DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit-area factory where Rosie the
Riveter showed that a woman could do a "man’s work" by building World
War II-era bombers has been saved from the wrecking ball, organizers of a
campaign to build a museum on the site announced Thursday.
The
site’s manager had given the Save the Willow Run Bomber Plant campaign a
deadline of Thursday to raise the $8 million needed to buy a
150,000-square-foot portion of the larger property.
As recently as
Tuesday morning, the group was about $1 million short of its goal, but
later in the day "closed on a big one," fundraising consultant Michael
Montgomery said.
That allowed Montgomery and his partners to get
"within spitting distance of the full eight (million)" and enough to go
forward with a purchase agreement, which he expects to be finalized in
seven to 10 days.
Meanwhile, those behind the effort will go back
to raising the additional dollars needed to make the new Yankee Air
Museum a reality.
"We’re going to go on raising money past May 1,
because we’ve got to build the plant out and create the exhibits of the
new museum that we’ve promised."
Those exhibits will focus on the
history of the plant and vintage aircraft, but Rosie will be a star as
well, just as she was seven decades ago.
Although women performed
what had been male-dominated roles in plants all over the country during
the war, it was a Willow Run worker — one of an untold number of women
in its 40,000-person workforce — who caught the eye of Hollywood
producers casting a "riveter" for a government film about the war effort
at home.
Rose Will Monroe, a Kentucky native who moved to
Michigan during the war, starred as herself in the film and became one
of the best-known figures of that era. She represented the thousands of
Rosies who took factory jobs making munitions, weaponry and other items
while the nation’s men were off fighting in Europe and the Pacific.
The
Willow Run factory, which was built by Ford Motor Co. and featured a
mile-long assembly line, churned out one B-24 Liberator bomber every
hour and nearly 9,000 in all. It transitioned to producing cars after
the war ended and continued making them and parts for more than a
half-century under the General Motors name before closing for good in
2010.
Now, the plant in Ypsilanti Township is being razed in part to make way for a connected vehicle research
center.
The
hulking facility currently is in the hands of the Revitalizing Auto
Communities Environmental Response Trust, which took over sites around
the country left behind in GM’s bankruptcy.
RACER Trust gave the
Save the Bomber campaign a number of fundraising extensions, but no more
were forthcoming because demolition already is underway on other parts
of the plant.
Bruce Rasher, redevelopment manager for the trust,
said he was "pleased that the Yankee Air Museum has reached this point
in the process."
"Our mutual goal remains to see the former hangar
redeveloped as the future home of the museum, an outcome the community
clearly supports," he said.
As for the Save the Bomber campaign’s
next move, Montgomery said, "Over this weekend, we’re all going to veg
out and take a break. We’ll be back at it on Monday.
"(We’re feeling) a combination of relief about the initial objective and a sense of: On to the rest
of it," he said.
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