Mary Doyle Keefe, the woman who posed for Norman Rockwell’s iconic World War II painting “Rosie the Riveter” has died. Keefe, who passed away from a brief illness, was 92.
Keefe’s family confirmed to multiple outlets that the historic model died in Connecticut on Tuesday, April 21.
The late 92-year-old posed for Rockwell’s famous painting — which landed on the May 1943 cover of the Saturday Evening Post and symbolized the millions of women who went to work in factories during World War II — when she was just 19-years-old and was only paid $10 to strike the now-symbolic pose.
"I was much smaller than that and did not know how he was going to make me look like that until I saw the finished painting,” Keefe told the Hartford Courant in 2012, explaining that Rockwell painted based off photographs a photographer would take.
"There was a war on, and you did what you could," she recalled. "I didn't really make anything of it and didn't really see it or realize what would happen to that picture until it came out."
