Photo by Erin Nelson.
Fran Carter, 97, founder of the American Rosie the Riveter Association, sits in the living room dressed in the Rosie uniform, worn during World War II, at her home in Homewood in September 2019.
If you met Homewood resident Frances Carter at all during her last two decades of life, she probably talked to you about Rosie the Riveter.
“Grocery stores, drug stores, airports, wherever — she was usually talking about the American Rosie the Riveter Association, since she started it in ‘98,” said her daughter, Nell Branum. “She would say, ‘Look in your family tree and see who your Rosie is.’”
Frances died in May at 99 years old. She spent her last 12 years as a resident at Brookdale Senior Living, right across the street from Samford University, where she taught elementary and early childhood education and home economics for 27 years.
Frances was a “Rosie,” one of millions of women who worked on the home front in the 1940s while the men fought in World War II. She was a riveter on B-29 airplanes in Birmingham.
Her late husband, John Carter, proposed while he was fighting in Berlin.
“Of course, she was thousands of miles away in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,” he wrote in his book, “Some Side Lights of Operation Dragoon.”
“But I sent some money to a jewelry store in Hattiesburg, and she went down by herself and picked out her engagement ring, and had her own little private ceremony back in her dorm room.” By this time, Frances had left her riveter job and was back in school at the University of Mississippi.
From there, it was always Dr. John and Dr. Frances, said their daughter. “You can’t really tell mother’s story without talking about my dad,” Branum said. “They did just about everything together.”
They shared an office together at Samford. If they both taught night classes at the same time, their daughter would wait in their office until they finished and bought snacks from the nearby vending machine. Their office was also a “curriculum lab” with teaching resources, and Branum said she would often explore. “I really think this was one of the ways I learned how to read,” she said. “There were perks to being on the campus all the time.”
Both were thorough in their teaching, she said. Their students through the years have told Branum they remembered opening every class with a prayer. They were also known for being interested in their students’ success.
“They loved teaching. They loved the students and the atmosphere.”
Frances took an early retirement and became an editor for Woman’s Missionary Union until John also retired.
“She was one of the few moms I knew who was working,” Branum said. “I was maybe in elementary school before I realized that not everyone’s parents both had doctorates. I’m probably exaggerating, but that’s just the way I thought it was.”
Frances was 76 when she founded the American Rosie the Riveter Association. She was taking a Sunday afternoon nap when her friend called and told her about a Rosie the Riveter program in Georgia.
They went to the program, and on the way home, Frances told John, “We need to have our own club.”
John thought Frances meant a local, Birmingham-area club, Branum said. But Frances had something bigger in mind: a national organization.
Frances and her husband also went on speaking tours, where they talked about WWII, showed off their books and even dressed up, with John wearing his original paratrooper suit and Frances sporting the classic Rosie the Riveter look. Together, they conducted about 400 programs in 18 states.
In a 2019 article, Frances told The Homewood Star that it meant everything to her to be a Rosie during her lifetime.
“We found we could do things we didn’t know we could do,” Carter said. “It changed our life completely.”
But while Frances is well known for starting the American Rosie the Riveter Association, she and her husband did much more before that, Branum said. Frances was an active member of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, and pretty much everywhere she lived since she was 12, she taught Sunday school classes.
According to her obituary, she and her husband led more than 15 mission trips to China, Indonesia, Russia, Honduras, and Mexico. They also taught at both Anhui Normal University in Wuhu, China and Hong Kong Baptist University.
They started a book project and sent thousands of English books to China. John founded a fellowship group for teachers interested in missionary work. He also started a pen pal project for Chinese students to write letters to people in the United States, and Frances helped out with that.
Frances liked creative things, Branum said. According to Frances’s parents, when she was a Rosie, she would take extra rivets, glue them to cards and mail them to her friends with the message, “I think you’re riveting!”
She had a determined personality, Branum said. She stayed busy until the end.
“They were both forces of nature,” Branum said of her parents.
Branum and her brother, Lt. Col. Wayne Carter, have spent time over the summer going through their mother’s things. Branum said it’s been “amazing” to find all of the memories.
In a June 2021 newsletter honoring Frances’s life, the American Rosie the Riveter Association wrote that the organization now has more than 7,000 members.
“Fran has said many times how proud she is that the next generations are continuing to carry on,” the newsletter stated.
For more information about the American Rosie the Riveter Association, visit rosietheriveter.net.
