Yuma has 'Bea, the riveter'

   After graduating from San Diego High School, the young Beatrice "Bea" Fritz got a job at Rohr aircraft factory, hammering rivets under the motor cowling of planes.

   World War II was under way and the United States was embroiled in the conflict. And while the future Yuman wasn't on the front lines, she and other American women were employed to assemble weapons - women often referred to as Rosie the Riveter - played a key homefront role that led to victory of the U.S. and its allies 63 years ago.

   Today Bea recalls, "I was paid 58 cents an hour" in the factory job.

   "While I was at Rohr I was learning the metal riveter work. There was a
gal named Ruby, from Texas, who could do anything. There was a contest and I won over her making cowlings. I became Bea the real Riveter, not the Rosie of the song.

  "That was when I was living with an aunt on the Coronado Strand. To get to work I took a bus, the ferry and two other buses to get to Chula Vista to the plant.

  "All the women had to wear a bandanna and kept their hair covered. It was a  safety necessity after one girl had got her hair caught in a drill! We had to wear heavy shoes and had to use up one of our shoe stamps to buy them."

  Shoes were among the many things that could only be purchased with stamps allotted during World War II. Gasoline, tires and sugar were also on the rationed list.

  At a dance, where Wee Bonnie Baker was performing, she met Ernie Stiles, a sailor stationed at Treasure Island Naval Base near the Oakland Bay Bridge.

  They were married in 1943, and Bea Stiles started working for the Navy at the Alameda Naval Air Station where, she said, "I got 68 cents an hour."

   Housing was nearly impossible to find. "Our first apartment was an attic room with no heat. We could only cook breakfast on Sunday, because that was when the landlord went to church. We ate a lot of Chinese take-out!

  "I caught a bus on the Main Street to get to work."

  While her husband was at sea, communication was through letters. Bea received airmail (it cost six cents) letters and some V-Mail - a collection she has kept.

  Work at Alameda was all restricted and confidential. Bea remembers hearing a huge explosion. "A plane had flown into a nearby hangar, and we never knew what happened."

  Often, she said, "We would have the disassembled wing section of a plane. It had been shot up, so we had to cut around the holes then patch them up with Movel, a softer metal."

  Working on a wing meant it had to be "bucked up" to have bars to hold the wing while she could rivet the metal. She riveted on P-38s and aircraft carrier planes.

  "When the China Clipper - the first commercial plane, a flying boat that  carried passengers to Hawaii - was brought in, it was 'secured' for privacy. Inside the wing of the pontoon plane, one of the men workers, who was 6 feet tall, could stand up straight, not crouching, so we had space to work in."

  Bea said there was always music playing while they worked. - songs like "Mares Eat Oats" and "ltty Bitty Fiddies" were popular as singalongs.

  "We worked hard, and when we had time off we'd take the ferry to San Francisco and go to dances. It took us a 'T' stamp to ride the ferry. At dances we knew the partners were somebody's husband, father, brother or other relative who needed a change from military duties."

  When Bea left her riveting job, she was making $1.38 an hour as a journeyman metalsmith.

  Ernie completed 44 months in the Navy, out in 1945. Their daughter, Joyce, was born in the Oak Knoll Hospital in Oakland.

  The Stiles family moved to Yuma in 1954. He had a commercial painting business, was president of the Yuma Rod and Gun Club, had been vice president of the Arizona Wildlife group and active in the community.

  They had a cabin at Martinez Lake and enjoyed fishing there and at San Felipe and Puertocitas, Mexico.

  Bea admits that her training as a riveter has been handy when doing crafts. Her hobbies of gardening and quilting take skills, too, as does her baking cakes for her Beta Sigma Phi sorority sisters.

  Ernie died in 1980. Bea has three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren living with her daughter in Ojai, Calif.

  Bea is now married to Ray "Dutch" Feuerhaken.

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Pam M. Smith can be reached at psmith@yumasun.com or 539-6856.