'Real' Woman Who Inspired 'Rosie The Riveter' Dies In Washington

LONGVIEW, WA — Naomi Parker Fraley, the woman believed to have been the "real" inspiration for the iconic Rosie the Riveter poster has died from cancer in Longview, Washington. She was 96.

In the poster, a woman dressed in a blue collared shirt and wearing a red polka-dot handkerchief in her hair flexes her right arm. The timeless caption: "We can do it!"

Several women over the years were identified as the real-life model for the World War II-era poster, but it wasn't until recently that Fraley learned she was likely the person. When Fraley, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, first saw the poster, she thought it resembled her. She thought nothing of it though, since several million women entered the workforce for the first time during World War II.

“I did think it looked like me, but nobody ever mentioned it," she told PEOPLE Magazine in 2016.

In 2009, Fraley and her sister attended a reunion at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park when they saw a picture of the woman who probably inspired the poster, the magazine said.

“I couldn’t believe it because it was me in the photo, but there was somebody else’s name in the caption: Geraldine,” Fraley said, referring to Geraldine Hoff Doyle. Doyle apparently recognized herself in the photo.

In the black-and-white photo, a 20-year-old Fraley — wearing a red polka-dot handkerchief and work clothes — leans over a lathe, a machine that makes duplicate parts. It was taken in 1942 by a photographer who was visiting the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. The photo ran in newspapers nationwide, Fraley said.

Seton Hall University professor James J. Kimble investigated the photo and agreed that Fraley was, indeed, likely the real Rosie, publishing his findings in 2016 in the journal Rhetoric & Public Affairs.

Fraley was independent and every bit the embodiment of Rosie, her family told KATU-TV. She was a single mother and breadwinner for her family in the 1950s.

Her son Joe Blankenship told the station she was "amazing."

“Whatever the world threw at her, she'd just bounce back,” he said. “She did it and she always did it on her own."

The family plans to hold a public memorial for Fraley in Longview on March 10.

CAPTION: The United States Post Office presented an enlargement of the Celebrate the Century, Women Support the War stamp depicting Rosie the Riveter to the Portland Harbor Museum in South Portland, Maine, Friday, June 25, 1999. The stamp is part of a 15 stamp set honoring people, events, and lifestyles of the 1940's.

Photo by Joan Seidel/Associated Press