Photo: Panels on the starboard side of the 'stack'

Photographer: Barry Swackhamer
Taken: April 22, 2016
Caption: Panels on the starboard side of the 'stack'
Additional Description: Click on this image to enlarge it and view the panels.
Panel captions (right to left): I have not been on a ship since... No, definitely not. I will not ride one, I was fearful. When you were working, you would always think about how this ship was going to go out, and who was going to be on the ship when it came back -- the boys in the service. This is what you would fear. You would not want to make an awkward weld. You had to make it perfect -- there were lives involved. The ships had to come back. It wasn't the work that made me fearful. It was the fear of people not coming back. It was what the ship was going to do ... bring back boys and bodies -- that's what the memory goes through.; My mother's first shipyard job was in plate layout. Later she became the first female inspector. She tells a lot of stories, mostly about the guys who gave her a hard time for being a woman. She went on to work for unions. She fought for peace, civil rights, and a living wage. She often says, "Many remember those times with a rosy haze over their riveter eyes -- but we fought hard for social justice!'; It took many years for the small white scars to go away, from the hot rolling slag that fell as I welded overhead.; I weighed 110 lbs, so it was my job -- the flagpole and the double bottom. Yes, I went up to the flagpole, the very top of the ship to weld. Then I went all the way down to the bottom deck. You squeeze through a little hole that goes down; you drag you line, you tools, everything goes down with you, and it's dark... So this is how I worked, from the flagpole to the lowest deck.
Submitted: May 9, 2016, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p351792
File Size: 3.498 Megabytes

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