Correspondent photo / John Bagnola Josephine “Peppy” Laasko of North Jackson poses with the same helmet and welding gun she used in 1943 as a Rosie the Riveter.

NORTH JACKSON — Josephine “Peppy” Riffle Laakso will celebrate her 100th birthday in September. She also will be celebrating many lifetime achievements.

“My most meaningful job, as a young woman, was becoming a ‘Rosie the Riveter’ and supporting our military men during the war. We were not looking for any notoriety. We were just doing our job in order to help protect our freedom, and it was really hard work,” she said.

At age 17, after graduating in 1942 from Warren G. Harding High School, she was hired at 57 cents per hour as a lifeguard at Warren’s Packard Park Pool because she was a great swimmer. “It was a great first job because it taught me responsibilities. One afternoon, after a few months on the job, I had to save a young man from drowning,” she said.

Since that was just a summer job, Peppy decided to pick up a full-time job that year with the Army Corps of Engineers as a junior corps secretary. That was the time when the Army Corps was developing Lake Milton, as well as Berlin and Mosquito lakes.

By 1942, Germany began making headway in Europe and Japan began to conquer much of the Western Pacific. So the U.S. government decided to increase production of wartime machinery and equipment. One out of four women joined the workforce between 1942 and 1945.

The women wore hard hats and coveralls and played a massive role in the war effort by helping to produce rockets, bullets, cannons, tanks, jeeps, planes, boats and barges.

Peppy realized, at age 18, that she could become a valuable asset to our military men overseas. So she took a job at the Warren City Manufacturing Plant and became a professional electric welder certified by the Navy.

“I was a proud “Rosie Riveter” that day”, she said. She was certified to do flat, vertical, overhead and ballistic welding at $1.57 an hour.

The Warren plant contained an assembly line of women working with large sheets of ballistic armored steel to produce the protective armor for landing craft that made amphibious landings, such as Normandy, during World War II.

“All of us worked in assembly-line fashion for 10 hours a day during the week, but they gave us a so-called break by only working us eight hours on Saturday and Sunday. It just seemed odd to me that the men were the supervisors there and the women were churning out the heavy finished products,” she said.

The women would weld the protective ballistic sheets of metal to the barges. The overhead crane would then lower the barges into a massive tank of water inside the factory. Because Peppy was small, about 100 pounds, she was given the dubious honor of squeezing inside the bulkhead of the finished barges looking for leaks.

She then had to reweld the problem areas with the electric welder while standing in a puddle of water. She said electrocution never crossed her mind. She only thought about getting the job done as efficiently as possible. She did the final repairs on every unit before it left the plant. The barges were very wide so they were turned on their side, placed in an open gondola railroad car and then shipped off to wherever our soldiers needed them. These workers risked severe injury and major respiratory illnesses.

Peppy will never forget the day one of the women, with a 2-year-old son, got word that her husband was just killed in battle in the European theater.

“The young woman still came to work the next morning and said, ‘I have to keep working. I have to help win the war’,” Peppy recalled.

Peppy was born in Dillonvale, near Steubenville. Her parents, John and Mary Riffle, were immigrants from Slovenia. They moved to Warren when Peppy was 2. Her nickname, Peppy, has lasted a lifetime.

“No one even knows me by any other name,” she said.

Her parents dubbed her that name because she was the feisty one out of their 11 children. With five brothers and five sisters, Peppy had to be on her toes at all times, especially at the dinner table. She was a middle child and constantly searching for a way to be the best at everything.

All 11 Riffle children graduated from Warren G. Harding High School. She was proud of all of her siblings, especially three of her brothers who served in World War II. Rudy was the first one drafted into the Army and was wounded in France; Chuck served in the Navy; and Joseph, a Marine, jumped from one island to another in battles. All of her siblings are deceased.

The war may have ended in 1945, but as a young woman, Peppy was just getting started. She continued to challenge herself. She had a dream to become a pilot since she was a little girl. She found a great certified flight instructor named John Tyndall and was able to pass her first solo flight in a Piper Cub after six hours of instruction.

“Back then, the one-hour lesson was only $1. Now it’s between $45 and $65 per hour and generally requires a minimum of 40 hours.” she said.

Peppy met a gentleman at the plant and they decided to tie the knot in 1945.

His name was William Harold Laakso. They were blessed with four daughters and all of them were as driven as Peppy.

After being laid off at the plant, Peppy went back to school and became a Licensed Practical Nurse in 1959. She worked for 30 years in the emergency room and retired from St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital in 1989. With her love for the symphony orchestra, she decided to work as an usher for many years at Powers Auditorium after retirement.

Peppy has compiled dozens of Senior Olympic medals in freestyle swimming between the ages of 65 and 80. She qualified in the Olympic trials at Akron University on many occasions, which entitled her to compete at nationals in Kansas. In her 50’s she also decided to learn to downhill slalom ski, and became good enough to attack the Alps. She also loved white water rafting, private piloting a Piper Cub, River Fest Kayak racing at the age of 99, and flying and landing a glider released from an aircraft.

She now resides at the Antonine Village in North Jackson.

To suggest a Friday profile, contact Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com or Features Editor Ashley Fox at afox@tribtoday.com.