Rosalind P. Walter (née Palmer; June 25, 1924 – March 4, 2020) was an American philanthropist and humanities advocate[1] who was best known for her late 20th and early 21st century support for public television programming across the United States.
"The powerful female image of Rosie (the Riveter) was developed under the auspices of the War Production Board to inspire patriotic behavior," according to heritage writer Ginny McPartland, who reported in 2013 that the idea to give "the female war worker the name of 'Rosie' probably started with a newspaper story about Rosalind P. Walter, an aircraft factory worker in New York."
[14] Additional sources have noted that she worked on F4U marine gull-winged fighter airplanes,[15] and that she "broke records for speed on the production line, advocating for equal pay for her female co-workers.
[13] In 1942, she inspired Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb to write the song, "Rosie the Riveter", which was then recorded by Kay Kyser and The Four Vagabonds.
[11][16] In 1943, The Roanoke Times reprinted an article from a New York newspaper, which had described Palmer as follows: "We really have a Rosie the Riveter, who is Rosalind Palmer, 19, a dark-tressed society doll, who had just finished a year of hard work as a night-shift welder at the Sikorsky aircraft plant at Bridgeport, Conn." Adding that she was renting a room that summer in Fairfield, which enabled her to commute "25 miles to her job," she said she had been teamed with "a crackerjack welder" who helped her to become confident and competent in her work on fighter planes and would "'keep at this job until the war is over.
[27] Best known for underwriting public television programming in the United States, she supported the PBS series, Great Performances,[28] and such documentary films as: Blakeway Productions' Shakespeare Uncovered,[29] Ken Burns' The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,[30] Ric Burns' The Pilgrims,[31] and Susan Lacy's Emmy Award-winning American Masters series for WNET.
[34] She also provided support to PBS NewsHour,[35] served in various leadership capacities for the Paley Center for Media and established a journalism scholarship at Long Island University.