Helen Kushnir was born in February 1926 in Dearborn, Michigan and has been there all of her life. She had three sisters and one brother, and she was the oldest. Her father worked for the Ford Motor Company. During the Great Depression nobody really worked but they never were without. Her father was a proud person and he would dig ditches and help farmers. If you had money, you would get some ice for the ice box. If you did not, you went without. They had a Victory Garden and that really helped. They survived it. She had one Sunday dress. At Christmas, they got a big box of toys with broken dolls. They pasted them together. There was no gasoline for their car, so she walked. Everything was done by priority. They were happy. They played in the woods and picked berries. In high school, it was war time. They had the USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations, Inc.] and did Red Cross work. She wanted to help the war effort and they got extra credit at school. She worked for the OPA [Annotator's Note: Office of Price Administration] and she inspected meat. They got a lot of horse meat in those days. Right from high school, she went to DeSoto [Annotator's Note: DeSoto-Warren Plant, Chrysler Corporation, Detroit, Michigan]. Kushnir was picked to represent Rosie the Riveter [Annotator's Note: allegorical cultural icon] in a parade some years later.

Helen Kushnir went to work for DeSoto [Annotator's Note: DeSoto-Warren Plant, Chrysler Corporation, Detroit, Michigan] right after high school in June 1944. She had to go to riveting school. She does not know now how she remembered all of the details of doing the job. It was a lot of money then. Her great-granddaughter told her teacher she was "Rosie the Riveter" [Annotator's Note: allegorical cultural icon] and they asked her to come speak. She was in a full auditorium and she thought it was only going to be third graders. The first day on the job she got put in the corner because she was small and could get up inside the wing. She told the children that just because they are little, it does not mean they cannot do something big. Women would line up for hours to try to get nylons. She told the kids how they would put make-up on their legs because they could not get nylons. Everything was going for the war effort. "Rosies" brought out women wearing pants. Kushnir never saw her mother wear a pair of pants. Her mother could not understand her wearing pants and tying her hair up. She told her she was not a lady if she wore pants. Women became bus drivers, firemen, farm workers. That is when the pants came about.

When the war was over, a lot of women stayed on in the factories. Helen Kushnir went to work for Western Union as a router. The telegrams about the men missing in action were her job. She got married in 1948. Her husband was in the VFW [Annotator's Note: Veterans of Foreign Wars] and American Legion groups. Kushnir joined the VFW Auxiliary and started going to Veteran's hospitals. She has been doing that for 40 years. The government does not give them things like toothbrushes. The nurses send down a list of what is needed on the wards and they make up a bag for them. Some of them say that they cannot pay for the things. She tells them that they have already paid for them and they will always be paying for them. It is rewarding for her. Someone asked her why she did not get a job. It is not about what she gets in her pocket. Her husband is veteran, and her deceased son was a Vietnam veteran [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War]. Somebody has to do it. The volunteers are going down the tube. The younger people have to work. [Annotator's Note: Kushnir's son comes in and gives some papers to the interviewer.] Kushnir and her husband got the Four Chaplains Award [Annotator's Note: Legion of Honor Award, Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation] among others. Her husband does fundraisers and is very active.

[Annotator's Note: Helen Kushnir was in grade school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] It was very frightening. She knew it was war time. The paper boys would go around and holler that we were at war. There would be air raid horns and they would have to cover the windows and turn the lights off. She graduated high school in 1944 and went to work. There were some men working and the men were good to them. Not all of them made the war. They did contribute by working in the plants. Neighbors, cousins, and friends were gone. It was hard to get used to. She wrote a lot of V-mails [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail] and sent packages. In the Korean war, they sent a lot to her brother. They would go to the USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations, Inc.] dances. There were a lot of men stationed around there. Life was not the same. You knew one day not a lot of those men would come back. Her husband joined the Army but did not finish high school. Their commencement when they got back was very sad. [Annotator's Note: Kushnir gets emotional.] People came from all over to work there [Annotator's Note: in Detroit, Michigan]. Her friend came from another state. She just read Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" [Annotator's Note: 1998 book by journalist Tom Brokaw] and it was really something. Her husband took care of Senator Inouye [Annotator's Note: Daniel Inouye; Army veteran and United States Senator from Hawaii 1962 to 2012] and Robert Dole [Annotator's Note: Robert Joseph Dole, American veteran and politician] as a medical technician. Senator Inouye came to Dearborn [Annotator's Note: Dearborn, Michigan] to speak and her husband went to the dinner. He was brought up on stage and had his picture taken. He said they called Dole "Pineapple."

President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] passing away was very sad for Helen Kushnir. She remembers everybody kissing everybody when the war in Europe was over. The plants turned right back into auto factories. She had had enough of working there and went to work for Western Union. She had lost some hearing and her hands were bad, now her hands are crippled. She lost track of her work partner who would signal where to rivet. She would go home, sit on the porch, and go to sleep after working ten to 12 hours. Working there was not an experience. It was something she had to do. It was hard. She cannot visualize it now. She joined the war effort because she wanted to contribute. Her friends and cousins were gone. War always changes someone's life. She has been with the VFW [Annotator's Note: Veterans of Foreign Wars] and has gone to the hospital to see people. The new war memorial was just dedicated. You see all those names and it is a sad time. You go to the hospital and see men with disabilities they will have for the rest of their lives. People forget about that. They forget about the lock-up wards. If people could see that, maybe they would get along better. That is what war is all about, people not getting along. Wars are terrible.

Helen Kushnir is just beginning to realize that it mattered [Annotator's Note: being a woman working in a factory for the war effort]. At the time it did not seem a big deal. They waited a long time to recognize "Rosie the Riveter" [Annotator's Note: allegorical cultural icon]. She had dinner at the Library of Congress sponsored by the Ford Motor Company. So many people turned out to make it possible for them. She made a speech. They need to change them [Annotator's Note: the Rosie the Riveter illustrations] from "We Can Do It" to "I Did it". She thinks the legacy of the war and what she did is important to be taught. People are still honoring "Rosies" and the people who did things for the war effort. She did not make a big thing of it, it was just something that she had to do. She worked on the Curtiss Navy Helldiver [Annotator's Note: Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive bomber]. She saw it in the museum. [Annotator's Note: Kushnir and the interviewer talk about the plane.] She had thought they did not even care about the plane she worked on. She did something then. All she ever hears about are Willow Run bombers [Annotator's Note: the Ford Motor Company's Willow Run Bomber Plant, also known as Air Force Plant 31, located between Ypsilanti and Belleville, Michigan, manufactured Consolidated B-24 Liberators heavy bombers]. She just built them.