Fringeville #216: The Greatest Generation Loses Another: Rosalind P. Walter

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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