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| Rosalind P Walter (Rosie) (Photo from CNN) |
Perhaps
you don’t recognize her name, but chances are you’ve heard of “Rosie the
Riveter.”
She and
countless other women in America were an enormous asset to the American war
effort. They kept our factories humming, producing the armaments that protected
Fortress America and assured victory over her foes.
Rosalind
Walter passed away on Wednesday, March 4 2020. She was 95. Her obituary is at the end of this post. (Photos that follow are from Wikipedia. The video is from YouTube).
WALTER--
Rosalind P. She was known to millions of Americans as a name on a
caption. The name was Rosalind P. Walter and the caption appeared on
public television with astonishing regularity for more than 40 years,
acknowledging her generous funding of all sorts of programs, but mostly
in the arts and public affairs.
"It always seemed to me", she wrote,
"that America could only be a truly democratic nation if it was based on
what I would call a democracy of ideas and information. I wanted all
Americans, whether they were rich or poor, well educated or not so well
educated, to have equal access to news and knowledge and the arts. It
seemed to me that television had the greatest potential to be the
instrument and enabler of this vision. Most of all, I thought that
public television, when it emerged in the mid-1960s, was ideally suited
to the role. I have never deviated from that opinion, and it is why I
have been a supporter of PBS - and more particularly, of WNET Channel 13
- since the mid- 1970s".
Beginning with the importation of a BBC
series, Royal Heritage, she quickly focused on home-grown American
programming that included many of PBS's 'greatest hits' - from the
MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour to American Masters, from Charlie Rose to the
dance programs of Annabelle, from landmark series by Ken and Ric Burns
to local programs that never got shown in prime time, like Richard
Heffner's The Open Mind, which she valued just as highly. "My purpose
has always been to fund production and programming, not overheads or
administration", she said. Public television was her principal passion,
but it was by no means the only one. Just as she proudly sat on the
Board of WNET Channel 13 for more than four decades, so she supported a
number of other institutions that were important to her. Long Island
University (LIU) was one of them: there she followed in her mother's
footsteps as a trustee. The United States Tennis Association (USTA) was
another. Having herself been an active player well into middle age, she
used her membership of the USTA Board to do all in her power to promote
diversity and youth within the game. Scholarship programs are named in
her honor at both LIU and the USTA - for students (as the USTA Serves
program states) "who share Walter's belief in always putting forth one's
best effort and giving back to one's community to make it a better
place".
The American Museum of Natural History, the Pierpont Morgan
Library and the Paley Center for Media were three of the other
institutions she served for many years. So were the Grenville Baker Boys
& Girls Club on Long Island and the National Committee for Inner
City Drug Prevention. Roz (as she was always known) had an innate gift
for friendship. In later years, she preferred to entertain at the River
Club, and there her table featured an extraordinary range of friends,
old and new, often including leading personalities from the television
world - Bill Moyers, Neal Shapiro, the Burns brothers, Paula Kerger,
Bill Baker, Susan Lacy, Charlie Rose and Jac Venza, to name just a few.
Born on Midsummer's Day in 1924, Rosalind Palmer Walter had a
privileged, but not always easy, childhood in Locust Valley on Long
Island. Her mother, Winthrop Bushnell Palmer, was a well-known educator,
poet and writer; her father, Carleton Palmer, was president and
chairman of the pharmaceutical company E.R. Squibb & Sons. Roz was
educated at The Ethel Walker School in Connecticut, and it was there
that her education ended - her parents simply refused to let her go to
college. Instead, as a teenager in the early days of World War II, she
went to work as a riveter on the night shift of the Vought Aircraft
Company, building the F4U marine fighter plane, known as the Corsair.
Within a few months, she broke all the records for riveting - for men as
well as for women - and she was immortalized as "Rosie the Riveter" in
the 1942 song written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb - "she's making
history, working for victory".
She was twice married - first to Henry S.
Thompson, by whom she had a son, Henry, who survives her. Her second
husband, Henry G. Walter, Jr., was a lawyer whose clients included the
Duke of Windsor and who, for more than 20 years, was Chairman of
International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF). Throughout their 44-year
marriage, they were actively involved in philanthropy, sometimes
individually, sometimes together. In 1951, Mrs. Walter established the
Walter Foundation, which has been her vehicle for philanthropy ever
since. It is now known as the Rosalind P. Walter Foundation. In addition
to her son, Mrs. Walter is survived by two grandchildren, four
stepgrandchildren and several step great-grandchildren. At her request,
no memorial service will be held. Family and friends are invited to make
donations in her memory to WNET - Channel 13.
Published in The New York Times on Mar. 6, 2020
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...Be good to each other
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