Shirley Virginia Bellemeur holds up an imaginary piece of metal with her delicate fingers. She punches it repeatedly with her other hand, as though she's holding a rivet gun.
“It would go dun dun dun dun,” Bellemeur, 99, says quietly as she sits in her Pasadena retirement home. She was honored with a leadership award on Wednesday for her job as a Rosie the Riveter from 1944 through 1946, when she repaired war-torn seaplanes during World War II.
“I hope I wasn't too loud,” she said before a crowd of friends, family and well-wishers at the Pasadena Meadows Nursing Center, where she was surrounded by red, white and blue balloons. Bellemeur herself sported a silky red, white and blue shawl.
“I'm overwhelmed,” she said as Rep. Judy Chu (D- Monterey Park) handed her the congressional leadership award, TV cameras pointed their way. Bellemeur says she's an introvert and couldn't imagine this type of attention focused on her.
“She is clearly very humble,” Chu said. “I think that we in this country have not done enough to honor the Rosie the Riveters, who stepped up to continue all the manufacturing in our factories and the shipyards while men went off to serve in the war. They kept up our war effort, and did it magnificently.”
Rosie the Riveter was a cultural icon used in wartime campaigns to encourage women to work in factories and on assembly lines. The character sported blue coveralls and a polka-dot bandanna. She flexed…
