Clearview City resident Amy Sneed, 83, remembers the smell of gunpowder while working on the production line at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant in 1944.

It gave her headaches and sometimes made her feel sick, she said.

“The smell of the powder — it would make my temples pulse,” Sneed said. “But during the war, you know, you wanted to help.”

Shortly after marrying her husband, Joseph, Sneed said they moved from Missouri to Clearview City, which was then known as Sunflower Village and was a settlement built to house Sunflower workers across the road from the plant near DeSoto. She said people flocked to the area to get jobs, coming from as far away as Arkansas.

Stories like Sneed’s about the lives of working women on the home front during World War II are now being collected and preserved.

In 2000, Congress passed a law establishing the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. The site is part of the National Park Service.

“It’s to honor all of the stories on the home front,” said park Supt. Judy Hart. “But as a result of its name, there has been a lot of attention on the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ stories.”

An advertisement about the park caught the eye of Bee Jackson, 79. A resident of Checotah, Okla., Jackson was one of about 20,000 people who worked at the Sunflower plant during World War II. Jackson — then Bee Bloomfield — left her family’s farm in Lenapah, Okla., at age 19 to work at the plant.

“All of us — we had family who enlisted in the military,” said Jackson. “Everybody was dead serious. We all knew the importance of what we were doing, and we were very concerned about getting enough powder out and how much ammunition was going out in a day.”

Amy Sneed earned the popular moniker of Rosie

Jackson, a retired nurse, currently is writing about her wartime experience for the Rosie the Riveter historical park and searching for photos and documents involving the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant.

Plant jobs

Jackson lived in an apartment in Lawrence while working at Sunflower.

She caught a bus to work on an ammunition production line. Shifts sometimes could be up to 16 hours, she said.

“There were young girls and young men working,” she said. “We had to wear a face mask, and we also had to wear a uniform and gloves that were fireproof.”

Sneed said she wore a similar uniform. She said she wanted to work on the production line because it allowed her to work alongside her husband. Living so near the plant, Sneed said sometimes she and her husband would walk to work, but they also could take a bus.

Jackson said she worked at the plant until about 1945, when she went home to help her family with their farm. Sneed continued working at the plant until she was laid off along with the other women at the plant.

“It was called a reduction in force,” she said. “They didn’t need us anymore. They kept the men and laid off the women. We didn’t have women’s lib then. So, things were kind of different. Of course, I think the men should work anyway if they are able.”

Sneed eventually went back to work for Sunflower as a phone operator and receptionist and retired about 49 years later in 1993.

History of Rosie

“Rosie the Riveter” was a character in a song by the same name written in 1942. Most people associate the character with the image created by Norman Rockwell for the Saturday Evening Post in 1943.

Hart said when the United States entered World War II, the military didn’t have the ships and planes necessary to wage war.

The only way to supply the military was to have more people enter the work force on the home front. Since many men enlisted, the only way for that to happen was for women “to take very nontraditional jobs not open to them previously,” Hart said.

In many cases, people still didn’t want to hire women, and when they were hired, there could be friction in the workplace, Hart said.

“In many ways, what this park is really celebrating is the social changes that happened in our country by 6 million women going to work,” she said.

Some of the consequences were that for the first time people accepted child care outside the home and preventive health care, Hart said.

More than 9,000 “Rosies” have contacted the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park; about 2,000 wrote what they could remember about their jobs and lives during wartime and provided personal memorabilia to the park.

Jackson said she wanted to include her accounts of the war, and she is continuing to search for more documentation about the work that happened at Sunflower.

Hart said creation of the Rosie the Riveter site was ongoing. Currently it includes a large monument with photos and quotes from people about life on the home front and facts about the war.

In the future, the site will include a visitor center where artifacts will be displayed.

“Realistically, it will take about 20 years to complete the park,” Hart said. “But we’re in it for the long run, and we hope to have the visitor’s center opened in three to four years.”