ROSIE THE RIVETER STILL RIVETING WOMAN.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

``They were the classic World War II 'I'm going to step up and do it' gals.''

- Marianne Davis, chief of voluntary service for the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

Yeah, they were. Hundreds of young women in the 1940s, like the Meeker sisters of Granada Hills, donning safety goggles and manning rivet guns to help Lockheed build those airplanes that gave America supremacy in the skies during World War II.

Rosie the Riveter, each one was called - filling in on the production line for the guys who were fighting overseas.

This Thursday, a few local Rosies and many other women veterans will be stopping by the Sepulveda VA to be honored on Women's Equality Day.

The day commemorates the 85th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women throughout the nation the right to vote. (California had previously - in 1911 - given its women the right.) We've come a long way. Today, women get to fight, too.

But back in 1943, when the Meeker sisters were turning 18, women were pretty much limited to becoming Red Cross nurse, joining a service organization like the WAVES, or going to work on the Lockheed production line in Burbank.

``My twin sister, Virginia, and I had graduated from San Fernando High two weeks earlier when we went to work for Lockheed because they needed us,'' said the other Meeker twin, Betty-Jeanne Farmer of Calabasas - ``B.J.'' to many friends.

``I really wanted to join the WAVES, but my father had been in the Navy, and he didn't want us to join. He said the guys were too fast.''

B.J. wound up staying at Lockheed for 16 years after the war, working in the finance department. But her years as a Rosie the Riveter are the ones that this member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Don Jose de Ortega chapter, cherishes the most.

``It was a helpless feeling for a lot of young women to see the men marching off to war and not being able to do anything to help them. Becoming a Rosie the Riveter was one small way many of us found to do our part.''

To become one of the step-up-and-do-it gals.

That's why the VA wants to honor them on Women's Equality Day. Today, women are more than 58 percent of all VA employees caring for the nation's veterans.

``It's a way for us to say thank you for their service, not only to women in the military, but also to the civilians, like B.J., who contributed with hard work and effort,'' said Vance Davis, voluntary service site manager at Sepulveda VA.

``They all did their jobs until the troops came home.''

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

Women veterans of military and other war-effort work will be honored from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday in the lobby of Building B200 at the Sepulveda VA, 16111 Plummer St., North Hills. For information, call [phone].

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(1 -- 2) Betty-Jeanne Farmer, 81, of Calabasas cherishes award pins and letters she received as a World War II era Rosie the Riveter aircraft worker.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer