her plan? Attend a technical school.

“School’s never really been my thing,” Konner said. “I think I’ll enjoy this a lot.”

More than half of the country’s high school seniors each year head to college right after graduation, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

However, 30 to 40 percent of seniors find their footing elsewhere.

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Through the wonderful social medium that is Facebook, we have been fortunate enough to meet a variety of dedicated and uniquely talented women welders who are working their way through life with a torch in hand. Here’s what Karine Maynard says about welding, and life:

My name is Karine Maynard, and I live in central Kentucky. I work as a blacksmith who helps to make ornamental & architectural ironwork, mostly custom jobs, like railings and balconies; sometimes we get smaller commissions for tables, fire screens, etc.

Growing up on a tree farm in Wisconsin, my father also had an auto parts store and I’d probably still be there and running the place now, except that when it came time for him to retire he said it was “no business for a girl,” so I went to college and one of the things I studied was art.

I got my introductions to working in metal in jewelry-making classes, and I studied everything including political science, foreign languages and history – but really my early years in the country surrounded by auto shops & farming gave me the taste for things “hands on”. I also traveled a lot internationally in college and that really expanded my ideas as well as introduced me to other cultures and interesting people.

(more…)

In one of the most original, sad, and, therefore, daunting tasks I’ve ever heard of, Natascha Whitehurst is using her talent for welding to fabricate her own parents’ tombstones.

Instead of the usual headstones, Natascha is crafting two oak stumps (made from a water heater tank), connected by a root (made from an exhaust pipe), bearing their names and dates etched in the metal.

Welder honors her Mother & Father

By Laura Gutschke
Posted January 2, 2010

TUSCOLA — Rusted metal scrap objects long past their original function are finding new life as art at the hands of Natascha Whitehurst.

One of her current projects also is her most personal. She is crafting out of a discarded water heater’s inner steel tank a double tombstone for her parents. The tombstone looks like two oak stumps connected by a root, to be made out of a vehicle exhaust pipe.

“Instead of buying new, I like using what is already out there,” Whitehurst said.

Rows of small welding beads will run down the side of the tank to resemble bark. On top of the 18-inch tree stump for her mother, Janice Sadler, who died on Jan. 1, 2009, will be a watering can to symbolize her nurturing of the family.

A rifle will be leaning against the stump for her father, Harley Sadler, who continues to work as a truck driver today, to represent his providing for the family and his love of hunting.

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I’d like to thank Craig Swanson for the following cartoon, which has to be one of the best ones on welding I’ve yet to find:

All I can say is, it’s about time!

It’s about time somebody put up a statue in honor of the working women of WWII, and it’s high time I find out about it (it’s only been nearly a decade)!

Now, if we could just get some of the other states to follow suit…

Tinker statue commemorates working women

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City)
Apr 3, 2000 by Bill May The Journal Record

When Elizabeth Ward decided to apply for a job at Tinker Air Force Base, it was no precedent-shattering event.

“I just walked in and got my job,” she said. “It was because of women like her, that it was that way.”

The “her” she referred to was Frankie Collier, 73, who went to work for the Douglas Aircraft Plant, now building 3001 at Tinker, the day she turned 18 in August 1944.

As an inspection clerk, Collier didn’t handle the wrenches, tools and rivet guns that gave the name “Rosie the Riveter” to a whole generation of women who took over defense manufacturing jobs to free a equal number of men to fight World War II.

“I worked there until the end of the war, then they just let us go,” she said. “There was nothing done about it, nothing said. They just told us to go home, the war was over.”

In the 55 ensuring years, Collier — like so many of her generation — got married, raised a family and continued with a teaching career.

One thing was missing, though. There was no memorial, no statue, nothing to commemorate the tough work these women tackled during the nation’s dark days.

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Did you know what you wanted to do for a career when you were a freshman in high school?  I didn’t!  I don’t really know anyone who did — isn’t that what college is for?

Lyndsi Tingle did.  She wanted to be a welder, and she and her teachers agree — she’s on the right track to succeed.

Frankfort Face: She makes sparks fly

By Katheran Wasson

Lyndsi Tingle wore men’s welding gloves for three years before she realized they made smaller pairs for women.

The 17-year-old Western Hills High School senior welds, cuts and bends metal alongside the boys at Franklin County Career and Technical Center.

She spends four hours a day in tan Carhartt overalls and a T-shirt, safety goggles propped on her blonde head.

“Most of the guys kind of look at me as mama,” she said, sitting in the workshop before winter break.

“If something needs to be done, they know that I’m going to be on them to do it.”

Lyndsi has known since freshman year that she wanted to make a career out of welding.

After graduation, she and five of her classmates will head to Tulsa Welding School in Jacksonville, Fla., to study the craft.

She hopes to eventually become an inspector, checking the welds on bridges, power plants and pipes to make sure they are secure.

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How do you wear your hair to work?  Up?  Down?  Short?  Long?

In the 1940′s there were no two ways about it — to look good, and keep safe, there was only one iconic actress to emulate: Veronica Lake.

When I was growing up in Long Beach, this school didn’t exist yet, and that’s a pity, for me, and for thousands of other girls who didn’t have the option of going HERE:

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Nailing a trade at Rosie the Riveter High

Long Beach charter school seeks to put young women in nontraditional jobs such as welding and carpentry.

By Bob Pool
December 3, 2009

Students are welding the old to the new at Rosie the Riveter High School.

The Long Beach charter school was created in 2007 to help prepare teenage girls for careers as welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and other trades.

Today, its 50-member student body includes girls and boys, but its organizers still attempt to break down barriers for women seeking careers in what largely remains a man’s world.

“It’s about trying to change the way society looks at women,” said Lynn Shaw, who helped create Rosie the Riveter High. “We just feel that women should have an equal opportunity.”

Shaw, who lives in Long Beach, teaches electrical technology at Long Beach City College.

She heads the board of directors for Women in Non Traditional Employment Roles, a nonprofit economic development group that sponsors the charter school.

She knows plenty about nontraditional jobs.

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