Neta Rush; One of Original Rosie the Riveters

It was wartime and Neta Rush used to tuck her auburn hair up, say goodby to her two young daughters and hop on the bus to Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica.

As one of the original Rosie the Riveters, Rush helped build airplanes for World War II pilots. While her husband, a merchant mariner, was off at sea, the young mother was working to support the war effort at home.

Rush died Friday in Thousand Oaks, where she had lived since 1968. She was 80 and had emphysema.

During the war she joined a work force of women that swelled to 2.9 million by 1944, doing the kinds of skilled, blue-collar jobs that women had never been considered capable of before. They welded. They worked on assembly lines. They handled heavy machinery. And for the first time they earned wages comparable to those of men.

A government film christened a fictional composite of these working women as Rosie the Riveter, and the label stuck.

Rush’s daughter, June Patterson of Rialto, remembered her mother’s working days.

“She loved it,” Patterson said. “She used to say it was the first time that women ever got in there and did men’s work. She was very proud of her job because she was really doing something worthwhile.”

After a long week, Rush and her sister, who also worked in the war effort, used to dress up on Friday nights in clothes they had sewed for themselves and go over to the USO, where they would serve coffee to the soldiers.

“I always thought they looked so gorgeous,” Patterson said, remembering her impressions as an 8-year-old. “She looked like Barbara Stanwyck.”

When the war was over, many of the women lost their jobs, but Rush held onto hers, staying at Douglas Aircraft until the early 1960s.

Her mother was a real fighter, Patterson said. On Friday, she “just finally gave up,” she said.

Rush was the youngest of 14 children and was born in La Cygne, Kan. She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the 1st Ward of Thousand Oaks.

She is survived by a brother, Ed Rose of Kansas; two daughters, June and Norma Lindsay of Thousand Oaks; a son-in-law, Dick Patterson of Rialto; eight grandsons; eight great-grandsons and one great-granddaughter.

Funeral services were held Saturday. Rush was buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Memorial Park.