Terry, Peggy

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Peggy Terry

Born c. 1922

Factory worker

"The first work I had after the Depression was at a shell-loading plant in Viola, Kentucky. My mother, my sister, and myself worked there."

Prior to World War II (1939–45), women usually only worked outside of the home following the completion of their education until marriage. However, as twelve million men joined the military in the early 1940s, critical industrial jobs faced a worker shortage. Peggy Terry was one of nineteen million women who found work on the home front during the war years. Not only did the work vastly improve women's personal financial condition, but it opened the doors much wider for the acceptance of women in the workplace in America.

An early life of need

Peggy Terry was born around 1922 to a family that lived in poverty for most of her early years. Her mother was born in Kentucky and her father in Oklahoma. Her father fought in World War I (1914–18) as a machine gunner and was left emotionally scarred from the experience. Peggy was born only a few years after the war. For the next fifteen years, the family moved back and forth between Kentucky and Oklahoma. While living in Oklahoma between 1929 and 1936, they experienced the worst of the Great Depression (1929–41). The Great Depression, beginning in the fall of 1929 and lasting through the 1930s, was the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Close to a quarter of the nation's workforce was unemployed. Many Americans did not have enough food. For those in Oklahoma and other parts of the Midwest, the Depression also included surviving the severe drought years of the early 1930s. The region became known as the Dust Bowl.

By 1937 Peggy's father lost his job, so they returned to Paducah, Kentucky. In Kentucky her father worked at times in the mines and was active in the workers' unions. Peggy married around 1937. Her husband, Bill, worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), digging ditches for city water lines. She was fifteen years of age and he was sixteen. For the next three years they traveled around hitchhiking. Peggy was expecting their first child while on the road. They found jobs as migrant workers, picking oranges, grapefruit, and lemons in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas.

Work comes to the home front

Peggy and Bill had returned to Paducah when mobilization of industry for war began in 1940. She was eighteen years old and her husband was nineteen. Her mother, a sister, and Peggy found jobs at a shell-loading plant in Viola, Kentucky, not far from Paducah. They worked different shifts at the factory so they could take care of children at home. After having no steady income through the Great Depression years, the thirty-two-dollar-a-week job seemed a godsend. They could once again buy new clothes and shoes, pay rent, and regularly put food on the table. It was the first job other than agricultural fieldwork that her mother had ever held. War mobilization on the home front brought a vast improvement to their lives.

Most Americans could not recite the formal reasons President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45; see entry) had given for going to war. They just knew that war involving the United States had been declared in some far-off location. They were essentially protecting the way of life that they knew. Peggy Terry was no different, particularly since she did not even have a radio in order to keep up with current events. Despite their disconnection, many Americans knew that the Germans and Japanese were their enemies. They were particularly suspicious of the Japanese, whose racial and cultural differences made European Americans uncomfortable. Terry saw local people destroy any items they owned that were made in Japan.

Rosie the Riveter

Women like Peggy Terry who worked in America's factories during World War II (1939–45) attracted considerable national attention. At the time, it was thought a novelty for women to work in industrial jobs. Labeled "Rosie the Riveters," they worked in aircraft construction, shipbuilding, munitions manufacturing, and other related war industry jobs. They became glamorized in the media and the subject of posters as doing their part for the war. Noted artist Norman Rockwell (1894–1978; see entry) created the most memorable depiction of Rosie for the cover of the May 29, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post (see photo on page 161).

Prior to the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941, few women worked in industry. By early 1944, 2,690,000 women were employed in the war industries. They comprised nearly 35 percent of all industry workers in the United States. No longer could people claim that women could not do mechanical work.

Thousands actually did work as riveters and welders in the war plants. Hundreds of thousands of women worked in shipyards across the country riveting sections of ships together. However, they worked in many other kinds of positions as well. At munitions factories, like the one where Peggy Terry first worked, women operated machines that made gun parts, and they wired fuses for bombs and filled bullets with powder. Others greased and painted gun barrels in their final production before shipment overseas to the battlefront. Terry next worked in the aircraft industry. At many aircraft plants, such as Douglas Aircraft, more than 40 percent of the workers were women during the war. Like Terry, many women moved beyond assembly line work to testing the airplane's systems. In steel mills, women rebuilt furnaces. It was found that women, because of their smaller hands, were often better able than men to assemble tiny parts in machine shops for precision aircraft instruments.

The Rosie the Riveter symbol lived on for decades, later representing the extensive role women played in the American home front war effort. When the war ended, millions of men returned from active military service seeking jobs. Women, especially those in the traditionally male-oriented factory jobs, were commonly among the first workers laid off as industry cut back war production and transitioned to producing consumer goods again. Most women employed in aircraft, shipbuilding, and munitions manufacturing during the war were quickly let go after the war.

Terry also saw the hazards of factory work in a war industry. There were explosives, detonators, and hazardous materials, such as chemicals used in the explosives and cleaning substances used in the final production stages. Terry recounted how many women came away with their hair, skin, and even eyeballs discolored from the persistent exposure to chemicals. Some experienced breathing problems from the fumes in the air. Their noses and throats often burned. Though working conditions were poor, Terry knew little of union activities to improve their conditions.

Despite these harsh working conditions, the workers shared a pride in their accomplishments. Terry's munitions factory received a navy award for its efforts. A navy band came to play at the award ceremony.

Work at an aircraft factory

Terry's grandfather worked for the railroads and retired to Jackson, Michigan. After receiving word from her grandfather about the handsome wages for aircraft factory workers in Michigan, Terry moved there. She found a job testing airplane

radios and made ninety dollars a week. It was a big increase from the munitions factory work. In Michigan, Terry discovered a whole different world than she had known in Kentucky. She worked with many eastern European immigrants who were very involved in union activity. Like many Americans, life on the home front as well as on foreign battlefields was a major education. Terry saw a larger world with greater social and cultural diversity. Like other home front workers, her expectations increased about a future life in the United States, including financial security.

While Peggy Terry worked in the factories, her husband, Bill, was a paratrooper in the military. Bill saw considerable action in North Africa, France, and Germany, making twenty-six parachute jumps in all. Like Terry's father from World War I, Bill came back from war in Europe emotionally scarred. He now smoked, drank too much, and at times physically abused the family. Terry claimed she lost her faith in religion because of the war's effects. Many of her childhood friends had died fighting in the war.

Nonetheless, Terry was financially considerably better off than before the war. As so many young brides did immediately following the war, Terry became pregnant shortly after Bill's return from the service, contributing to the phenomenon known as the baby boom. Following the war, Peggy and Bill settled into a small apartment in Chicago, Illinois.

Although most women were laid off from their warrelated jobs soon after the war to make room for returning servicemen, the idea of women in the workplace became more socially accepted thanks to the contributions made by working women during World War II.