Real life Rosie the Riveter, Norma Sherman turns 101

A Rosie the Riveter, Norma Sherman turns 101 Sunday and to celebrate she wanted to be interviewed by the Record-Courier.

Sherman was born June 18, 1922, in Colorado Springs, Colo. She currently resides at the Gardnerville Health and Rehabilitation Center.

“What I love about her is she’s so cognitive,” said Gardnerville Health and Rehabilitation Center Activities Director Pam Fillmore. “She’s an avid reader and is so intelligent.”

Over the last 101 years, Sherman has observed improvements in technology and experienced wars and other worldly changes, but some of the most appalling changes have been the rise in costs of simple necessities and pleasures.

“I remember our first radio set and television, we’d watch the wrestler Gorgeous George on that tiny TV,” she said. “Now, the televisions are so big and anything really is available to watch.”

Speaking of television, Sherman said going to the movie theater only cost 10 cents.

“The whole neighborhood would go and you could watch two movies, a news reel and two shorts skits with your money’s worth,” she said. “After we would all get ice cream for 5 cents.”

Her favorites were the silent films and peanut parfaits flavored ice cream.

Sherman said milk came by the quart in bottles for 5 cents, most everyone had access to their own eggs and four pork chops for a dime.

“The cost of everything has gone up so much,” she said. “We ate so simple and did things so simple, now it’s like everyone is in a hurry and things are expensive.”

As a Rosie the Riveter, Sherman worked at Timm Aircraft where she built the inner wings on P-48 Thunderbolts and later the factory contracted with Boeing Aircraft where she worked on the outer shell of bomber aircraft.

“It was tedious work, but needed to be done,” said Sherman.

Her stories of working during the war and her memories all had a “get-it-done” sort of attitude, but she’s fond of her life and reminisces on her time singing in the choir in high school and being part of the a cappella group and causing mischief as a teenager climbing “Kissing Camels” rock in Colorado.

She moved to California in 1941 by Route 66, then to Washington with her husband in 1967 where they built their home. After her husband died in 1970 her family brought her to Nevada.

Sherman is a mother of two boys and a grandmother of five grandchildren and a great-grandmother.