The torch is passed: Modern-day Rosie the Riveters fix WWII ship

Female welders, boilermakers, others volunteer to restore a museum in the Bay Area

- BY JESSICA GARRISON

TANZILLO, an apprentice welder, makes repairs on the ship in Richmond, Calif.

In a desolate corner of the Port of Richmond, dozens of women wearing polka-dot handkerchiefs and wielding blowtorches have spent the last two weeks volunteering their time to try to weld a piece of history back together.

The SS Red Oak Victory is the last surviving ship of the 747 that were churned out at the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond during World War II.

Now a group of women, led by welders who know well what it is like to try to make their way in a male-dominated profession, are volunteering to restore the ship.

These volunteers are "a testament to women building the ship and carrying the torch forward and showing our youth that the trades are viable professions for women," said Sarah Pritchard, the executive director of the Rosie the Riveter Trust, a nonprofit helping to coordinate the project.

Photographs by GABRIELA HASBUN For The Times THE WOMEN working on the ship project include, top row from left: Melissa Tanzillo, Jocelyn Mak, Dori Luzbetak and Angel Greer; and bottom row from left: Rennae Ross, Maria Inez Carrasco, Nicci Whetam and Margaret Chester, an SS Red Oak Victory crew member.

Like just about every ship that came out of that effort, the Red Oak Victory was partly built by women, who were called in to factory jobs in an industrial frenzy to replace men who had shipped overseas to fight in the war.