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Excerpt from "Meet the Girls Who Keep 'Em Flying"

Reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post.

Published on May 30, 1942.

"Mechanics in fancy work pants will be doing up to 60% of this country's airplane building by the end of the war."

"The foreman asked if I could run a lathe, and I said, 'I can, if you'll show me how.' He did, and I've been at it ever since." These words were spoken by Mrs. Francis DeWitt and recorded in "Meet the Girls Who Keep 'Em Flying," an article printed in the May 30, 1942, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Mrs. DeWitt, a San Diego wife and mother, had tired of "keeping house and playing bridge," so she joined millions of other women on the home front who went to work in the war industries. She became one of Consolidated Aircraft's best lathe operators. A lathe is a machine used for shaping parts.

In "Meet the Girls," women such as Mrs....