Lucille “Cille” MacDonald — one of the storied U.S. Navy shipyard welders known as Rosie the Riveter — is dead at 98.
She died last Friday in her longtime home of Hawaii, just weeks before the 83rd commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to Pacific Historic Parks, which announced her death on Monday.
MacDonald was one of 27 “Rosies” honored with the Congressional Gold Medal in April for exemplifying the all-hands-on-deck mentality Americans adopted during World War II. More than 5 million women volunteered to serve the U.S. military after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
MacDonald was reportedly born one of nine children in Greenville, S.C., where she grew up picking cotton. According to military publication Stars and Stripes, she was 16 years old when the war began. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, MacDonald boarded a bus and headed to Georgia, where she was taught to weld and put to work after just a few days.
“We had the most difficult job anyone could ever,” she said in an oral history video posted to Pacific Historic Parks’ YouTube page earlier this year. “We worked double shifts, seven days a week.”
MacDonald said sustaining burns were common on the job and there was no time for anything but shipbuilding. She said her crew contributed a ship per week to the U.S. fleet.
She credited her rural upbringing filled with difficult chores for making her tough.
“It made me very strong,” she said. “Children today don’t work like we worked.”
MacDonald moved to Maui in 1976 and remained in Hawaii until her death. During that time, she beat cancer twice and narrowly escaped the wildfire in Lahaina last year. The waterfront home she built with her late husband burned down in August 2023, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
MacDonald would have celebrated her 99th birthday on Dec. 9. She was planning to once again attend commemorations at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial two days earlier.
“Cille was diminutive, tough, spunky and beloved, an ambassador of all the Rosies who had a key role in helping win World War II,” said Aileen Utterdyke, president and CEO of Pacific Historic Parks. “We will miss her so much.”
