By: Charity Meier | C&G Newspapers | Published December 11, 2025
METRO DETROIT — Maryellen Robbins, 101, was recently recognized as a Rosie the Riveter for her service as a welder at a plant in Detroit during World War II. However, it is a title she doesn’t quite believe is hers.
“I never really gave it much thought. Personally, I didn’t think I was one (Rosie the Riveter). I mean, I was a welder. I wasn’t a riveter,” Robbins said. “To me, it was a job, and it had to get done, and I wanted my husband home, and he was (serving at a hospital) over in England. So, I just wanted this war over.”
Robbins said she got the job as a welder after some encouragement from her boyfriend. She said he told her she could do better than the $18 per week retail job she had.
Robbins said that the welding job required six weeks of unpaid training. After completing the training, she became an Army/Navy certified welder.
Initially, she worked with her boyfriend, who would later become her husband, and she drove him to work in his car. He owned the car, but she had a license. After he got drafted, Robbins would drive several other Rosies to and from work, which provided her with some extra money for gas.
At the plant, Robbins served on the night shift and welded small airplane parts.
“You worked your head off,” she said with a laugh.
She said they worked in teams of two. One woman would hook up a piece to the machine, then spin it over to her partner, and she would weld the part and send it back to the first woman, and the process would continue like that for 10-to 12-hour shifts, six days a week.
“It was piecework. You had to do so many pieces a day, or they would get rid of you. You couldn’t just weld something and get up and walk around,” Robbins said.
“She was saving the money to set up house when her husband got home,” said her son, Rick Robbins.
Maryellen Robbins recalled the day the war ended. An announcement was made over the loudspeaker.
“Everybody hollored and screamed and then kept on working,” she said.
The women would finish their shift and then go back to doing more traditional work for women at the time.
Maryellen Robbins would go on to raise three sons, the youngest of whom she would raise practically on her own after her husband suffered a brain injury in a car accident around the age of 40. He was left incapacitated, and ultimately she had to place him in a nursing home until he died in his early 50s.
Maryellen Robbins said that she didn’t think too much of it when she was told that she was a Rosie.
“To be honest with you, I wasn’t too impressed,” she said, “because I didn’t have any doings with them, you know.”
“She didn’t feel she was a part of them doing just welding,” Rick Robbins said.
“I was just a welder. I wasn’t anything to get all excited about,” she said.
She said that although she helped with the war effort, it didn’t impress her.
“It was just something that I was expected to do,” Maryellen Robbins said. “We had to get this war over. I wanted him (her husband) home.”
She said she never took days off, as she wanted to do her part to end the war. However, her husband had to stay in the military after the war ended for a time, as he didn’t serve on the front lines. She said he didn’t come home until March 1946.
Debbie Robbins, Maryellen’s daughter-in-law, said she thought it was amazing when she learned that Maryellen was a Rosie, and she was so proud of her, as was the rest of their family.
“It made me feel special because she helped out,” Debbie Robbins said.
“I’m just an ordinary person that’s lived an ordinary life. I didn’t have an exciting life, I don’t feel — just an everyday life. My neighbors were just like me,” Maryellen Robbins said.
Rick Robbins said they are just very fortunate to have her around with such a sharp mind.
“It is amazing, her memory,” he said.