'We Can Do It!' inspiration dead at 86

LANSING, Mich., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Geraldine Hoff Doyle, the Michigan woman who appeared as the female-empowerment icon Rosie the Riveter on World War II-era posters, has died, her family said.

She was 86 when she died Sunday, the Lansing State Journal reported Thursday. The cause of her death was not disclosed.

Doyle was a 17-year-old factory worker when she was photographed by United Press International at a metal-pressing plant near Ann Arbor.

The U.S. War Production Coordinating Committee later used the photo as the basis of an illustrated poster bearing the slogan "We Can Do It!" intended to encourage other women to enter the workforce in support of the war effort.

"Rosie the Riveter is the image of an independent woman who is in control of her own destiny," Gladys Beckwith, former director of the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame, told the newspaper. Doyle "was a gracious, beautiful woman. Her death is the passing of an era, and we need to take note of that. We need to respect what she stood for."

Doyle, a mother of six, has said she didn't know until 1984 she was the inspiration for the famous posters. Once she realized the connection, she didn't want to upstage other women who also had been associated with the Rosie the Riveter image in films, artwork or ad campaigns.

"She would say that she was the 'We Can Do It!" girl," her daughter, Stephanie Gregg, told the Journal. "She never wanted to take anything away from the other Rosies."