What do you get someone who’s turning 100 years old? For one local legend in the Philadelphia region, it is help keeping her story \u2014 and the story of millions of women like her \u2014 alive in the minds of Americans.<\/p>\n
Mae Krier<\/a>\u00a0of Levittown, Bucks County, is preparing to celebrate her 100th birthday on March 21, which also happens to be National Rosie the Riveter Day.<\/p>\n The date is no coincidence. Krier helped establish the national holiday. She was also the driving force behind securing the Congressional Gold Medal<\/a> honoring the 18 million women who went to work during World War II.<\/p>\n What was Rosie the Riveter?<\/p>\n Krier didn’t know it back then, but Krier and those women would collectively become known as Rosies. They were the women who worked on the home front as riveters, engineers, farmers and more. Now, they’re immortalized by that image of a woman in a polka-dotted bandana with the slogan “We can do it.”<\/p>\n “It was a man’s world. It wasn’t a woman’s world,” Krier said. “Women didn’t have much choice in anything. She couldn’t get a job. She couldn’t go out to work.”<\/p>\n The Rosies proved otherwise.<\/p>\n “See the gun she’s got there, that’s a rivet gun,” Krier said, flipping through a book written about her. “I riveted on the wings.”<\/p>\n In 1943, at 17 years old, Krier became a riveter for Boeing<\/a>\u00a0and built B-17 and B-29 bombers. Now, Krier is preparing to celebrate her 100th birthday by continuing her mission.<\/p>\n “Until I draw my last breath, I’m going to fight for you women and girls,” she said. “To make them realize how able they are. And if they have a dream, to follow it.”<\/p>\n Krier’s story has inspired so many.<\/p>\n “I know we’re about 80 years apart, but I do think we’re kindred spirits,” Raya Kenney said with a smile.<\/p>\n A Rosies monument is in the works in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n Kenney is now working to honor Krier and all the Rosies with a monument in Washington, D.C. It’s an idea she first brought to life as a school project in fifth grade, after learning about all the different roles women filled during the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Their spark just ignites me,” Kenney said. “There’s a passion and intensity that comes with these women. And I think as a young woman, that’s very important to see.”<\/p>\n Kenney, now 24 years old, has been working on the project ever since. The monument has been approved in Washington, but a site still needs to be selected, and whatever’s built will need to be funded through private donations.<\/p>\n Krier hopes that people will wish her well on her birthday this year, not with a present, but through a donation to the foundation raising money for the monument<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meantime, looking back on her life, Krier says the journey \u2014 and the people like Kenney she meets along the way \u2014 mean just as much as all the accomplishments.<\/p>\n She says time has been a gift.<\/p>\n “That’s a God-given gift. You can’t buy that,” Krier said. “I always say someone up there likes me.”<\/p>\n \n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n