I. Riley Helmstetter, 102, smiles while flexing her arm in the style of "Rosie the Riveter," on June 11, 2026, in the courtyard of a senior living facility in Bend, Ore.
Jen Baires for OPB / OPB
On a recent blue sky day in Bend, a 102-year-old woman sat in the courtyard of her senior living facility, flipping through photo albums stuffed with yellowed pictures, postcards, and memories.
“My full name is I. Riley Helmstetter,” she said as a means of introduction. “I’m not going to tell you what my first name is because I never liked it,” she added, laughing.
One set of pictures in her album shows her fresh out of high school in 1943. She’s wearing a bow in her hair and a tidy skirt suit. Snow blankets the ground as her soon-to-be husband and siblings pose beside her.
It was a brief visit home from her work two hours away at the Alcoa Aluminum Plant in Spokane. There, she swapped her skirt suit for work clothes and endured long shifts flipping sheets of metal to build planes during World War II.
“We had to wear steel-toed shoes in case one of the heavy sheets fell on our feet. We wanted to have our toes,” she said with a chuckle.
Like over six million other American women during World War II, Helmstetter took over factory work at home while many men, including her brother and husband, served in the military.
It was a monumental shift of women into the U.S. workforce.
People called them “Rosies,” after a government campaign popularized the character, “Rosie the Riveter,” flexing a bicep in her blue jumpsuit and red kerchief with white polka dots. The “Rosies” drastically increased production in wartime facilities. They built aircraft, ships and munitions. A musical show opening in Bend this week celebrates this chapter of American history.
On June 11, 2026, I. Riley Helmstetter, 102, holds out a photo album filled with her memories from 1943. In the two images on the left, Helmstetter and her soon-to-be husband, Hughbert Conner, pose with Helmstetter’s younger sisters by a tree on the family’s farm in northeast Washington. In the image on the right, Helmstetter shakes snow off her foot.
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Playwright Marilyn Magness called the production a “love letter” to the millions of women who took on hard labor in factories, including her own mother.
“My mom was so humble about it,” Magness said, recalling her mother’s experience during World War II. “Her greatest words were, ‘We were all Rosies,’ and so she never took credit even though she was on the line riveting.”
Magness said she wants her latest musical production to celebrate Rosies like her mom. She said her mom worked alongside tens of thousands of women at a large plant in Long Beach, California, in the 1940s. The family story goes that the women wore Rosie-esque outfits while churning out more aircraft frames than any other plant during World War II.
“And I said, ‘Mom, that is the most spectacular story you’ve ever told me. Let’s write a musical.’”
Marilyn Magness holds up a photo of her late mother and World War II factory worker, Allys Joy, at Magness' home in Bend, Ore., on June 10, 2026. Magness wrote “Rosie the Riveter the Musical” as a "love letter" to women like her mom, who entered the work force by the millions during World War II, she says.
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That conversation was nearly 50 years ago.
Magness went on to have an accomplished career as a creative director who worked at Disney and produced huge events, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Her mom passed away nearly twenty years ago. But “Rosie the Riveter the Musical” is finally happening – and it’s having its world premiere at Bend’s Tower Theater June 18.
“It’s been a bigger joy than probably anything I’ve ever done,” Magness said.
At a rehearsal last week, Magness’ creative intensity was on full display as she led the cast through the first act.
She called out loudly for quiet from the front of the room.
Members of the “Rosie the Riveter the Musical” cast rehearse on June 10, 2026, at Open Space Event Studios in Bend, Ore. On the left, left to right, actors Patty Halsey, Perry Scott Schwarz, Natalie Curtis, Aaron Hinkley, Hannah Allen, and Mollie Tennant stand in front of the playwright and director Marilyn Magness, right, as Magness gives notes.
Jen Baires for OPB / OPB
“The show begins with a full screen down, and we play a little bit, and we do a little Rosie thing, a tease for the audience,” she said.
During a later scene, Magness directed the play’s titular character — a nineteen-year-old named Rosie Waterman, who falls in love with a recently enlisted army private while she’s working at a diner.
“Time to dance off that apple pie,” sang out Natalie Curtis, the actress who plays Rosie. The sound of Big Band era horns, piano, and strings filled the air as everyone in the diner got up to sing and dance.
Over the last few months, the production team has reached out to senior centers throughout the region to invite living “Rosies” and World War II veterans, who are around 100 years old now, to attend a show.
They found five “Rosies,” including Bend local Riley Helmstetter, who plans to attend a weekend matinee. Magness said the play is about honoring all the “Rosies.”
“Every single one of them, when I tell them what we’re doing, they cry because it touches something that they either have buried or they never thought was worth celebrating,” she said. “And now I’m saying, ‘It is worth celebrating. You are worth celebrating.’”
In the foreground, actors Hannah Allen and Noah Cortese hold hands and kick their legs out while dancing during a rehearsal for “Rosie the Riveter the Musical” at Open Space Event Studios in Bend, Ore., June 10, 2026. In the background, from left to right, Blaze Springer, Perry Scott Schwarz, Amy James, Lauren Wray, Trevor Smith, Deena Nororian and Marilyn Magness look on and clap.
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