Everyone Was Wrong About the Real ‘Rosie the Riveter’ for Decades. Here’s How the Mystery Was Solved

When news began to spread that Naomi Parker Fraley had died on Saturday, it prompted an outpouring of admiring obituaries, uniformly lamenting the loss of Rosie the Riveter, and lauding that timeless American icon pictured in the “We Can Do It!” poster. Such remembrances were, and are, a well-deserved tribute to an extraordinary woman.

But it almost didn’t happen that way.